25th July 2012: Embroidery is the bane of my life Started the hand embroidery of the dress. I really hate hand embroidery, but I don't think I can easily get the swirls done on my machine and they look hand done on the original dress (from what I can tell, they seem slightly irregular)

This is going to be a loooooong process

9th April 2012: Skirt Progress Win! Finished the evil swirls today! I need to iron the whole dress to fix the fabric paint next and to finish the aging and distressing the hem. The hood still needs it's swirls and I am debating what effect washing the dress will have. My swirls should in theory be colourfast but I have some trepidation about attempting a wash after doing all those hours of work painting!

9th April 2012: Ring Progress Started work on my ring! I've been working with Sculpey III, it is WAY softer than I recall. I always preferred Sculpey to Fimo as I found it gave sharper results. I had to put this in the fridge several times to harden the clay enough to work it well. The piece has been worked by hand and tooled with a chisel edged end of a paintbrush and has been molded onto a standard adjustable ring blank and is ready for baking!

This is the start of my ring against the reference image.

7th April 2012: Handpainting sloooow Yet more handpainting, I've been laying it out on the floor after foolishly attempting to paint it whilst on mannequin. The fact this is a full circle skirt is really sinking in. Alas the painting goes on...

28th March 2012: And so it goes on So it occurs to me that I have a LOT of fabric to hand paint. Still with the boys sleeping better I have a good hour or more each night to work on Bella. It's a grind, I hope it'll be worth it!

26th March 2012: Oh gods the swirls... Painting yet more swirls. It occurs to me there is an awful lot of fabric on this dress. I'm pleased with the effect I've achieved so far. I've been handpainting using a mixture of white fabric paint and a fabric paint 'shade creator' This has effectively thinned the paint to make a pale faded effect in places, with stronger areas in others for a nice aged look.

24th March 2012: Swirly Swirly Swirls So I've started hand painting the swirls on the costume! I debated over driving myself nuts aiming for screen accuracy but decided against it in favour of just creating the general feel of the dress.

I SO wish I had access to screen printing facilities as I would have simply developed a design, popped it into repeat and printed the fabric before construction. Alas I lack the required workspace, which I deeply lament being almost 5 years since I've done any screen printing now...

Still painting goes well and sleeves are now loosely attached!

18th March 2012: Corset on mannequin! I've finished binding the corset underlayer now and glued the two layers together. I probably should have made the hem of the corset wider to give a deeper curve and cinch at the waist. It was difficult to judge as my shape has changed dramatically in the last year since I started making this costume and it has only been 9 weeks since I had my second child. Oh wells!

18th March 2012: Corset ready to bind This is my mini waspie fully boned and ready to be trimmed in bias binding. I say it's lightweight as it has only about a half or a third of the average number of bones I'd usually put in a full corset. This is simply as it's a structural thing to support the leather work and I'm less concerned about it having drastic waist reduction properties. It is boned with 7mm wide spiral steels.

16th March 2012: Corset Progress! So today I've been working on the lightweight corset that will form the support for the leather patchwork. The pieces are cut, sewn and topstiched and the boning channels added. Next stage is to cut the boning to lengths, seal the ends and trim the top and bottom edge in bias binding.

15th March 2012: Nails! Today I have been painting Bellatrix's nails. In the movies her nails are all worn and chipped and rather unpleasant! I've used false nails and acrylic paints in multiple layers to create the colour. I then sliced into the nails with scissors to create the tattered edges.