Bonnie's Black

It used to be no one wanted a black ball gown for competition.  Black is the color of almost every gentleman on the floor.  Universal belief is that the man is a frame and the woman should be a picture.  SO... a black picture in a black frame?  But when champions and winners wear something, then everyone wants it. Lots of winners have been wearing black lately, and Bonnie is a woman who looks great in black.  She has striking blonde hair, great skin and beautiful features.

When she told me she wanted a black gown, I had to agree it would be beautiful on her.  But I also know that she will wear this gown for a while and wanted her to be visible, and not instantly out of date, when this trend shifts, as they all do.  I encouraged her to add a color to her black gown, at the very least white, or lots of crystal AB sparkle.

After lengthy negotiation and multiple re-designs, we finally landed on an acceptable solution, which included the addition of both a partial white side and a red accent.

Black soft boning hem adds shape and movement.

The gown converts for International Style Ballroom by means of the skirt becoming a float.  Another scarf float attaches to the center back of the necklace, designed just for the Ballroom.  Bonnie has a simpler necklace for use in the American Smooth style.  Isn't she lovely?  I have the best clients!

Success for Less for Sally!

This post is to show you that you do not have to spend a fortune to look great on the dance floor.  Sometimes a cocktail dress can become a costume with minimal tweaking.  This great little dress is from Cache, shown at the link in black.  My client Sally found it last fall in Steel Grey, and asked me to adapt it for her as a Rhythm gown.  It had tremendous potential!  The best dresses for adaptation have some things in common.

1)  Made of stretchy fabric.
2)  Fits you beautifully or fits some places and is too large elsewhere.  There is NOTHING to be done if the dress is too small.
3)  Is sleeveless, or if it has some sort of sleeve, you can raise your arms without the dress moving up on your body.  We can add a sleeve cut for movement, but dresses you buy are cut for standing-around-looking-good, and this means you cannot raise your arms to dance if there are sleeves.  Sometimes, existing sleeves can be replaced with something else, or adapted themselves.
4)  Has a lining, which also stretches, and can be made into a leotard beneath the gown.
5)  Has its tags still attached and can be returned if I tell you it will not work.
6)  Is one of several so that a second one can be purchased if additional fabric is required.

Sally brought in her dress, matching all the above criteria, and I gave her a big YES, and she immediately bought a second one to scrap for parts and fabric.  After that first Steel gown, Cache recreated it for Spring 2014 in a fabulous orchid pink, and Sally called again. This is the one I will feature here.  (I apologize, I COULD NOT capture the color in my studio accurately without hauling out the studio lighting, and I didn't do that.  It is a blue pink, not this coral-ish!! As many of you know, it can be very hard to capture neon color with a camera.)

What the Cache dress lacked was interesting movement in the skirt, although the front and back drapes were pretty fabulous.  Also, the straight hemline was tight, and did not allow for kicks and big movement.  So the first thing to do was to cut the hemline diagonally, in sympathy to the lines of the gown, to create a bigger movement potential.  Then I chopped off the overdrapes from the second dress, and they became the drapey skirts.  I installed a bra for suppport, and created a leotard out of the interlock lining, after stablilzing the fabirc to prevent running.

Then we discussed embelllishment.  Rather than weigh down the drapey bits and turn them into spinning Ninja-quality weaponry aimed at her partner, we decided to embellish the parts that did NOT move, in a way that would be visible in motion, but not entirely when standing still.  A peep show of sorts, animated by action.  We both thought floral and tropical, because of the great hot orchid color, and we both scoped out loads of possible images.  I took her ideas, and my own, and began sketching, working to create something that met our joint criteria, and would be reasonably easy to stone and dazzling when finished.

In addition to the peekaboo bits at the left side, I removed the rhinestone cup mesh on the shoulder, replacing it with a shaped piece that boldly stated our motif.  I also wrapped my design diagonally across her back hipline, a place where cuban motion would animate the stoning and call attention the strong action of her back.

Sally has been doing her own stoning for MANY years, so she is an application pro.  I sketched the design on brown craft paper for her, and pinning it to the gown in the correct position.  Then I showed her how to cut open my pattern and fold it back to draw outlines for her application work.

I think she danced in it with the back drape hanging down like this, but we had discussed tacking it up as it is shown in earlier images, and for what it's worth, I personally would prefer just to shorten that drape, leaving it free.  But clients should get what they WANT!

