Free Hand Silk Panels

I had these panels finished back in July, but didn't really have any decent pictures of them besides the progress pictures I took whilst I was painting them. So yesterday me and my ma took some proper photographs of me wearing the entire costume so that you can get a proper feel for it.
Firstly, here's the original design for the costume. You can see some of the panels in it, I deviated from it a little but I prefer the end result which you can see a bit of in the progress pictures.

I really enjoyed free handing all that stuff, but I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I hadn't been trying to get the entire costume finished in about four days. I used Pedeo fabric paints which is a really lovely brand, my only complaint about it is that you do have to really load up your brush if you want the colour to be opaque, otherwise it's kind of smeary. They dry really fast and once ironed -if the paint isn't too thick- blend rather seamlessly with the fabric and you can actually feel the silken -or whatever- texture when touching the painted areas.

I wore the costume to the London film and Comic-Con and it was really well recieved by everyone. Including, to my delight, Craig Parker who played Haldir in The Lord of The Rings movies!
I was in a group with three of my friends and we wore the costumes on stage, but unfortunately didn't win anything.

After doing this I realised that I'd love to go on stage more often for cosplay related things, it really gave me a huge amount of confidence despite not really getting any recognition for all our hard work.
The obi-like-belt-thing and the panels that hang down from it are probably my favorite part of the whole costume. They just brought a weight to it that felt right. I'm also really happy with how the patterns turned out, I think there is a fine line between assault on the senses and fitting in properly.
Bellow you can see some more pictures of the costume being worn, since the ones taken whilst I was on stage don't allow you to see very much of the back or sides.

I definitely want to try more free hand fabric painting in the future, it's a really nice, simple way to add more interest to a plain piece of fabric.