This post goes along with the bra crafting you may have seen if you follow along- my facebook album for updated pictures on this is titled “Natural Blue”
- You can catch up on the bra progress:
- Bellydance Bra Base!
- Bellydance Bra Cover
- Fusion Bellydance Bra
I had limited fabric- I think I only had 3 or 4 yards of the black lace and a meager 5 yards of the blue. My inspiration was pulled from those very full modern and contemporary dancer costumes- with long clean lines.- so I wanted some fullness- which would be tough to achieve with not a lot of fabric.
I unfortunately did a bad job taking pictures because I went ahead and did a time lapse of cutting out both my fabric pieces.
I marked out my first panel skirt- the intent was to have 2 full half circles- and then a quarter and a quarter- but unfortunately because I’m tall- that means I would have needed over 6 yards of fabric- which I DEFINITELY didn’t have. I tried to see if I could squeak out 2 full half circles- but even that seemed dicey- so I did ONE full half circle- and a little over a quarter circle. I had to do some quick readjusting to my original mental design- but you know- have to roll with what you got.
This was some of my original sketches:
but once I figured out how much fabric I didn’t have we did a quick redraw and came up with this:
Saturday and Sunday I chipped away at little bits of this trying to make sure I didn’t leave it for last since skirts aren’t my usual go to other than circle skirts.
I used washable stabilizer to help with my seams since the lace is a little tough to sew straight through. I laid out the lace piece so I would have roughly 2 circles wide at the top and it lined up straight at the bottom as I wanted the lace to end the bottom section.
I serged the edges together (wrong sides together) and then put the fabric RIGHT sides together and straight stitched to create a french seam. I thought this would give me a more robust seam considering it’s a more fragile fabric next to a more robust one.
It was fun watching it come together!- obviously I got a lot of help from the cats.
When I got all the pieces together- it looked a little something like this.
Over all I”m really pleased with that- I need to secure it more and trim it up – but I think the effect was pretty much what I was aiming for on the skirt.
I also took 15 minutes and reviewed how to install ad invisible zipper and put one in,then put some pleats in the back and front to create a more seamless waist and then turned the top over to create a waist band.
I added elastic through the tunnel- and I think I may have snugged it up a little too tight since in the picture above- you can see it’s nice and smooth against my skin- but after the waist band and elastic it’s giving me some muffin top- which isn’t ideal. I’d rather wear nude shorts and secure it to that then have excessive muffin top.
I took it with me at work to keep working and added a few stretches of the bottom scalloped edges on the top-it’s a nice edge on the top without looking overwhelming and helps keep me moving forward. And obviously I got to dance in it- because- that’s much needed before performance.
After a trial run and some futzing- I finally got to add the back panel- I added this quarter panel and then added some trim on the side and finished it off. I’m quiet pleased! so on to the crystals! I have so much more to share in terms of progress but that’s it for now! Gotta push this out today and back to gluing!
And that’s it for today- till next time fearless costumers! I have so much exciting stuff coming up I can’t wait to share with you all!
BrickHouseDesigns 