Good Quill Hunting (music plays) is hosting a Haute Couture contest — “inspired wearable bead art.”  Participants are to choose any one of 36 different Haute Couture pieces, and make something inspired by that photo.  Here’s what I chose:

Click on the photo to see two detail shots.

Two things caught my eye with this dress – the basic color, which I like and have in beads – and the style.  For Haute Couture, this actually looks wearable!  And, I thought I could translate it into beads.

It took me a couple of attempts to get irregular ruffles that were reminiscent of this dress. The dress has some light cream in the base skirt, which I translated into a spiraling band of like colored charlottes.  I felt the mass of green, between the “skirt” and the tapering square stitch tube, needed a larger offset of color than the relatively small bodice in black, cream, peach, and sea green.  So, I changed the proportions and shape to make a larger beaded bead.  The cream in the skirt ties it to the cream in the bead, and I used 4 beads to make each randomly placed flower.  The last design challenge to be faced was the clasp, which is visible as a band of silver at the front, balanced by a silver bead peeking out at the base of the ruffles.