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.