I also patterned and made a cuff for her, for her right wrist, to diagonally balance the shoulder piece.

Sally did a great job with following  my stoning plan on this motif, and I am really happy with my design work.  The rest of the gown could certainly be embellished as well, but it is just not always necessary to be dripping in sparkle.  Sometimes having your own unique look is worth as much, or more on the floor.

So here is stunning Sally, and the gown in the RIGHT COLOR!  I wish I could let you see it move.

Due to starting with an existing garment, and Sally's time spent on rhinestone application, the cost was super reasonable on this project, approximately 1/4th of the cost of a new, custom designed and made from scratch project, including the cost of the two off-the-rack Cache dresses.  If you want to give this a try, give me a call and let's discuss how you should shop for some possibilities.  And call right away!

It has been a while since I posted to this blog!  I have two posts started, which I MUST finish, and many more to catch up with.  Being on my own in my studio due to Michele's accident has forced me to focus on dressmaking, but Michele is back, healthy, and ready to work, so make sure you get on the fall schedule if you want costumes for Minnesota Madness, Ohio, Holiday Classic, The Snowball, or anything else this year!  We are filling fast.

A Hawaiian Carnival for Rita

Rita is one of the very first dancers I dressed, way back in the late 1980's. She has never stopped enjoying ballroom dancing. She is now retired, and her investment advisor told her she would need to take money from one her investments this year, and her thoughts turned to dance. She decided she would compete at Arthur Murray Dance-O-Rama this month, and wanted a new ballgown to wear for the event.  And she called me!

The criteria we worked with were, soft, flowing, elongated, and elegant.  And Rita had no trouble choosing colors and fabrics.  She wanted lace, and chose a piece called Desire, which I really liked working with.  Since she wanted the result to be soft, we selected a georgette skirt, with a satin chiffon lining.

Rita chose two pinks, a blue based one, called Carnival (upper left, folded to the right), and a more balanced but slightly warm one, called Hawaii Pink (folded to the left side), both from DSI in England.  Blending warm and cool pinks has always been a challenge for me personally, but I really liked this combo. I think the Carnival by itself is near to "Radiant Orchid", the Pantone color of the year for 2014, (although ballroom brighter!) and the blend of the two is kinda magical, much more so in person than what I am capable of capturing in my camera.

We kept the lighter, bluer color (Carnival) on top, in the lace and georgette, and put the deeper, hotter Hawaii Pink under the lace in dance crepe and a satin chiffon for the underskirt.  This is the logical thing to do, as lighter colors tend to move toward the eye, and darker ones, to retreat. (In all fairness, cool colors should receed and warm ones advance, but I think in this case, value trumps hue.) In the rhinestone application, I was able to leave some of the Carnival lace visible, which I think turned out really nicely.  The curvilinear stoning emphasizes the beautiful shapes in this lace, while letting the lighter color beneath it help to pull the pattern forward.

I am also very proud of the matching job I did with the lace in this gown, the bi-lateral mirror symmetry of which is really featured nicely in the back.  I was also able to use the edges of the lace fabric to create a scalloped edge at the bottoms of the sleeves, neck edge and skirt connection point.

At the gown front, where the center seam is replaced by two side seams to accomodate bust shaping, the lace looks more organic, but I am still super happy with the figure placement, and think you really have to look for the seams to see them.

Rita had a necklace she thought might be good with the gown, but it really didn't work out.  The shapes and sparkles were pretty different, so I made her this piece, which I think works nicely with the scalloped edges of the neckline.  I made a couple flowers we did not use on the dress, and attached clips to them for use in her hair.  Those flowers really demonstrate nicely the warm and cool pinks in the gown.  :)

We originally had two layers of the georgette over the satin chiffon lining, but they were too blue, and we reconfigured them to alternate, achieving a really good color match between bodice and skirt.

The flowers were not part of the original design.  The gown probably would better meet the "elegant" part of the design criteria without them.  But listening to Rita in her fittings, talking her performance nerves, and about being encouraged to be more expressive and joyful in her dancing, I thought she might be best served  by both providing a focal point on the gown, and by offering a little whimsy.

