Anyway, here is the result of our photoshoot.

The design was inspired by Ariel, from one of my favorite Disney movies, The Little Mermaid.

I used a flesh toned body suit as the base, with sequined knit fabric for the tail. I put a split in the back so I could move (very important at a party) and made a “fin” frill for the bottom to hide my feet.

The shells were a little more challenging. I drew a rough pattern of a clam shell, but with the finger bits spread out so they could be shaped.  I cut out four shells in a white sparkly/pearly Lycra fabric (scrap from another project) and two from thin purple card to go in between  for body and to give a slightly purple tinge. Obviously I wasn’t thinking about cleaning it at the time!

The pieces then got zigzagged together around the edges and  shaped and stitched onto me.

This was the really tricky part. I had the body suit on, standing in front of the mirror and tried to pin the shells on but this proved to be far too dangerous, so instead I got some thread and a needle and hand basted each of the clam fingers to the suit, all nicely overlapped and in the correct position. Then it was just a matter of stitching it all around.

For those who are wondering, yes it was a great party!