A daunting task

As you know, I do Irish dancing and I'm to the point where I've had a solo dress for about the last year.  While owning a custom solo dress is a dream come true, as with most things, I start thinking about a more updated model.

After this last St. Patrick's Day, I decided that there was just something about my dress that needed to change, and that was the green sleeves.  I love the green and the lace pattern but I started to think that a solid colored top with green accents would be more 'mature' looking.  The problem? I don't have the money to go out and buy a new dress.  These dresses generally run between $1000-$2000 and I just can't justify that cost.  How could I update my current one?

I started to peek at the seams and thought it might be easy to just replace the current green sleeves with black velvet, but could I find the same thing?  The dressmaker had sent me a swatch for each fabric she used so I took the black velvet to the store.  JoAnn's was a bust so I decided to postpone my search for another day. We were off to buy food for the pets, when lo-and-behold, there was a Hancock Fabrics in the same parking lot!  I didn't know there was one within even a 10 mile radius so I begged the hubby to drop me off while he picked up animal food.

I promptly located the velvet section but alas, the black they had didn't match and mine had a bit of a stretch to it.  As a last resort, I asked an employee if they knew where I could find a similar fabric.  He started to lead me to what I assumed was the same velvet section, but no! There was a stretch velvet row!    I practically squealed with joy and instantly picked up the fabric to make the sleeves.

Draping the fabric over the current sleeve. Trying to gather courage.

Now, the hard part, do I really want to slice and dice my pricey dress?  I laid the fabric out but just couldn't bring myself to it. So... I called my mom.

My mom is a sewing master.  She went to fashion design school and while I was embarrassed by her skills when I was a kid (why couldn't I have a cheap, grocery store costume at Halloween like everyone else?) I've learned to value her expertise.

She came over and we instantly set to work.  She removed the old sleeves and traced a new pattern for the velvet version.  I removed the black embroidered cuffs from the previous sleeves and my mom reattached them to the new velvet sleeves.  It took a couple of hours but...

Voila! The new and improved dress!

I love the 'new' dress.  I think it looks sleeker and more elegant.  I'm looking forward to my next competition in a couple of weeks and testing out the revised dress.  What do you think?

Dancing queen

This November is a busy month for me.  It's my birthday month (woohoo!), my Highland dance school's annual performance, and a regional Irish dance competition.  Due to the dance performance, I've had to work on some costumes for our show. This year we're doing an Alice in Wonderland theme but of course, tweaking it to suit Highland dancing. How do we do that? Well the evil red queen is instead the Irish queen.  Guess who got that role?

Front of the jacket

I'll be wearing my Irish solo dress for most of the show, but we are doing an Irish vs. Scottish jig battle towards the end of the show, and I'll be wearing my Scottish jig dress.  In order to show that I'm the Irish queen, I whipped up an orange 'queenly' jacket.  I used Simplicity pattern 3685.  It was so easy to follow and a fast project to put together.

Back of the jacket

I'm pretty impressed with how it turned out.  I was able to test actually dancing in it at our recent dress rehearsal, and it fit perfect.  I'll post more pictures after the performance in a couple of weeks.  Now to keep practicing my steps!