Finally - an Irish Dance Dress

Well, I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently but not entirely idle.  I have spent rather a lot of time making a dance dress for my younger daughter and we didn’t want to show it until it was finished.  As tends to happen, it turned out nothing like the original plan so that is probably just as well.  She is very into “dark romance” (but gets very offended if you call her a goth) wears an awful lot of black, and reads novels with vampires in, so there was no point in making a frothy, girly dress. 

Here she is ready for her competition (apart from the shoes).  The dress is black silk with machine embroidery and the skirt is lined with the same red satin as the shawl – I themed it on a raven which is her favourite bird and  crops up in celtic mythology.  We added a fluorescent red tutu underneath to make the skirt fuller and it gives a flash of  bright colour as she dances.  It doesn’t come out in the photos, but the dress is actually quite sparkly – I stuck on over 220 Swarovski rhinestones.  Many on the bodice are black so they reflect under lights but look more like studs (again a bit less girly).  The machine embroidery designs came from the embroidery library, I  just changed the colours to fit her style.  

I rather like the small bird on the shawl which was stitched onto felt and cut out to make a brooch.  The finishing touch is the headband –  more machine embroidery but this time it is my own design.  And more bling of course.

You may already know that I am going to design and make an Irish dance dress for my elder daughter as part of my City and Guilds coursework (functional 3d item) – so keep an eye on my blog Gallimaufry as I will shortly be posting my background notes on styles and fashions.