Ballroom Seamstress

The new year marks a new chapter in my sewing of dancesport gowns. After two years of honing my craft I am taking on my first paid commission.

The commission comes from my co-worker Jessica, who has recently returned to ballroom dancing after a year-long stint in a different career. Unfortunately for her, when she left ballroom dancing in favor of a career change, she did not figure on wanting to return and gave away or sold off many of her dancesport gowns. When love of dance and boredom of office work drew her back into professional dancing, she knew she would have to rebuild her dance wardrobe.

After some casual consultation, we arrived at a rough sketch of an off-shoulder gown that would form the basic dress. After sifting through some pictures of dresses online, Jessica picked out a drape to go with the basic dress. Finally, we came to the task of picking out fabric. Jessica expressed an interest in a brown color palette to complement her pale, brunette coloring. I was worried that some browns might be drab or uninteresting for a latin dress, but luckily I had one particular fabric in mind.

As usual, my go-to source for stretch fabrics is Fabric.com. At the time, they still had a wide selection of colors in one of my very favorite fabrics, Nylon Tactel. I had worked with the Maroon shade before and knew that it had just enough of a reddish tone to give the predominantly brown color pizazz for a latin dress.

The next challenge was sizing. I had only ever made dancesport dresses for myself before this commission, and so I was a bit apprehensive to design a dress to fit another person. On the one hand, dancesport dresses are made of four way stretch fabric, and so they can often work for a range of sizes. Often, dress rental or resale sites list dress sizes by the range they accommodate, rather than assigning one size or another. On the other hand, dancesport dresses are made to fit very close to the body, so a bit too large or small in the wrong place could be disastrous.

After taking Jessica's measurements, they turned out to be similar enough to my own that I brought in a basic dance dress I had made for myself to check the fit before I started designing. The dress turned out to be a good fit for the bust, wait and hips, but what I hadn't anticipated was the difference in torso length. Jessica is only a couple inches shorter than I am, and I had figured with the elastic and stretch fabric, those couple inches wouldn't matter much, but in fact the dress bunched up at her middle in a way that couldn't have been fixed even by shortening the straps. The good news was, I could use my default dress-with-bodysuit pattern for Jessica, but it needed some adjustment, so I took a wild guess-timate and shortened all the basic pattern pieces by an inch before beginning the design process. 

Luckily, my first commission also coincided with my first dress form—a timely Christmas present from my parents. Even before I had received any inquiries from folks interested to commission me for dancesport design, I had reached a point in my sewing where I felt an acute need for a dress form. To a certain extent, being my own dress form is a good thing; I have learned how important it is to try on clothing during the sewing process to assess fit and the dress form does not completely substitute for real life try-on. However, there are certain aspects of sewing and tailoring that turn out to be near impossible when wearing one's own dress. I didn't want to lug every dress or skirt over to my mom's house every time I needed to hem so I could stand on her ottoman and let her measure up the hem with pins. And so I was excited to get my new dress form, a Singer DF150, size small. 

So far, this dress form has treated me well. The only trouble I've had with it are that the adjustment dials hit a limit when there is an unusual discrepancy between two adjacent measurements; try to dial up a 33" bust and a 31" waist (the small and large limits of this particular form) and one of the measurements will snap up or down a size. This isn't a big issue for me, since the dress form works fine with my measurements, and I work mainly with stretch fabrics. Real-life try-on plus forgiving stretch fabrics ensure a proper fit, while the dress form still serves as a useful mannequin. 

