Deanna Troi’s Teal Dress – Star Trek: The Next Generation
Made for: Dragoncon 2025
Background: Mom and I have wanted to do a Lwaxana and Deanna duo for ages.
Journal Entries: Read more at my Deanna Troi tag
Related Costumes: Dr Crusher, T’Lyn, Seven of Nine, TOS Uniform
(coming soon)
Patterns Used: Peekaboo Women’s Footed Tights Pattern and an older fan pattern for the dress. Read on….
So back in 2019, my mom and I were planning to do a Troi duo at HSV Expo in 2020, because my parents were gonna go with us. I was just going to wear my Crusher jumpsuit with a new wig. We never got any further than just chatting about it because of course 2020 got completely derailed.
Fun fact: I haven’t been to a convention with BOTH of my parents since I was a kid going to MidsouthCon in like 1990. When I started going to conventions myself it was always one or the other taking off work to go with me. The only time they both went was to Anime Expo 2003, but they didn’t go to the con – they went sight-seeing while Ash and I did the con (cuz they really weren’t into anime).
So we’ve been trying to find a good con for all of us to go together and plan some costumes. In 2024, my parents mentioned they wanted to go to Dragoncon. So we planned that for 2025, and the Troi duo was back on the board.
But now instead of just reusing my Crusher uniform, I decided I wanted to make her teal dress. So let’s actually get into it.
The Pattern:
So the pattern I used is one of those old giant pattern packets you used to see at cons. Xeroxed pages in a giant paper envelope. I thought it would be neat to finally use one of those, and if it wasn’t 100% accurate I didn’t really care, close enough was good for me for this project.
I don’t want to say the exact pattern this was, because in the end, I can’t recommend it and I don’t want to be a dick to the people who obviously put some time and research into this pattern. But it was a bit of a pain to work with. The directions were confusing. Some pattern pieces had to have seam allowances added and some didn’t. But the biggest complaint is that the sizing was WAY off. I will get into this in the construction portion below, but parts were too big and it was very odd.
I did want to preserve this old pattern though, so I didn’t cut the pattern pieces out directly – I traced them onto craft paper and used those pieces instead.
The Fabric/Dyeing:
I spent like 2 months getting fabric swatches trying to find the colour I wanted. From what I understand, there were 2 Troi dresses – one was more green and one was more blue. I was fine with either if I could find either colour I liked. I finally settled on an “Arabian Blue” matte spandex and ordered yardage. I ordered way more than I needed, and I’m glad I did because I did end up having to recut some pieces.
Part of the reason for those recut? The dyeing. Yep I bought this fabric thinking the colour would work, but after sitting and looking at it for a few weeks I decided it wasn’t. It was too bright and saturated. So I tested some small pieces in dye – I did a test in Rit DyeMore Graphite and Rit DyeMore Tan. The Tan produced a nice teal-y green. The Graphite produced a nice teal-y blue. So I had my choice here, I could go either way – in the end I went with the Graphite because I had a full bottle of it to use and I would’ve had to buy a new bottle of the Tan LOL.
I had waaaaay too much fabric to dye this in one go. I decided to go ahead and cut my pattern pieces and dye them in batches. So I did all of the bodice pieces first (which I doubled and self-lined), then all of the neckband, waistband, sleeve and cuff pieces, then some of the skirt panels, then the other portion of skirt panels, then everything I had left uncut.
I did a lot of tests before jumping into this too. I had a whole guide — exact amount of water to add, exact time to boil, exact amount of dye to add, exact amount of time to leave the fabric in. It was still a shit show LOL
I’ve dyed spandex with DyeMore plenty of times – generally not this MUCH, but I’ve never had this weird of an outcome. I do think this spandex must have had much more of a blend than I thought it did, because the dye just wasn’t consistent. AND — it shrunk. I’ll get to that in a bit.
So yeah I started dyeing and first round, everything looked good coming out of the pot, but once it dried, it was splotchy. So I put it all back in to see if it would even out or just make it worse. Thankfully it did even out. Unfortunately while the first set was drying, I’d done the second set, so now I had to put that back in too. And of course some of it ended up darker. So now back in with the first set to get it slightly darker to match the second set. This was my life for like an entire week LOL
The worst was the skirt panels and the neck and waist bands. I had to do the skirt panels in chunks like I said above, so the pot wouldn’t be too crowded. But I do think it still ended up too crowded because I had to keep putting them back in to get them dark enough to match the bodice pieces. And because the neck and waist bands were so small – they dyed FASTER and ended up darker than EVERYTHING else. I just recut those and started over. They’re still not exact matches to everything else. Hell if you stand there and really look at the finished costume, you’ll see slight colour variations right next to each other at seams. But I wasn’t spending more money to start over. It is what it is.
