Daenerys Targaryen

Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons.

So Game of Thrones is back and Daenerys is still awesome. I like A Song of Ice and Fire; I finished all the books up to Dance of Dragons. At the rate the TV series is going, we'll probably see Season 6 before we get book six. 

Regardless of the media, Daenerys is one of my favourite characters (along with Arya, Sansa, Tyrion, Brienne, and DAVOS ). The series did make some changes with her character that I didn't like (why pray tell, change her wedding night scene with Khal Drogo from how it was in the book? WHY? Whine whine), but I think Emilia Clarke is superb in her role. 

And the costumes. Oh wow, the costumes. Daenerys gets some of the best (though Sansa's black dress and wedding dress are damn stunning). My favourites are her Season 3 and 4 "dragon" dresses, which all have a dragon-like scale texture, created with smocking, beading, and embroidery. 

For more information, I recommend looking at Michelle Carragher's website http://www.michelecarragherembroidery.com/Game-of-Thrones-Gallery%282829575%29.htm

I love all of these costumes, and would love to replicate them. I have a few metres of a white silky material, which sadly seems to be synthetic. I will test it to see if it can be dyed. If not, it might work for one of these pleated underskirts, though I found some promising pleated material in a local shop.

I'm thinking of using a material called India Cloth for the blue parts of the dress, as it has a slight sheen to it. I also found it in just the right colour for Dany's first dress.

I really like this midriff baring one, but not sure if I am confident enough for it. Still, I keep meaning to get fitter, so maybe this should be my incentive.

I have no idea what the material here is; some kind of amazing cutwork stuff with beading on the shoulders, as far as I can tell. I sort of want to make all these outfits, but be lazy and make only one pleated skirt and use it for the two long blue dresses (the white midriff outfit would need it's own skirt, because there's a little v-shape cut into the front of the skirt).

Theories about making the pleated skirt:

Daenerys often wears pleated skirts like this one. As far as I can tell, these are sunray or sunburst pleats, which look like this:

This would be very difficult to do at home. I did some reading, and you need a pleating board to make these pleats. Due to the length of the skirt, the board has to be absolutely enormous. It would be a big hassle to make at home. Theoretically I could create a pleating board from card, but it would be very tedious due to the circular shape. 

There are companies that will pleat for you, but that would be a little expensive for me, mostly because of shipping costs. There are a few cosplayers who have used pleating services and gotten lovely results, such as stephwallsz 

One idea I had for the skirt is to save myself time, hassle and money by buying a pleated maxi skirt, like the ones below. 

This might not be so good if you are tall, as most of these skirts aren't even a metre long. I need at least a metre of material to reach from my waist to the ground.

If you are willing to sacrifice a bit of accuracy, you can buy pre-pleated material and make a gathered skirt instead.