For the appliques, I used a combination of trial and error, advice here, and internet reading. Appliques for purchase are not made of stretch material, can be costly, and I liked being able to tie the dress together using a combination of fabrics. I'm always on a tight budget, which helps make these decisions for me
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For these, I traced the flower outline with a crayola washable marker on a square of spandex, then placed a square of stretch mesh on top, pinning well. I used a small zig-zag to outline the outside of the flower and inside petal shape, cutting away the mesh with tiny embroidery scissors in the petal centers. The applique was heavily pinned to the dress and I stitched it down using the same small zig-zag with lots of lifting the pressure foot and slightly rotating the fabric on the needle as I went around curves. The process was slow and tedious, and the result wasn't perfect with flowers puckering when the dress is on the hanger.
The first appliques I did were considerably easier and probably a good place to start. I used a lace and cut out the appliques using the patterns in the lace as a guide. Next, I placed the lace pieces onto a medium weight fusible interfacing and carefully ironed the lace using a presscloth. The interfacing gives the lace some body and stiffness. I cut them out again, pinned them onto the dress while my dd was wearing it, then hand tacked intermittently along the edges. By tacking instead of sewing along the edges with a machine, I knew I could easily take out a stitch to adjust if needed and it didn't matter that the appliques didn't stretch. If you sew a non-stretch applique on with the machine you will loose the stretch of the dress.
I've never used the 12 ss, might be fun to try them on a practice dress and see how it looks. I buy the 16 ss crystal ab by the 10 gross at a discount and then purchase 16, 20, and 30 ss in ab colors to accent. This seems to be a budget friendly way to get 5-700 crystals on a dress. I don't use Swarovski (they are beautiful but oh so expensive) so I order the AB coating since the non-swarovski clear and color crystals just don't seem to have enough bling. The AB coating sort of covers up the fact that you aren't using expensive crystals. If I didn't have budget issues or my dd was skating at a higher level, then I would use Swarovski.
My hotfix method is to use an electric skillet set to 310 (glue melt temp for the stones I buy), set the stones glue side up with tweezers on the electric skillet so the glue is already melted when I place them on the dress using tweezers. Then I hit the top of the stone with a heat applicator that I bought from Hobby Lobby (I like it because it has flat brass heads instead of the cupped heads meant to hold the stones in place). The method works well, I've lost very few stones but it takes forever.
For this last dress, I decided to try e6000. The crystals I buy only come in hotfix but can be glued. Squirt out a pea-sized bit of glue, dip a toothpick in the glue, touch it to the back of a crystal, and the pop it down on the dress. Use a little pressure from a second toothpick to push the stone down into the fabric for a few seconds (I found sanding the tip of the toothpick a bit made it more stable for this part). There was a fine line between using not enough glue and using too much - I erred on the 'not enough' side and had some stones seem like they might fall off. Panic time set in, then I read about the "double bond" method from a dance website where you glue and then touch all the crystals with a heat tool to activate the hotfix glue - so that's what I ended up doing. This is probably the way I'll go from here on out as the crystals seem like they are never coming off. I worry about losing crystals on the ice because I would feel SO bad if they tripped up somebody else during their program.
Whew, that was a wordy post! I'm an information junky, and happy to share what I've learned but sometimes it means my posts are too long even with editing. Oh, and dd was disappointed with her skate (3 out of 4) even though we thought she did great. Guess it's inspiration to work hard for the next one.