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I've been planning this dress for a little over two years and I'm happy to finally bring it to you for Star Trek's 50th Anniversary.

I knowwww you're looking at this and going "Two years? It's hardly anything!" and you would be totally right. There was a significant portion of laziness in getting the pattern drawn and a fair bit of guilt in timing... both this year and last year Trek actors have passed away and I'm just like ._. whyyy.

Last year I did the majority of my planning for the comm badge:

As it turns out creating the circle button-backing out of a Crystalett blank was going to create way too much 'lift' from the dress itself, so I had to opt for super-glue to attach the badge to the beads. This is the only time I've ever used glue on my bead dresses and I think it's a worthy sacrifice to keep the badge flush. The badge is just 3.3mm x 4.6mm and is cut by hand with some terribly sharp scissors out of brass sheet metal.

The Original Series red-shirt dresses were usually worn by Uhura and were really basic: a red 60's minidress that barely covered their butt cheeks, wrist-length sleeves without decoration, a thin V of black along the collar, and the comm badge above their right breast. Literally their fingertips laid at rest below where the skirt ended. There was some sort of layering that gave the dress a bit of a wrap-around maybe-there's-a-slit-in-the-skirt look and after a while they did give their sleeve cuffs a line of gold.

The Next Generation dress was only around for the first season and is what I chose to go with causeeeee let's face it a fully red dress with a black V on the collar is realllllllll boring to bead. The Next Gen dresses had two red panels (front and back) and black everywhere else to end in two black cap sleeves. So you'll notice right off: I didn't do sleeves. I hate doing sleeves. And according to the internet and a few Facebook commenters lots of people tend to go with a sleeveless minidress for their cosplays anyhow. (But, yeah, in the future, I'll be making a short sleeve version.)

Don't forget, in Next Generation, even [the men wore miniskirts] .

After the first season though they dropped it and everyone on the ship wore pants. This made finding references a bit trickier than I expected it'd be but there are plenty from the Original Series and a particular shot of [Troi] that I continuously referred to where she apparently wears green instead of blue (I suspect this is just a bit of image quality causing that, but who knows really, Troi wore a lot of weird outfits).

References gathered, I grabbed the closest dress shape I had and set to work drawing little circles all over graph paper.

...And then I set myself firm in the idea that no matter how ridiculous it was I would need to chop the length of the skirt by, like, a lot to make it the correct Trek length. This didn't make me happy but it did save me on beading time so I guess it evens out. Pattern creation time actually worked out to something like just two hours.

She is created entirely from glass seed beads and nylon. Her dress form is not removable without permanent damage and attempted removal may cause sudden death. Glass seed beads in size 11 and size 15. Matte red and shiny black, hand-cut brass comm badge. Threaded together with red Japanese One G nylon. Herringbone stitch.

Color Total: 2
Bead Sizes: 2
Size: 2 1/2 inches tall, 1 inch waist, 1 1/4 inch bust, 1 7/8 inches hem, 1 1/8 inches wide shoulders
Time: 5 hours beading (I totally forgot to time the comm badge.)

Description
Full Shop | Etsy | Facebook | Instagram

I've been planning this dress for a little over two years and I'm happy to finally bring it to you for Star Trek's 50th Anniversary.

I knowwww you're looking at this and going "Two years? It's hardly anything!" and you would be totally right. There was a significant portion of laziness in getting the pattern drawn and a fair bit of guilt in timing... both this year and last year Trek actors have passed away and I'm just like ._. whyyy.

Last year I did the majority of my planning for the comm badge:

As it turns out creating the circle button-backing out of a Crystalett blank was going to create way too much 'lift' from the dress itself, so I had to opt for super-glue to attach the badge to the beads. This is the only time I've ever used glue on my bead dresses and I think it's a worthy sacrifice to keep the badge flush. The badge is just 3.3mm x 4.6mm and is cut by hand with some terribly sharp scissors out of brass sheet metal.

The Original Series red-shirt dresses were usually worn by Uhura and were really basic: a red 60's minidress that barely covered their butt cheeks, wrist-length sleeves without decoration, a thin V of black along the collar, and the comm badge above their right breast. Literally their fingertips laid at rest below where the skirt ended. There was some sort of layering that gave the dress a bit of a wrap-around maybe-there's-a-slit-in-the-skirt look and after a while they did give their sleeve cuffs a line of gold.

The Next Generation dress was only around for the first season and is what I chose to go with causeeeee let's face it a fully red dress with a black V on the collar is realllllllll boring to bead. The Next Gen dresses had two red panels (front and back) and black everywhere else to end in two black cap sleeves. So you'll notice right off: I didn't do sleeves. I hate doing sleeves. And according to the internet and a few Facebook commenters lots of people tend to go with a sleeveless minidress for their cosplays anyhow. (But, yeah, in the future, I'll be making a short sleeve version.)

Don't forget, in Next Generation, even [the men wore miniskirts] .

After the first season though they dropped it and everyone on the ship wore pants. This made finding references a bit trickier than I expected it'd be but there are plenty from the Original Series and a particular shot of [Troi] that I continuously referred to where she apparently wears green instead of blue (I suspect this is just a bit of image quality causing that, but who knows really, Troi wore a lot of weird outfits).

References gathered, I grabbed the closest dress shape I had and set to work drawing little circles all over graph paper.

...And then I set myself firm in the idea that no matter how ridiculous it was I would need to chop the length of the skirt by, like, a lot to make it the correct Trek length. This didn't make me happy but it did save me on beading time so I guess it evens out. Pattern creation time actually worked out to something like just two hours.

She is created entirely from glass seed beads and nylon. Her dress form is not removable without permanent damage and attempted removal may cause sudden death. Glass seed beads in size 11 and size 15. Matte red and shiny black, hand-cut brass comm badge. Threaded together with red Japanese One G nylon. Herringbone stitch.

Color Total: 2
Bead Sizes: 2
Size: 2 1/2 inches tall, 1 inch waist, 1 1/4 inch bust, 1 7/8 inches hem, 1 1/8 inches wide shoulders
Time: 5 hours beading (I totally forgot to time the comm badge.)