Tunic

This is the not-negotiable part of the costume. We tried to find gold lurex mesh to make the tunic from, but it seems to be unobtainable at the moment, so we settled for a black/gold mesh instead. I cut this out by laying a tunic I already owned onto the double layer of fabric and chop chop chop! Then overlock down the sides and shoulders, add a dropped sleeve, and voila! Oh, and finishing raw edges (although being mesh, it didn’t run, so I probably would have got away with it.) We addied a beaded edge to the dropped sleeve to add a bit of swing.

We’ve decided that it was a bit too shiny, after performing, so we’re going to adapt this when we wear the costume next year.

Poufyloons

These are love-’em or hate-’em pants – 2m of fabric in each leg for lots of swoosh. Depending on the day I love ‘em because of the drape, or hate ‘em because there’s soooo much fabric to pleat into the yoke or the ankle cuff, and it’s never terribly flattering to have four metres of fabric bunched up at your hips. I chose olive charmeuse for these, as it would drape well, plus the colour coordinated well with the black/gold mesh tunic.

Turkish Vest

I started off with a sequinned Bali scarf as the fabric for my vest, but lost my sewing mojo mid-project and cut it out badly, ending up with pieces only fit for the bin. Back to the stash, and I unearthed a piece of vintage upholstery velvet that my grandmother used to cover a chaise longe back in the day! My mojo was still not with me completely, as when using a different pattern than my original plan, I forgot to add to the shoulder length to suit my long waist! However, it worked out okay with some extra darts to add shape, and the underbust band ended being an at-bust band instead. The dip in the back worked well, too!

Then I had to embellish it a little, as it looked quite plain next to the belt!

Belt

Our brief was to have metal tribal-style belts over the tunic and poofyloons. Here’s a pic of the belts I bought on ebay (two, to have enough to decorate front and back!)

Nice! The mirrors and beads look great! However, the problem with these beaded Indian belts is that they tend to tangle and bits fall off them pretty easily. I’ve mounted it on a velvet base to match the vest, to hopefully avoid some of the tangles… Cross fingers!

For WAMED a few weeks ago, a few of us performed Na’ilah and Nanda’s choreography of “Leyla”, which was another vintage-inspired piece, this time with the melaya.

I don’t yet have any closeups of this dress, but here’s an action shot, taken by the amazing Ruza!

For the costuming, we were inspired by Farida Fahmy’s classic melaya look:

I searched high and low for a nicely weighted floral lycra, and eventually found some on ebay, a cream lycra festooned with red roses and green leaves. I started out planning a one-shoulder dress with gathered skirt attached at the low hip, curved up at the front over the pelvis and down over the booty at the back.

After constructing this style, and even going to the extent of lining it with swimwear lining as the fabric was a bit too sheer under lights, I was pretty down about it. The one-shoulder looks cute on many people, but on me it looked like a Flintstones revival, and didn’t flatter my bust at all. The skirt wasn’t full enough and looked limp and sad, and the colour didn’t do my skintone any favours whatsoever. What a mess!

Enter my fabulous dancing buddies: when I said I wanted to throw it out and start again, they told me not to be silly, that it needed a new cut and more colour. They pulled down the neckline into a strapless number, added a swathe of red fabric at the top to provide some lift to the expanse of cream, and told me to get to work.

This gave me the incentive I needed. I took it home, chopped the skirt off, cut off the top, and looked at it for a while. I found coordinating red lycra in my stash, which I used to add a band at the top of the now-tube bodice, and at the hem of the fuller skirt. I attached cap sleeves in the same lycra to complement the shape of the dress, and outlined the gathered skirt seam with a thin red ribbon to mimic piping.

Add a coordinating head thingy (mandeel) with pom-poms and beads (happy hint: don’t add too many beads to the back drape of your mandeel or you may find yourself cracking a tooth when you spin and the mandeel end comes swooping in to smack you in the mouth) and we’re ready for melaya madness!

During that time I’ve done lots of bitsy work on other things, like making harem pants, circle skirts, trumpet skirts, tie tops, U-tops etc, and adjusted various costumes that have come in and out of my wardrobe… but not done much whole costume construction work.

Since my last post in February I’ve finished the chunky beading on both bra cups, chopped off the old band, made and covered a new band, made straps out of grosgrain ribbon then covered them in a wide casing of the base fabric to form the wide straps you can see in the picture. Oh, and added more fringe: matching swathes of pearls looping from the top of the cup to the centre, and some dangles to drop down almost to the bellybutton. I mixed two different styles of drop and a couple of strands of rhinestone chain to add bling.

Now to the belt! Hopefully this part will take less than 16 months…

I know… I started this costume a year ago and I’ve been stalled for about three quarters of that time! I had a new idea for it just before Christmas though – to fill in the top part of the cups with chunky beading and then have a drapey “belt” with swathes of fabric and looped beading like above, with an accent piece at the belt closure of the same chunky filled in beading. So I got to work on the bra cups, which took a lot longer than I’d expected. I’ve done one cup, and am about to start on the second.

I’ve added four big Swarovski rivolis at the top, surrounded by a mixture of the following beads:

• tiny plastic pearls in white
• larger plastic pearls in white
• multi-sized glass pearls in olive green
• 4mm swarovski bicones in olivine, olivine AB and silk
• various glass faceted crystals in olive green

It’s a lot blingier in person! all the crystals dotted here and there add shine under lights (this pic was taken with the trusty iphone, so the colours are a bit off).

