Dance Dress

This dress is a composite of the New Look 6735 top and Simplicity Thread’s 3877 dress. The purpose of this dress was for a Sunday morning service at my church. I’m starting a dance ministry there, and in effort to incorporate dance into the services, I’ve been dancing once every four to six weeks. This dress was intended for a song called “The Battle Belongs to the Lord.” I envisioned black and gold for this particular song. Black signifying the darkness of the battle, and gold for the victory.

I found both fabrics at a Super Jo-Ann’s in one of the near-by towns. It was a pretty hefty expense. The black spandex was about $12.00/yd. and the gold lame was about $5.00/yd. I believe. Overall, the total was a around $45.00 with coupons. Believe me, this was a good price for this fabric and this type of dress. Typically, dance dresses like this run from $60.00 to $75.00, average. So I did save some money and got to design the dress the way I envisioned it.

I cut out the fabric and sewed most of the dress (save the hemming) in 24 hours. Yes, I did a quick job on this, which was only possible because I serge it. However, I machine basted the skirt first, then went back over the seams with a serger. The top was a snap to put together. I cut out the pattern pieces for the 3/4 sleeves and cut the bottom off at the waist line. Then attached it to the skirt.

The only thing I needed to fix was the bagginess of the top. When wearing the dress, it looked like I didn’t have any hips, and I wanted the dress to fit more snuggly. So I tried sewing darts into the front. It was more fitted, but messed up the look of the skirt. I took out the darts and took in the bodice’s side seams instead.

Ironically, I never got a chance to dance in this dress, because service was cancelled due to inclement weather. Well, at least I have it for another occasion when I need it.