Belly Dance Crafting

So a lot of my crafting time has been taken up by one particular project recently.  As I've gotten a bit deeper into belly dance and been performing more, I need more costumes.  Well, a nicely made and well embelished costume averages around 200-400 dollars.  As I'm a bit more shapely, we are talking more in the 500-800 dollar range.  Yeah, I'm cheap and crafty.  You can see where this is going.  I need to scavenge some pictures from facebook for our last performance.  I made all of my costumes.  I even dyed our silk veils.  But that needs its own post. 

 

So I have been spending time at Goodwill looking for velvet dresses and housecoats.  A good and cheap source of nice velvet material.  The good, stretchy, non-crushed (I always thing the crushed velvet at Joanns looks cheap) velvet can run around 10 dollars a yard.  Even with a coupon it can get pricy.  So I recently found a few housecoats that fit the bill.  For the purpose of this post, pretend it is red.  This green one did get turned into another costume, but I don't have a picture of the finished product.  But it started pretty identical looking to the red one. 

 

 I did some slicing, dicing, and nipping.  Cut it off right under the bust.  Cut off one of the sleeves. And fitted it around the top and bottom and cut it off around my knees.  I replaced the mid-section and the now missing sleeve with lovely old gold lace. 

 Beading time.  I added some sequin swirls and rosettes.  And added beaded fringe to give the dress movement.

 And I've added more lace onto the bottom for a mermaid fit.  I am still working on the top beading.  It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do.  I plan on carrying the swirl motif up.  And there will be little swirls along the neckline that get bigger and multiply as they head towards the shoulder of the red sleeve where they will eventually spill down the top of the sleeve.  I am really loving how it is turning out.  The gold sleeve is going to get some red trim and I think I'm going to try to find something to trim the bottom as well.  It feels a little short to me and I think it would help my feet not just sort of blend in.  Give my twirl some definition.

 This is my other dance project.  I used that ribbon yarn that is so popular right now and crocheted myself a circle skirt.  It took forever.  A little voice in my head keeps telling me it needs one more round.  But apparently a lot of people in this area are making the ruffle scarves for sale because none of the stores around here can keep it in stock.  It is ridiculous.  I was trying to find more in this color and I got to AC Moore right after they had restocked and I watched two ladies clean out pretty much the entire rack.