Best of luck to Rita , who has practiced in the dress and seems happy with the results!  I am so glad to have the opportunity to be a part both of the beginnings, and the maturity of her dance career.  Are you wondering about that first gown?  Styles and construction have changed over the years, but it's still a pretty thing

Leslie in Aqua

I have made many costumes for Leslie.  Each one, different from the last, and yet uniquely hers.  I always ask my clients to provide a word of phrase that we can use to narrow the visual focus of the gown, and Leslie asked me to choose for her.  Good thing I kinda know her dancing!  I told her that for me, the best thing about her dancing was her partnership with her husband Lee.  They are really lovely to watch together, and their power for me is in how they relate to each other in their movement.  I suggested that we try to emphasize their partnership in her costume.  She brought in a crocheted sequinned shawl in a beautiful soft aqua, and told me that this was the color she was imagining for her gown, and I thought that sounded great as well.  Plus she brought me a pile of photos from magazines of things she liked that might be encorporated into a gown.

Her personal style always has a "1950's school girl" vibe for me, and so I was not surprised to see a retrospective of Princess Grace Kelly's fashions represented, (lower left corner) and, note the soft aqua satin of the gown pictured.  Just above that image, (left top) is a gown with high-contrast lace applique in black on a pale mauve.  That jumped out at me right away, as a great chance to feature the black of Lee's dancewear on Leslie's gown, drawing a neat visual parallel.  Certainly, there is an abundance of floral imagery in this pile of clippings, and lots more of the dark figure on light ground.  I particularly like gown on Lucy Liu, (tiny image in the center) as a great example of dark floral on light blue.  All these things fit neatly into Leslie's desire for pale aqua, and my goal to emphasize her partnership in her gown.

She is beautifully proportioned and fit, but not my tallest client, so we wanted a long clean look for this gown, to allow us to see nice lines without any horizontal distraction   She also wanted her embellishment to spill well onto the skirt of her dress, so we decided on a lycra gown, to accomplish both the long clean lines and lengthy detailing, without having the embellishment disappear in folds of frothy skirt.

Not every gown goes along smoothly, and some clients have a very hard time visualizing the end result from the sketch and at early fittings.  In all fairness, it is really hard to stand and look at yourself in a BIG mirror for an hour, while I poke, prod and pin.  But Leslie freaked out entirely at our first fitting.  She was convinced that we had both the wrong color and the wrong fabric.  SO... she went home to think about it, and decided she wanted to proceed with the gown as designed.  I felt really badly for her.

For prospective clients who might be reading this post, I will say add some advice here.  When we finish our design meeting, and agree to a goal, we begin a series of decisions, some I make on behalf of my client, and some we make together.  The process of buying materials, patterning, cutting, sewing, fitting, and finishing each gown is FULL of forks in the road.  And when we both understand the desired end result, we can make these choices with reasonable ease and agility.  Once the design train leaves the station, have faith in yourself and your ideas, and in me and my design and construction experience and ability.  Our process will go smoothly, and I will do a better job on your behalf, and we can work together toward our mutual goal.

We talked about using feathers as accents on this gown.  They are a recent trendy detail on many gowns, and I arranged all the large flowers in the applique lace so a few delicate feather stamen and pistils could sprout from each one.  Leslie decided against this, but was in favor of feathers at her shoulders.  I did these as removable bits, and I do not think she has ever actually worn them, but I would love to see them throughout the gown.  I like it without them as well!

Remember I said I have a harder time making decisions of my client's behalf if I am not confident about what their goal might be?  Well, I had a really hard time stoning this gown.  I think part of why I love those feathers is how very black they are. And my initial plan was to use Jet on the lace.  But Leslie also needs a gown that will "compete" with other gowns on the floor for attention and status, and I felt the Jet might be too quiet. I initially stoned most of the black lace at the gown front with Crystal AB, trying to get to "championship gown", because Lee and Leslie compete at that level.  But after a few hours, I felt I was losing the black, which was really the overall intended visual impact

So, I picked those all off, (on my own time, and deleted the hours of application as well) and switched to Jet AB, hoping to maintain championship sparkle power, without sacrificing the beautiful black-on-pale contrast that is the core of the gown design.  I also put more space between stones, to keep the black visible, and then surrounded the diagonal banners of lace with Aquamarine AB to boost the sparkle power, switching to Swarovski's new color Light Turquoise for the remainder of the gown.

