Sewing clothing is still new to me, but my interest was recently spurred by the need for new costumes for my Scottish Highland dancing. When you get to a certain level, your need for costumes suddenly increases, and of course, none of them are standard. Everything is custom made and if ordered from a Highland dance company, can be hundreds of dollars.
The price tags on these custom made costumes made my jaw drop, so I decided to use the help of friends and family. I had an immediate need for an Irish jig dress, so my ‘dance mom’ helped me pick out the fabrics and assemble things. She took the hard parts (zippers, weird angles, sleeves, oh my!), but made sure I did my fair share.
Onto the Sailor’s hornpipe costume: a tunic and pants. I pulled my mom in for this one as Project Runway has me terrified of doing pants. It didn’t seem like it could be that hard, but I wasn’t ready to take that chance and have them split in the middle of a dance. Watching my mom literally crank out an amazing hornpipe costume for me was inspiring and had me instantly ready to push her out of the way so I could make my own clothes. Of course, I didn’t, but I promptly went out and begin forming ideas of things I could make myself. And this is where I am today... an update on my raincoat is coming soon!
Splitting your hornpipe pants is pretty hilarious. Ask Maggie about it sometime! (I can't remember the whole story but it was in front of a LOT of people. We used to do down and up in every Sailor's we did because people go nuts but she did it somewhere and it went bad. Funny bad, though.) I thought I split mine once, but it was only a couple of stitches. It sounded like I was going to end up with chaps. The key is to have a double seam!
ReplyDeleteYour costumes are both super cute! I hope you having tons of fun dancing in both of them. Jig and Hornpipe are my favorites.
Congrats on sewing and helping with the sewing. They look great, I especially enjoy the style of the jig dress!
ReplyDeleteAnd zippers aren't that bad!
I think dancing costumes are fun to sew...one of the motivations for my sewing is wanting retro dresses for lindy hop and practical items for clog.
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