advice on a dress for a beginner

[tickingy]

Hi guys,

I have never made anything with chainmail before, however I saw this really beautiful chainmail dress (pics attached) in a vintage store that I fell in love with. The price was way over my budget, so now im considering trying to make my own. Where should I start? What tools do I need? Do you guys think making something like this is possible for a beginner? I’m going to learn the basic patterns first. I really adore these dresses and I know it’s going to be a lot of work but honestly im excited to do this as my new project. I asked another website how many pieces i need and they said around 10,000, does that sound accurate? Im a very small girl, so i dont really know how much that changes. Is buying just a bunch of chainmail off amazon ok, or is there a specific place I should get it from? I have a lot of videos saved on how to make a shirt and stuff but I really want to replicate the bell sleeves and im not sure how to. any advice would be helpful. thank you so much!

 

[ashemdragon12]

Hey! So yeah this does seem like a pretty big project for your very first forray into chainmaille but I guess not totally undoable.
10,000 rings seems like a pretty okay estimate to me, IF you make the dress as open of a weave (ie, with as big of rings) as the one in the picture, and you're a petite person. You can always just order more rings if you run out, but you typically get discounts for buying more at once so... options. Please don't buy from Amazon. There's very little quality regulation or accountability with any kind of product on there, and it's just so soulless. Buy from a proper chainmaille website like theringlord.com (the big one everyone uses) or chainmailledude.com (a much smaller one but they're pretty much the only one other than ring lord that I've ordered from.) Finding what you need that way will be much easier too, because the method of ring sizing is much more systematized; chainmaille uses wire guage for ring thickness, fractions of an inch for ring size, and AR for the ratio between those two values. Non chainmaille websites will typically give you millimeters with no further information, which can make it a lot harder to match up your projects with online instructions or discussions (at least this has been my experience). Furthermore, they might be the wrong kind of metal!! Many maillers have had the formative experience of buying rings or wire from a craft store thinking, "aluminum's aluminum, right? How could they possibly be different?" only to find out that the craft store product has a "dead soft" temper and is only barely usable, if at all. Tools, on the other hand, you can get from pretty much any hardware store (if you use normal plyers like me) or crafting store (if you use needlenose plyers like most people do).

Anyways, supplies aside, personally I've been mailling pretty on-and-off for 10 years now and I don't think I'd be able to put that dress together through just eyeballing it or trial and error. Maybe that's a skill issue on my part since I've only made one full-size clothing piece, but I can't imagine that having only made zero pieces would give you much of a head start, haha. If you have a base pattern and litterally the only modification is the bell sleeves then maybe you could be okay? Looks like the bell sleeves were done with what's called "expansions." If you're not ultra familiar with base euro 4-in-1 then expansions can be kinda frustrating to find again between attaching rings but they're not HARD, they just require a little more attention, and maybe more trial and error.

Overall, however, I'd recommend ordering a smattering of different rings in different sizes and maybe materials to start with and just messing around with them a little to make sure you understand the scale of common measurements, the feel of whatever material you're considering, and to make sure chainmaille isn't actually miserable for you before you take the plunge and order the tons of rings you'll need for this undertaking.

Hopefully that wasn't as rambly to read as it felt to write, and hopefully that helps! Lemme know if I missed anything you wanted to know about!