As I recently admitted in the Blender Forum, I think I've improved a lot with my modeling in Blender, however, I still have a ways to go. In particular to do the finer details  that make some models really stand out. Until I improve enough to do that, it looks like I'm going  to have to use textures and bump mapping to achieve what I want.

To that end, I hope I can get some advice from those of you who know how to do what I want to do. The image above is a dynamic dress for Roxie I just made in Blender. I want to add piping to it, which wouldn't be a problem if the dress were conforming.