It was especially useful in working attaching the drape of this dress, but not so useful in marking up the hem. Because dancesport dresses have a built-in bodysuit, and the dress form doesn't approximate the whole length and shape of the torso, the crotch of the bodysuit is stretched across the full cut-off hip. When I attempted to hem the basic dress, it gave me the illusion that I had more skirt length than I actually did, and so I didn't mark the hem far enough down in back, and the skirt would ride up on Jessica when she tried it on. Not good for dancing freestyles with students (or anybody, yikes!). Luckily I'd saved the skirt section after I had cut off. It was still sewn together at the exact size of the tube skirt to which it had previously belonged. That, and it was a little longer on one side, and a little shorter on the other (from having marked the hem higher in the front and lower in the back), and so after removing the elastic rolled hem from the bottom of the too-short skirt, I reattached the tube piece with the longer (originally cut away from the front) section in back and the shorter (originally cut away from the back) section in the front, then elastic hemmed the bottom. The result? I shaped tube skirt with the inverted pieces acting dart-like the fit the hips. No more riding up!

I was a little nervous heading into this project to work with draping fabric. I had only ever made straightforward form-fitting dresses without any overlay. Jessica, however, had gravitated toward dresses with draping overlays while scouring photos in the design process, and so a drape it would be. Luckily I had stocked up on some extra of her fabric, just in case my first attempt at the drape was a disaster. It turned out to be pretty simple. The drape was fundamentally two large triangles front and back, gathered at the shoulder, narrow-hemmed and attached to the dress at each hip to form the desired effect. The only unexpected consequence was that the slit-open drape sections on the side that did not have the triangle tales were a little flappy at first. I had to cut them and re-hem them to match them up with the contours of the dress. 

The last big challenge of the Jessica dress was the open shoulder. I had never designed an off-shoulder dress before, and in designing the pattern pieces I simple created a smooth diagonal from the shoulder to the armpit. With the dress substantially done, Jessica complained that it felt like her womanly assets might just pop out of that side when she danced. The strap couldn't be tightened any further without making the dress lop-sided. I debated over possible fixes. I considered crossing the straps in back, changing the strap orientation on one side to halter... but all of those fixes had a fatal downside.

In the meantime, I began the design work on a new smooth dress. I wanted to make this new dress off-shoulder, and given the issues Jessica was having, I designed this one differently so that there was not a straight diagonal, but rather the neckline had a bit of a rise where the strap would be. It turned out great and I cursed myself for not having thought of it when designing Jessica's dress. You live, you learn, right? But the perfectionist in me would not let it go. Jessica was a paying customer (all be it with a friend/co-worker/design-guinea-pig discount). I couldn't make a dress for her that was any less than I would make for myself.

After much deliberation and measuring, I designed pattern pieces from the scraps of Jessica's original dress cuts to sew into the current dress to make it just like the new dress I had just designed. It was a tricky procedure. I had to rip out more of the current neckline, along with the elastic to get down the the raw edges so that I could sew on the make-up pieces, both to the front of the dress and to the bodysuit, make sure they matched up with each other and blended into the neighboring parts of the dress. I was essentially revising my old pattern piece after the dress was finished. Luckily my calculations were correct, and apart from a short seam (which would be covered on the outside with rhinestones) the addition was unnoticeable. 

When all was said and done, I finished the dress by stoning it on the bodice, and on the triangle-point drape with 20ss and 16ss crystal stones, and on the dress with 16ss smoked topaz stones. See upcoming posts for more on the stoning process.

Posted by S.K. Slevinski at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Twice a year, my studio hosts a student and professional Showcase in conjunction with three other studios in our area. With our Winter Showcase coming up, preparations at the studio were well underway. My schedule was filling up with extra lessons and double sessions to help my students get ready for their exhibition freestyles.

Back at home, my off hours were spent finishing up my dresses for the event. With only a few short weeks left, it was crunch time for finishing three garments of varying complexity. My project planning and time management for sewing has increased significantly since the Spring Showcase, earlier this year, when I finished only one very simple dress, and had to scrap plans for a second at the last minute.

A typical showcase demands three dance costumes for the professional instructor, in my estimation (if dancing in student routines, perhaps more). When I attended my first few showcases as a new dance instructor, I wore only one dress the whole night. Now, as I have increasing numbers of students performing freestyle dances, I want to look the part for each aspect of the exhibition.

