Belly Dance Costume Part II: I Thought There Would Be Fabric Involved

Today was All Pattern Drafting, All the Time.  

First up, harem pants.  I started with a pattern for scrub pants and used the excellent instructions from this book to draft a full pant leg pattern.  Basically, I pinned the tissue paper pattern to some craft paper and traced the top half of the pattern with a sharpie (thank you, bleed through!).

I kept the necessary curvy bits, chopped off part of the top, and turned the rest into a giant box.

(As you can see, the marker is still visible, but the white paper pattern is big and square).

I also tackled turning the Ghawazee coat muslin that G pinned and drew on me (thank you, G!) some weeks ago into a paper pattern.  Again, pin, trace, clean up, seam allowance, and voila!

I finished up with the back of the Ghawazee coat and a somewhat laughable attempt at drafting a sleeve.  The internet was incredibly helpful in giving me sixteen different methods for doing so, but as usual, my lack of drawing ability and patience was my downfall.  We'll see how the muslin turns out for the coat before I judge, but I'm not hopeful.  

I have to add that for sewing/crafting in an apartment, the best purchase on can make is a counter-height folding table.  I only lament that mine is not bigger!

Looks like I'll be surreptitiously cutting fabric at work after-hours this week.  

Belly Dance Costume Part I: Bra Cups Are Really Hard

You'd think I'd have an inkling of the difficulty of making bras from my forays into corsetry, but this project is really bringing home that particular moral.  I'm using the cups from a deconstructed (re: sliced apart) Lane Bryant bra.

I started by creating a pattern for the cups by draping (using black and white checked fabric for simplicity). Though my instruction manuals (primarily this book) show only one dart, my bra cups have enough of a curve to require two.  Joy.

Once I got the darts figured out to the best of my ability, I created a paper pattern, cleaned it up, added seam allowance, and started chopping fabric.

Squashed bra cups make for fascinating shapes.

Next I strengthened the cups.  I used 7/8" grosgrain ribbon along the top curve and English coutil (left over from aforementioned corsetry forays) to interline the cups themselves.  That was fun.  Despite a heavy-duty leather thimble, my fingertips may never recover.

At this point, I made an important strategic decision and switched over from a soundtrack of Arabic and Turkish belly dance music to the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.  Because, when you're trying to conquer charmeuse, nothing helps like background epic heroism.

Getting the darts to lie properly (and be pinned in place) took FOREVER.  But I got there.

Looks very Frankenstein, hm?

Luckily, my hand stitching is slightly better than my pinning, but only slightly.

Told you, only slightly.

Generally, it took much longer than I anticipated to get these finished up.  I hope the next parts will go quicker (with the ability to use the sewing machine to construct the band and straps, I'm guessing it will).  I'm not very pleased with the way the darts turned out in the satin, but I have to wonder whether the depth of the curve I'm trying to cover (and the fact that I'm juggling two darts) will always mean more obvious seams than I like.  Also, theoretically, I'll get better at it?

After Part I of this endeavor, I am moderately confident that I can 1) finish this project by the deadline and 2) produce a bra that won't fall apart when I start dancing in it.