The bra was created using a padded convertible bra as a base. I find the convertible bras are good to remake because they tend to hold their shape even when you change the strap configuration. I bought a pretty expensive one, thinking I would just cover the band in the stretch velvet fabric, but that didn’t work very well, so I had to chop it off at the side seams and add non-stretch buckram bands at the back, then cover those with the velvet. This created a solid, supportive foundation, but I now know I don’t need the expensive ones with the extra-good band! The shoulder straps are doubled grosgrain ribbon for strength, covered in a tube of the same print fabric. They are crossed at the back for support.

The belt is made from two layers of black drill fabric, one layer of the print velvet and a layer of shaping fabric. I used a belt base from Sugar Petals (the now don’t stock them anymore) for the front to give shape, and buckram in the back. I cut each piece, pinned, then machine sewed the four layers together, trimmed and turned them inside out so the velvet was on one side, a layer of drill underneath and on the back, with the buckram/shaping inside. The pieces were then ready to sew down at the edges, connect, then embellish.

For the embellishment I bought a pack of huge pearshaped Swarovski crystals in copper crystal and AB crystal, and used them for the main decoration, surrounded by beaded/sequinned settings. Then I added draped copper crystal swarovskis threaded into strings, for ultra bling-factor! I ran out of Egyptian glass fringe (I used overlaid 8″ and 4″ to give the multi-length effect) for the belt right before the end, so strung my own for the last 10cm. It’s an ever-so-slightly different copper colour, but only really visible in photos with a flash.

The skirt is a three-panel trumpet skirt with an elastic waist, with an added flare at the centre back for more swish.

I cheated a little for the bra, using an Egyptian bra base I reworked from another costume, covered with the sequinned net fabric, added a flower made from pear shaped and rivoli Swarovski crystals, looped fringe and some assymetrical straps.

The belt I made from scratch, starting off with two layers of black drill and  one layer of light buckram. I cut the belt in one large C shape, then darted the back in two placed to get a “cupped’ shape at the back. This didn’t work terribly well, so I ended up making two seams down the back instead. This allowed for more shaping, with less pointy bits sticking up!

Once I had the base right, I sewed the sequin net to it, pleating it roughly to give a softer effect. I machine sewed this mostly, then hand stitched any pieces that weren’t sitting right. Then I added the looped fringe and another Swarovski flower on the centre front closure.

I added a dark grey, and black and silver circle skirts for fullness, some blingy jewellery and then all that was left to do was pincurl the hair, apply false eyelashes, and there you go!

If you’re a member of Swancon, you can vote for this! The ballot is available here.

So far I’ve almost covered the bra. The cups are almost finished, and I just need to add pearl swags to the second side. I draped the fabric on the bottom half of the cups to hide the seam needed to cover the curved cup, and I’ll extend this drape into the straps. I’m hoping to continue this drape theme in the belt, adding more swags of pearl beads and rhinestone chain.

This type of skirt has a 40m- 45m hem, for heaps of movement. Obviously, it needs a huge amount of fabric, especially for the bottom layer, so choice of fabrics is always interesting.

A pal of mine first made these huuuuge skirts for a Turkish Rom dance, hence we now call them “rompi” skirts.

When I make these huge skirts, I use silk dupion for the top layer. That way I know it will be able to hold the kilos of fabric underneath it without fraying and coming apart at the seams. I bought this fabric first, as it was such a great vibrant shot purple. Then I picked up the olive satin, which was 140cm wide, so I didn’t need quite so much. The violet chiffon for the bottom layer was the last of the main fabrics, as I needed so much of it. Usually I make these skirts with a 45m hem, but since I could only find 10m of this fabric, it was a little narrower, although I think you could only tell if you actually measured it! It’s still pretty full!

The violet/gold thai silk for the band around the hem I picked up in Singapore on a recent trip there. I saw it and knew it would have a place in this skirt!

I start gypsy skirts top down, although a friend of mine starts from the bottom up. There’s a lot of merit to her idea, as gathering the 40m of fabric into 15m takes hours and hours! I prefer to start from the top though, as at least the first two layers come together in a couple of hours.

Once the basic skirt was constructed, it was time for embellishment. Ribbons! I found a supply of rolls of gold craft ribbon; a lot cheaper than buying ribbon by the metre, and when you want 60m of the stuff, cheaper is better!

The top is a basic tie-front shrug design, which I modified by extending the front ties to make sure they will tie at the back for a different look, and adding elbow ruffles. These look a little bizarre on the dummy as they have a double layer of ribbon on the hem, which makes them curl. Once worn, they’ll sit properly.

I chose this black stretch fabric with red pinstripe as I’d already got a black/white/silver one, and I love the colour combo of black/red/gold. I planned to use holographic gold sequins and paillettes to lift the colour. Stripes look great for these dresses as it emphasises the length rather than width!

I cut out a basic t-shirt shape (front, back, sleeve pieces) then added a dart at centre back for shape. The fabric’s stretch meant it was still form-fitting enough without too much shaping. I slit the sleeves to the elbow and the skirt up to just above the knee to allow for ease of movement, plus more edges for embellishing!

I used a facing to give the neckline some stability. the neckline trim is small sequinned appliques, 18mm AB Swarovski rivolis, a big pearshaped Swarovski at the bottom, and red and gold holographic sequin string to form the swirls.

The sleeve and skirt slits are edged with paillettes, strung with a sequin, 5 seed beads, paillette, 6 seed beads then through the fabric and stat again. This gives the paillettes room for movement when dancing.

The next step is covering a bra, which peeks out from the neckline keyhole. I only covered the cups of the bra, rather than all the straps, as these won’t be seen when wearing the dress. The fabric was hand stitched onto the bra, jut turned over to the inside.

Then another crystal and more sequin string was used to embellish where the bra could be seen. Done!