The day starts off with Smooth Freestyles and Routines. I didn't have any routines this time around, but I did have a number of freestyles throughout the day. Last showcase, I wore a store-bought, floor-length red dress, but this time I wanted to wear something I had sewed myself. I did not, however, want to fashion an entirely new dress with bodysuit, etc. because I was already working on such a ballgown for my professional routine at Showcase (more on that later). I simply cannot wear the same gown for student freestyles as I do for my professional routine.

After wracking my brain about the possibilities, the fabric available and the patterns in my collection, I decided that I would fashion a black skirt. I used as my base the Simplicity New Look Pattern 6461. I had used this pattern in the past to make a short pink skirt, and I liked how it turned out. With eight flared skirt sections, it has a lot of movement, and the opportunity to add godets for even more movement. The long skirt pattern pieces are separate from the short ones, so I still had them in their entirety, fresh and ready to go. Still and all, the pattern for the long skirt wasn't as long as I wanted, so I used the extension markers to add about 7 inches to the pattern pieces. 

Next, I contemplated what fabric to use. I had several yards of black lycra in stock, but I was worried that it might be too thin for a long skirt, and besides, it had been over $5 a yard on sale; long skirts eat up and awful lot of fabric and so I wanted something more economical. I settled quickly on black ponte double knit. It has a little stretch and a lot of drape, and I had several yards I had bought at Joann with a 50% off coupon. For the godets I ordered some Nylon Chiffon Tricot from Fabric.com in matching black. I've worked with this Chiffon before, and I like it for a number of reasons, but it also has some downsides. On the positive side, it's easy to work with, frays very little, boasts a subtly glossy sheen and has a nice drape. It's hardy for being as sheer as it is. On the downside, it has a moderate propensity to snag, wrinkles easily and is just a little bit too sheer for my tastes. The sheerness wasn't an issue in my aforementioned ballgown, since it has an underskirt, but in the black skirt, it looks almost like there's nothing between my skirt sections when I spin around. Not the worst thing in the world; the godets don't go higher than mid-thigh, and I've seen long dancesport dresses made specifically with open skirt sections for leggy smooth dances, like the tango. 

All in all, the skirt was coming together well, though I worried that it might be a problem for tango. While the godets made the skirt full on the bottom, the cut is slim to mid thigh at the top. As smooth dances go, the tango is a bit different because it requires a fair bit of leg interweaving with one's partner. I have at least one student doing ganchos (hooking your partner's leg with your own) in his freestyle and I didn't want the skirt to get in the way. Luckily, before I attached the godets, I found myself in a conversation at the studio with some of our longtime students about dancewear and learned a great tip. One student with a lot of competition experience mentioned that most smooth skirts his teachers have worn over the years have a slit up the skirt. I paid attention on the next episode of Dancing with the Stars, and sure enough, all of the smooth skirts I saw that night had one, or more, slits.

I sewed the upper areas of the skirt sections together down to where the godets were marked to start. I picked a place on the left side of the skirt where I wanted the slit to be, and attached the godet to the skirt on one side. I sewed a narrow hem on the godet and skirt section left open, thus creating the slit. I sewed in the godets to the remaining openings and the skirt was complete, save for the waist and the hem.

That was, until I tried it on in the mirror. The heaviness of the double knit ponte with the light, unstructured chiffon produced a droopy, shapeless column, not at all the flowing ballgown skirt I'd envisioned. Finishing the hem would give it some shape, I knew, but would a simple narrow hem be enough to give it the lift and profile I wanted?

I had seen a wire hem on practice skirts around the studio, and so I resolved to figure out how to use this technique to add body to my droopy skirt. After a fair bit of googling I discovered a message forum conversation about making wire hems. The process seemed potentially tricky, and the recommendations for using fishing wire made me uneasy since it was not a product sold at my local fabric store and I would have to choose from a number of different weights and colors. Within that discussion, however, came a recommendation from one of the participants for using horsehair braid to give skirts shape. This product, on the other hand, was readily available at the Joann, so I went to the store to investigate the next day.

