The North Remembers

I've been working on this piece in my spare time for a couple of weeks now and I finally finished it the other night! The embroidery on Sansa's season six gown is so eye catching and yet I could not find a single photo of it that gave me enough details to go into this project without reservations or nerves.

I created a pattern, traced from the most high quality image I could find, and yet I was STILL nervous. What about that part I can't see at all in any of the photos? How was I going to do that? What kind of beads would I use? What search term should I use for those beautiful flat shell type beads at the base of the wolf?

Even when I wasn't working on it - this piece was always at the back of my mind. Using stabilizer paper with my pattern on it just made me even more anxious, since I was never really sure if it was turning out okay or not. But I got there, eventually, and it doesn't look half bad if I do say so myself!

I started my work on this piece by finding as many images of the costume as possible. Then I took the best image out of the whole bunch and used photoshop to make a pattern, which you can see above with some extra notes - if you'd like to make this piece. (I'd recommend having a reference image on hand of the actual embroidery while you're working, it helped a lot!)

Usually to get my pattern onto the fabric for my embroidery work, I would trace it. But this is dark fabric, so I had to use a stabilizer. There's a huuuge range of stabilizers to choose from (one of them dissolves in water??), but I went with a simple tear-away one. I traced my pattern onto this and then cut it out and pinned it to my fabric. Et voila. All ready to start the embroidery!

I took this photo as a reminder that after lining my wolf - I tore away some of the stabilizer. I had to do this because I used a satin stitch to fill the wolf and I wouldn't have been able to get to the stabilizer after doing that.
It may be hard to tell, but I actually used four different colours for the embroidery.  They were:
Sullivans #45324 (Lining for the wolf + half of the leaves)
Sullivans #45150 (Filling in the wolf + the other half of the leaves)
Sullivans #45085 (Eye and ear of the wolf + the vines)
Sullivans #45091 (Just the vines)

I wouldn't normally pick Sullivans - I only went with it because they were only 69 cents each and I was purchasing quite a few - but in the end it doesn't really matter. Any other brand would have done just fine. The wolf is the only part with very clear colouring, whereas the vines were just guesswork. I saw someone use violet for their vines and I liked the idea so I used #45091 for mine. It's a very very light shade so it's not too gaudy.

There was also a lot of beading in the vines and I could barely make out the colours of them, so I just guessed. I did a lot more guesswork when it came to the beads. They were:
Ribtex Seed Beads in black (only for the vines)
Shamrock Craft Assorted Neutral Glass Beads (for the beads clustered at random around the wolf and the vines. I bought them secondhand at an op shop/thrift store, but they're very easy to find. They came in various neutral colours and look lovely)
Ribtex Seed Beads in metallic silver (I threw these in between the neutral glass beads, I like the way they catch the light)
Mix Shell Chip Beads (I really struggled with the flat beads underneath the wolf. I ordered two packets of beads and the second packet was only just good enough for me. I think the beads are actually Paua Shell beads? But I had no luck with that, so I just searched variations of "flat shell beads" until I found these on ebay. They're not perfect, but they'll do.)
Pearl and Shell Mix (I bought this mix packet originally for the flat beads, but they arrived and were far too big. I still ended up using some of the smaller beads with the flat beads, though. They're the green and blue beads at the base of the wolf, seen below.)

And of course the material I used was the same velvet used for the dress. When you're cutting out your dress, make sure there's enough left for this piece! I ran out very quickly! That's why my piece didn't quite fit the embroidery hoop.

When the embroidery was all done I carefully cut and tore away the stabilizer. You may want to take it off BEFORE you do your beading, because I had to sew all of them down again after tearing all that paper away. Some of them even fell off! If you have your vines and wolf in place, you should be alright adding your beading without the stabilizer.

Once that was all done and the beading was 100% secure, I lined all of my pieces with a soft black fabric I found in my scrap pile so all the ugly knots and such underneath would not be exposed. Then I machine stitched the pieces together and there it is! All done!
I still need to decide how the back of the piece will attach together (I'm thinking ribbon for a "vintage" touch). Next up is the cloak - which will feature some really lovely embossed snowflakes. It'll be a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to taking a break from all this hand sewing!