And now for the real weird part – the pieces shrunk in the dye. But only vertically. When I had them dry and laid back out on top of the paper pattern pieces (to figure out what was what again), they all still matched horizontally, but everything was was SHORTER. Like I’m glad I cut the skirt pieces 2 inches longer than the original pattern called for otherwise it would’ve ended up way too short. The bodice pieces were all like a half inch shorter than they original were. It was so odd, I’ve never had that happen with poly fabric/poly dye.
But it all ended up ok because guess what – the pattern pieces that I cut a size smaller than my measurements ended up being too big, so the shrinking worked in my favor! LOL
Construction:
Now that I had everything dyed, it was time to start sewing things together. As I mentioned above, I cut out 4 pieces of all of the bodice pieces instead of 2. I basted 2 of each piece together to create one double panel – I did this because I wanted the bodice to be thicker to hide any bra lines or anything – and thicker spandex just feels less revealing.
I got the bodice pieces put together, and quickly discovered that these pieces were still wonky in the sizing. I had to take about 2 inches off the bodice from the waist down. Because of the vertical shrinking the armholes ended up a tiny bit too tight – yet also way too wide again. I let it out at the bodice side seam, and trimmed off the horizontal excess again as much as I could. All in all I did what I could but it’s not perfectly fit, but it’s fine.
The neckband, waistband and cuffs were a pain in the butt. I do wish I’d done them slightly differently than the pattern called for me because to me it kinda looks more like quilting or maybe some cording in each panel and not just top-stitching, but I did it as just the straight top-stitching. I interfaced them as the pattern called for, and then I drew guidelines for the stitching on the interfacing layer. Sat and did the stitching, then sewed the interior side on. I only sewed the outer layer of the neckband to the bodice top, then flipped the interior layer over to the inside and hand-sewed it down to hide the seam line cleanly.
Waistband was more of the same, except I did just sew them together normally since I didn’t need to use the inside piece as a lining layer necessarily. With both of these pieces I had the WORST time getting the points to point. I went back and redid them probably 4 or 5 times each. They’re trimmed. They’re pressed. They’re resewn. They’re trimmed. They’re pressed. Over and over. And they still just don’t look great. Oh well!
(Also I melted some of this fabric on my iron – like literally just a corner, but it was enough for me to have to cycle through multiple iron cleanings for an entire weekend trying to get it to stop spitting out brown stuff. Also this is only the 2nd time I’ve melted fabric with an iron, last time was in 2003, and I feel like that was a pretty good run.)
For the cuffs on the sleeves, I ended up actually creating a new pattern and recutting them. I felt like the pieces on the pattern were too wide and too short. So I made one that would fit my wrist better. Made it same way as the waistband, got it sewn onto the sleeves, and then the sleeve sewn onto the dress.
Skirts were skirts. Sewed em together and sewed em to the bottom of the waistband. I finished the hem by hand.
Dyed a zipper for the back and got that sewn in. As usually just like with every ST costume, getting all of the panels lined up nicely on the back was a challenge. I also added zippers to the wrist cuffs – thankfully I found 2 small 5 inch zippers that matched my fabric really well so I didn’t have to dye those. I did cut them off shorter so they’re only about 3.5 inches.
All in all, it’s ok. Like I said previously, it’s not perfect, but I do like it, and I’m fine with its imperfections. Maybe I’ll remake it one day if I come across some perfect fabric I don’t have to dye, and I’ll be able to make it better after learning what I learned here.
Accessories:
Originally I was going to buy some tights and dye them to match. But after all my dyeing debacle here I really didn’t want to do more dyeing. I realized I had enough fabric leftover I could just make my own. I found a pattern on etsy – the Peekaboo Women’s Footed Tights Pattern and used that. It was great and super easy! I had these made in an afternoon.
I bought a wig from Wig is Fashion. At the time of this writing, I haven’t styled it yet. Will update later.
For the headband in the wig, I kinda just cobbled it together out of stuff I already had. I took 2 normal headbands, glued them together, and then sewed some buckram around it to smooth it out. Then I made a sleeve out of my dress fabric to fit over it, and hand-sewed it closed at one end.
For the design on it, I just kinda guessed from the photos I had and came up with something I liked. I used some rhinestones leftover from my Taylor Swift boots (and the Midnights ears I made Ash for Christmas), and sat and glued them on with gemtac.
The shoes I bought at the secondhand store and Chase will be painting them. As of this writing this isn’t finished yet, but I will update when they’re done.
History:
Nothing yet! I had this almost done enough to debut at a May con this year, but it was an outdoor con and I just really didn’t want to drag a brand new costume outside for a couple of hours in the Memphis humidity. Chase was gearing up to my paint my shoes so I told him to just put a pin in it, let’s not rush and just wait for dcon later this year. I do still need to put it all on because I haven’t yet… I’m lazy.
Please note that none of these costumes are for sale! This is my personal portfolio.