Contrary to my mental image of braided horse tails, I found that horsehair braid is a polyester mesh. Joann had it in store by the yard in either one inch or half inch sizes. The one inch seemed like overkill, so I went with the half inch. Because I had a coupon, I decided to stock up and get 8 yards. Good thing I did because my skirt ended up using nearly seven of them. The braid is wily, hard to keep wound for storage, but that's precisely what makes it stand up to the weight of a long skirt. I found it easy to work with because it is flat like a ribbon. What I didn't anticipate (but probably should have) was that it didn't look terribly attractive under the chiffon. I had planned to roll it up in the hem, but doing so exposed the raw edge of the chiffon on the right side of the finished skirt.    

What to do? I didn't want to have to wait until Monday to get bias tape from the fabric store, but I was close to done and didn't want to have to go to the effort of making my own trim. In the end, however, I was swayed by the fact that if I fashioned my own trim, I could use satin fabric, which would be a lot more attractive than matte store-bought bias tape; as an added bonus, I could get it done before the weekend was over. It turned out to be well worth the effort (unlike another attempt at trim that I tried later on my ball gown), and even without a bias tape maker of the correct size, the trim was easy to make. I cut two and a half inch wide bias strips of the satin fabric I had in my stores, then I ironed it in half, and finally tucked each side in as far as the fold, and ironed it that way. Voila! I had my own homemade, three-quarter inch satin bias tape. I sewed the horsehair to the inside of the raw edge of the skirt and then covered it up by sewing on the bias trim. The final effect was better than I could have hoped for.

The waistband was last to be finished. I sewed inch-wide elastic onto the edge of the waistband, rolled it under and sewed it again. For the finished dress I paired it with a hot pink bodice I had made for a bridesmaid's dress earlier in the year. With satin and boning, it wasn't exactly dancewear proper, but I knew I'd only be using it to dance with students in predominantly closed routines, so flexibility of the bodice section wasn't a huge concern.     

Posted by S.K. Slevinski at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I took up sewing about a year ago with the express purpose of one day being able to sew my own dance costumes for Latin and ballroom dance competitions and exhibitions. At the time, I had no idea what I was getting in for, but my creative drive wouldn't let the thought rest, and I was—quite literally—faced with confronted with the desire for following through with this ambition every day of my life.

 I am a professional ballroom dancer and dance instructor, and so I spend over 40 hours a week immersed in the world of dance. While my job classifies me as a "professional dancer," I will fully admit that I'm far outside the realm of pro competitors; I didn't move out of the realm of hobby dancer and start training professionally until my late twenties. There's a lot of catching up that I'll probably never do considering that the best ballroom dancers in the world win their championships in the teens and twenties. Teaching is central focus of my career, and I'm pretty darn awesome at teaching the Average Joe how to stand out on a dance floor of his fellow Joes. 

But as my client list grows, so do the interests and ambitions of my students. As my students see their dancing moving beyond the casual niteclub or wedding floor to exhibitions and competitions, my role—and thus, my persona—must change in order to continue meeting their needs. Looking "the part" is a huge part of my profession, and I take pride in putting forth a professional appearance that fulfills their fantasy of the ballroom dancing world.

Unfortunately, being a ballroom dancing teacher is far from the most lucrative profession in the world. Running a full-time dance studio involves an incredible sum total of overhead costs; I see very little of the money my students pay for lessons. I often say that if I weren't a dance teacher, I couldn't afford to pay for the lessons that I teach. Dance costumes can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the design, a cost that is certainly outside of my price range.

Why not, then, simply buy a ball gown at any ordinary store? Well, a lot of people do. Students and teachers alike often where regular cocktail dresses or full-length gowns to exhibitions and events, but when the level of dancing moves away from the merely social and into the stylized and professional, those ordinary gowns no longer suffice.

The limitations of ordinary ready-to-wear dresses are in the fundamentals of their construction. Have you ever hit the dance floor at a wedding and discovered that your dress would ride up or bunch up when you moved a certain way? Or maybe you kept stepping on your train? Perhaps you found yourself constantly tugging strapless dress up, or yanking a mini-dress down. The ballroom dancer simply cannot be burdened by these annoyances. Not only is it uncomfortable, but it ruins the aesthetic of any dancing presentation.

