Crystalling Dresses

[fsk8r]

How do you work out how to place the rhinestones on a dress?
Are there any rules of thumb to help start the process?
I'm a bit daunted by having a blank canvas of a dress and just need a little bit of help to get the creative juices flowing.

[tazsk8s]

How do you work out how to place the rhinestones on a dress?
Are there any rules of thumb to help start the process?
I'm a bit daunted by having a blank canvas of a dress and just need a little bit of help to get the creative juices flowing.

Can you describe the dress you're trying to stone? Is it solid color or does it have some contrasting parts in it? I love to stone dresses, but for me it highly depends on the basic style of the dress what I end up doing with the stones.

In general I usually use stones to accent things like an applique or a color contrast. If it's a solid color, maybe highlight the neckline with them more densely packed at the neckline and then gradually space them out more from there. If there is a sheer portion I might scatter little tiny ones over that just to give it a bit of shimmer. I'm usually pretty sparing on the skirt, but it depends on the type of skirt it is.

[fsk8r]

OK, the dress is going to be mainly dark green but with black power net for the sleeves and over the shoulders. Sweetheart neckline.
I'd like to add some applique, but I've not found anything I like yet and am not sure where to look. The music is celtic, but I'd like to keep the dress generic so I can reuse.
The skirt is going to be asymmetric chiffon (double layer black and green) so I'm figuring that's not going to be stoned.
I like the idea of stoning the neckline and then scattering them from there. Would you do something similar at the back so it's symmetric?

I've never had to stone a dress before and as the dress is currently being made, it's going to be a tight turn around before the competition so I want to have preplanned the stoning in advance. 
 

[alejeather]

In my experience, figuring out where to place the stones is the hardest part! I always shuffle stones around the dress until I'm forced by a time constraint to make a decision. It's hard to get a real feeling for what the finished effect will be by laying the stones on the dress, though. The dress isn't flat, and the stones slide around. It always looks better once I start gluing the pattern in place.

The neckline is always a good place to start, and remember, you can do the pattern in stages. I like to do a bit of stoning that I know could stand on its own without any additional work and then do the next bit. For instance, I'll be adding stones to the collar of the dress I skated in for Sectionals, but I could also leave it the way it is and it doesn't look unfinished. Good luck!

[tazsk8s]

Agree, the neckline is a great place to start. A sweetheart neckline sort of begs to be outlined with stones. :-) Definitely do something in the back as well as the front.

You didn't mention what color stones you were thinking of using, or if you were doing just clear or crystal AB. I personally love black diamond stones (not the opaque jet black ones, the black diamond ones are sort of a dark silvery-gray). You could scatter these on the black power mesh. They would give it some sparkle without the "polka dot" effect that the clear ones might have on a dark fabric.

I've found that what looks like a ton of stones close-up, can sometimes get "lost" from a distance and barely show up. If time permits, stone it and then take it to the rink and have someone take it to the middle of the rink for you so you can see what the overall effect is for yourself. You can always add more stones later.

[fsk8r]

I'd not even thought about color! Is it better to do Clear AB or to match the dress color?
I like the black diamond stone idea. I'll have to start looking for some of those.

[alejeather]

For each dress I've stoned, I've bought crystal AB stones and stones that match the dress. I've always ended up using way more of the crystals. In fact, I just ordered more for my current dress, though I still have a lot of matching stones left over. Matching stones help add extra sparkle or depth to your pattern but they don't show up much on the ice, though it does depend a little on the size of the stone.

Speaking of size, I wouldn't go smaller than 20ss.

[DressmakingMomma]

Something dd's skating coach has said to me about stoning is "what is the star of the dress and bling that". She doesn't pick the typical areas and sometimes I walk away thinking "hmm, wonder if that's going to work". I made a velvet bodice dress with sweetheart bust line (thought I would do a pretty pattern along the velvet), but the dress also had lace long sleeves, back, and from the bust up to a high neck. She said the lace was the star of the dress, not the velvet, bling the lace. I was worried the velvet would look plain, but it turned out to be a great decision and the result was a gorgeous dress that's a bit different then the typical pattern along the neckline. Same thing was true for the last dress I made - I thought I would stone along the sweeping neckline, and she said no, the dress is soft and flowing so make the crystals match. I ended up with an all-over pattern using small 16ss crystals. The result was amazing - soft, shimmery and very pretty on the ice.

Enjoy! Stoning is one of my favorite parts, it's when all your hard work sort of comes together.

