Pattern Review - Self Drafted: Tatiana's Latin Competiton Dress

If you are just joining us, let me give you a little background. This is a competition Latin dance dress for DS the Younger's ballroom dance teacher. She found out that I sew, and asked me to make her a couple of outfits. Ballroom and Latin dance dresses, if you buy them, can cost anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars for a relatively simple design, to many thousands of dollars for an Open level competition costume. After making them, I can understand why. There is a lot of engineering involved in these dresses.

Pattern Description: This is a Latin dance competition outfit. It's a two-piece dress, consisting of a skirt with a scooped hem and attached halter blouson, worn over a bra. The skirt is built on a panty that I based on Jalie 2801. The rest of it is self drafted.

Sizing: One size. Teeny!

Fabric Used: Lycra Serious-as-Hell Powernet for the panty and bra back. Bright turquoise lycra jersey for the dress. Turquoise holographic sequined stretch net for the bra, collier, belt and skirt flounce. Stretch net for lining the sequins, also in a matching turquoise.

Needle/Notions Used: 1/4 inch elastic, clear bra straps, clear bathing suit bra hook, two silver waistband hooks, falsies.

The lycra, especially the S-a-H Powernet, was brutal on needles. I bent or broke five, count 'em, five needles on this project. Big shout out of thanks to Nancy K., who has worked with this type of lycra before and pointed me towards Microtex needles. I wish I had known about them earlier in the project. Next time I work with this kind of fabric (next time?), I'll make sure to use Microtex.

Did it look like the photo or drawing when you got through? Um, well, no, but that's because I had no clue when I started out what this was going to turn into.

How were the instructions? Hah!

Construction Notes: Phyllis asked me during construction how much of the dress was done on the serger vs the sewing machine. All the seams were sewn on my industrial serger. I don't have an industrial zigzag machine. I think that's the next industrial on my list. So I did all the rest of the stitching on my home Pfaff. I did some basting on my Juki straightstitch, but it didn't see much action. Because of the way this dress is built, I didn't use my coverstitch at all. The only places I would have used it were on the necline and halter hems. I didn't want a double line of stitching there, so I decided to forego using the Beast. Oh, now that I think about it, I suppose I could have used the Beast on the elastic in the legs. Oh well. Next time. (next time?)

When making a dance competition dress, you really need to take as much ease as possible out of the pattern. As with the Smooth ballroom dress, I took the panty pattern down by about 1.5 inches at the waist. I had done a test run back in November, which was (IMO) disastrous. That was based on a McCalls pattern, and the pattern actually had positive ease (you need negative ease for a dance costume). Tatiana tried it on and was clearly not pleased with it. I think the way I described it then was a "How can I tell her it's heinous without hurting her feelings?" kind of look. So I dropped back to punt. I took time away from the Latin dress to focus on the Smooth.

The Bra
In the first iteration, I attached a flesh toned leotard to the bra. This time I decided to go for the two piece. Latin dance dresses are all about showing off the wearer's body.The bra is a commercially produced one that I took apart and covered with the sequine fabric. When Tatiana tried on the first dress, I noticed that the bra tended to pull away at the top when she bent over. That's not a good thing when dancing. So to help alleviate the problem, I sewed a length of 1/4 inch elastic into the top of the bra, stretching it to fit (it was 1 inch shorter than the length of the bra top). That helps the bra cup the top of the bust.

I also bought a set of silicone bust enhancers, and sewed pockets into the bra cups to keep them in place.
These give the, um, necessary components to fill out the bra properly. The sides of the bra are made from the nude S-a-H Powernet. This particular tone matches her skin almost perfectly. The shoulder straps are commercially purchased clear elastic bra straps.
(she's smaller than Shelley, so while the bra is tight, it isn't this tight on her)

The Skirt
The skirt is a formfitting straight skirt with a circular ruffle flounce at the bottom. It's built on a leotard panty made from the S-a-H Powernet
The ruffle is made from the sequined fabric and is lined with the turquoise mesh
I attached a decorative belt of the sequined fabric, also lined with the mesh, at the waist.

The skirt has an attached halter with a blouson drape. The neck of the halter is made from the sequined fabric and hooks in back.

Embellishment or, How I Learned to Embrace My Inner Tacky Girl
I found the lack of transition from the sequins on the flounce to the turquoise fabric to be too stark for my taste. So I decided to add some embellishment to it. I decided to stick with sequins, so I pulled individual sequins off scraps of the fabric. I've been consulting back and forth with Sewing Diva Phyllis, who has been kind enough to draw up some schematics for sequin placement on the skirt. I think I'm going to do placement of the sequins so they start at the top spaced several inches apart and gradually get more encrusted the closer you get to the flounce. I've started (and you will see here) with a simpler pattern, to give myself a frame to work within. Plus, if I run out of time (the kids are out of school this week, so it's highly possible), I have something for the dance competition and can add on to it later. Applying the sequins is tedious. I glue each one individually at markings on the skirt. I apply the glue with a toothpick to the back of the sequin, then I position the sequin with the other end of the toothpick and press onto the skirt
I'm using Aleen's non-toxic bridal glue. I started out using Fabri-Tac but after about 5 minutes I was feeling like Michael Phelps at a frat party. Wooooo! The non-toxic fabric glue has no odor and you can get it on your hands without worry. It was time consuming, but not difficult.

Likes/Dislikes: I often say that I hate sewing for other people. It's a true statement. But I have actually enjoyed this and the Smooth dance. These are so far out of my comfort zone it's funny. And my sewing studio looks like a bomb full of sequins exploded in it. But I really like the problem solving and the engineering involved in making these dresses.

Would you do it again? Would you recommend it? I might do it again. I haven't decided. Apparently there are people lining up for my services at the dance studio. I encourage anyone who has thought about making outfits like these to go for it!

Conclusion: An interesting, and ultimately, very rewarding project. I have conquered one of my last unknowns (sewing wicked activewear) and I have found that I actually enjoy it! Here's a picture of the dress as it stands right now:


I am going to try to put more sequins on the skirt and I may put some on the halter. But for now I'm going to sleep on it and make up my mind in the morning.

Happy sewing!