My first step was to look for patterns. My mother and, to a greater extent, my grandmother knew their way around a sewing machine, and so I had been exposed to sewing at a young age and had even attempted a few pattern-based garment projects over the years. But with the exception of one McCall's pattern, I found nothing.

The next step was to check out the internet, where I found more information, but it was sparse and hard to find, resigned to snippets in random blog entries and message board posts written by people who were themselves dabblers just like me. It would seem that of those people who practice dancesport, either as a profession or a hobby, the number who also sew and are willing to go to the time and effort to make true ballroom dance costumes, is relatively slim. In other words, the craft of sewing dancesport costumes is not a hot topic on the internet. Most of the methods of dancesport sewing are known by the professionals who sew dancesport gowns, without much motivation to share them elsewhere.

I did, however, manage to glean a few valuable pieces of information—both from the internet and from folks at the studio with more experience in competitions and exhibitions that I had—to get me started. First, a proper dancesport gown must be made of four-way (also called two-way) stretch material, preferably lycra-based. Second, a true dancesport dress has an internally constructed bodysuit and, for women, sewn in bra cups. Finally, I discovered a recommendation online from a hobby dancer/seamstress to read Kwik Sew's Swim & Action Wear, and apply the techniques described therein to the construction of dancesport dresses. I was ultimately underwhelmed by the insights this book provided, but in retrospect, I learned an essential dress-construction method that I was unfortunately slow to put into practice. Since then, I have learned to appreciate the importance of using elastic to seal all outer edges of of my dancesport garments. 

Ultimately, I found two commercially available patterns in active production (there are some out-of-print patterns available, too, if you can find them) for dancesport dresses. The first was the aforementioned McCall's pattern, 5136, which I have since used a number of times, and the second was Burda 7879, which I have not yet attempted sewing at the time of this writing. Both of these patterns left a lot to be desired in terms of my personal style, but they were at least a starting point.

It was from this point that I started in on teaching myself to sew. I didn't tackle dancesport sewing right away, but rather got myself re-acclimated to the process of sewing with a few "very easy" and "easy" patterns for everyday clothing. Despite the ease of the patterns, this process was a steep climb for me. My project ambitions quickly exceeded my mother's casual sewing expertise, and so I was on my own with a collection of library books, pattern directions, and the occasional off-hand comment from the ladies at the fabric store. My first project was a simple Butterick knit shirt (5084) that now takes me 3 or 4 hours from cut to hem, but that took me closer to 15 hours all told in that first go. For most of the first six months after that first project, the biggest obstacle to my sewing was finding the time and ambition to do it. The length of time it took me to complete projects was so daunting that I did not get many projects accomplished. Finally, over the summer, my sewing skills caught up further with my expectations, and a more realistic outlook prompted me to look for simpler and less time-consuming patterns. But these patterns were not for dancesport, except insomuch as I could wear the clothes to work and they would be comfortable and stylish for both practice and lessons.

My first foray into dancesport sewing was last January, when our studio owner decided it was time I do a pro-show at Spring Showcase. It was an arduous process and my novice mistakes only made it longer. From hand-sewing the leg elastic because I didn't know what machine needle to use, to almost melting my dress on a too-high iron setting, the project was exhausting, and ultimately a bit disappointing. The dress came together successfully, but it was ultimately plain, despite an attempt at beading. Certainly it was a far cry from the costumes sported by many of the other women, students and professionals alike, at our local showcase. A second attempt at a latin dress, this one self-designed with the McCall's pattern as a guide, remains unfinished after an overly ambitions decision to cover it in homemade beaded fringe.

But this fall, a year from when I started, with renewed skills and more realistic expectations, I am tackling dancesport costuming again. Along with my fashion sewing for everyday dancing, my experience learning dancesport are detailed in this log.  

Posted by S.K. Slevinski at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)