[tazsk8s]

Because you're working with a dark colored dress, the clear stones will show up very well. Like I said before, if you don't want a polka-dot effect, be careful of using them if you're going to scatter them on the black mesh. Learned this one the hard way.

Once in awhile I'd use 16SS stones if I was trying to do a particular pattern, but in general the 20 to 30SS stones were my personal favorites. The smaller ones can be a bit of a pain to work with.

[DressmakingMomma]

I've found that what looks like a ton of stones close-up, can sometimes get "lost" from a distance and barely show up. If time permits, stone it and then take it to the rink and have someone take it to the middle of the rink for you so you can see what the overall effect is for yourself. You can always add more stones later.

SO true. the first dress I stoned. I made a delicate pattern which was really pretty up close but totally lost on the ice. The dress almost needs to look gaudy in order to be pretty on the ice. I think using different crystal sizes can help - if you use the 16ss in mass quantities the effect is sort of shimmery, the 20 and 30ss give a bit more flash, and the big sew-on's are nice for spotlighting a part of the pattern.

If you are thinking of an all-over pattern, something I've found is that the color of stones gets lost on the ice - so that all you really see is sparkle, but they are nice for helping the stones blend into the fabric of the dress. Attached is a picture of what I mean - this is the last dress I made. I used 16ss in peridot ab, aqua ab and crystal ab. There was a crystal attached every 1.5" over the entire dress and skirt but they matched the fabric. It's hard to capture the shimmer on camera, but you can see it doesn't look polka-dotted but it does sparkle quite well.

[fsk8r]

That's a beautiful dress and I love the coloring on the skirt.
So all the crystals on that dress match the color of the fabric they're attached to?
So it gives the sparkly effect the camera is just about picking up but doesn't create a pattern which is discernible?

(I think I must be a visual learner as the picture is helping with the concept).

[DressmakingMomma]

Thanks, I really fought with this one while sewing but was happy with the outcome. If you are standing 5 feet from the dress then you see the crystals and they look polka-dotted, but once she is on the ice they blend into the dress. It's hard for the camera to capture the effect, but as she moves across the ice it sort of glimmers subtly. Her music is floaty and hawaiian, so we wanted the dress to be soft. Because the skirt has an ombre dye, I used aqua ab at the top and crystal ab where the skirt started fading into the white.

I'm very visual too, so here are a couple more pictures:

[Loops]

I'm lurking on this thread, because I foresee crystalling in my future, and it scares me.  I remember watching one of the mothers in our rink sequin-ing a dress many many years ago.  She had it down to a science, but it looked intense.  I've never seen crystalling in action (other than you-tube).

DressMakingMomma- that dress is so pretty!  I love the appliqué- how did you learn to do that on spandex?  Trial and error, or did you find advice somewhere?

And just out of curiosity, if you'd used smaller crystals like the 12ss, but placed them closer together, how would that have changed the effect, do you think?

And what's the general consensus- hotfix or glue-on?

[fsk8r]

The dress is beautiful. The applique is amazing and brings out the theme you're trying to create.
Thank you very much for posting the close up, it's nice to be able to see the crystal pattern that creates the effect on the ice.
I'm also interested in the applique. Did you create those yourself or buy them to use?

(and congratulations to your daughter. She looks to have been successful in the dress).

[DressmakingMomma]

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  .

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.

[alejeather]

I've always used the flat back crystals and E6000 glue to attach them to the dress. You can buy smaller E6000 tubes which come with smaller "jewelry" tips which is what I did this last time. I place a number of stones face up on a paper plate, then I apply a line of glue of 2 inches MAX to the dress, or several dots (depending on the pattern). Then using the base of a crayon, I press the crayon on the face of the crystal. It should stick. Then I place it down in the line of glue and it comes right off the base of the crayon. I try to use orange or yellow crayons because the wax can rub off on the face of the stone a little bit. It will rub right off, but that way, it's just not as noticeable in case you don't get to. Some crayons are softer than others, which makes it easier. Sometimes the base of the crayon becomes too pocked and then I just color it flat on a piece of paper.

I had a little bit more trouble with this method on my current dress, I think the crayons I had were harder, and I had to press harder to get the stones to stick, but I still think it's less tedious than tweezers. However, I did order some Embellie Gellie  http://www.rhinestonesupply.com/proddetail.php?prod=Emb.Gellie from rhinestonesupply when I bought additional stones recently. It's the same concept as the crayon method, but it's a stick with a little sticky gel on the bottom. It only costs about $5 and is supposed to last a long time. I haven't gotten to try it yet, but it seemed like a worthwhile investment.