Leslie had agreed to bangle bracelets, but when it came time for the necklace, I threw caution to the wind.  She had asked for a symmetrical piece, and I felt it was badly out of harmony with the asymmetrical neckline.  I created a necklace from lace scraps and decided she could buy it if she liked it and if she did not, I would keep it.  She bought it!

I thought she looked splendid at the Snow Ball, and danced beautifully with Lee.  She tells me she likes (I think her term was fully embraces) her new gown.  Personally, I hope the next project follows an easier, more joyful path.  But no matter how we get there, success in the end is worth the process.  And I am always ready to try again.  

Condiments for Julie?

Julie is one of my all-time favorite clients.  She is a professional dancer, teaching and competing with her students.  She is also a retired a professional competitor, and that helps to explain the fact that this is our 53rd project together, by my count.  She picked up her new gown at the Snow Ball this weekend, and laughed in the dressing room, telling another dancer about looking at this gown at one point in our process and seeing ketchup and mustard!  Hence the silly name for this post.  

I am particularly fond of the buttons on the cuff detail. 

Julie was not on my schedule for the Snow Ball, but was taken by surprise just before Thanksgiving when both of her ballgowns sold to another dancer.  She called to explain her situation, and despite being VERY booked for the Snow Ball, I could not say no to Julie.  Our design meeting was mostly about the hunt for, and discovery of, an interesting piece of ombred fabric.  With only the vaguest of sketches, I talked with my salesman about the fabric, to confirm color and vibrancy, and sent for a piece of it.  While the ombre flew across the pond, I basted together a leotard, since we knew Julie wanted a portion of the gown to be rhinestone-embellished nude mesh.  When the fabric arrived, Julie met with me and we wrapped it around her body and watched our design flicker into life. She is a beautiful woman and this photo, while illustrating our process, does not do her justice.

Julie's confidence is a tremendous asset in design and fittings.  Even in a moment of doubt, (like seeing condiments instead of flaming gorgeousness!) she is always willing to move ahead from where we are.  I appreciate her calmness and ability to be patient until a great next step presents itself.

The design lines and details of this gown are simple, in the interest of allowing the color shift to be the eye-catching aspect of the work.  We both felt it would need an awesome piece of jewelry to provide focus and cohesion.  We tried out a few of my patterns and Julie liked one she felt was "Amazon" in character.  I reconfigured it to allow it to drop in a v-shape, both in the front and at the back, allowing it to synchronize with and support the neckline in three dimensions. Then I devised a simple means for it to attach to the gown that allows it both to move with Julie and stay neatly in place.  After testing, my paper pattern was drawn onto nude mesh fused to ultrasuede for comfort.  I edge-stitched for durability, and painstaking cut it all out.  Here it is, ready for my syringe of adhesive and the rhinestone embellishment.  As you can see, there are also a couple of bangle bracelets and a pair of as-yet-un-trimmed earrings, at the far left of the shot.

Here are the finished bangles and earrings, and a shot of the necklace connection, which I hope you cannot see!

And here is the gorgeous Julie, modeling the finished gown.

And with her awesome husband, and amateur competitive partner, Ken, wearing one of our suits.

Gown and Ballroom Suit by Made for Movement

I have not been the best blogger in 2013, and have written about only a few of the gowns I created.  I am gong to try and play catchup, (ketchup???) starting with my most recent work, and over the next few weeks, I will see if I can't get most of last years work posted so I can move on to some things I am really excited about for 2014, among them a DRAGON DRESS!  Thanks for reading and if you are imagining a 2014 project, call today to reserve time on my schedule!  

Kim's Thankful Praise

Sometimes, one of my clients wants something other than what I typically create.  Many times, these  things are what I like to think of as "unicorns," because it can be hard to define exactly what is needed, and the goal can be a moving one.  In this case, Kim wanted a gown for a Theaters Arts piece.  Usually, I encourage dancers to purchase practice clothing for things like this, (I often add sleeves or embellishment) since the intended purpose of the costume is limited to one unique number and rarely re-sellable, or re-usable.  Custom dance wear is expensive, and I encourage my clients to think about resale value as we design.  So I encouraged Kim to think in terms of re-use, as a more traditional ballgown, with the addition of embellishment and sparkle, when she was through performing the Theater Arts piece.

In Kim's case, the Theater Arts piece was deeply personal, and important to her.  And she really wanted something special to dance in.  The piece is about her return to ballroom competition, following a health scare, that might have made it impossible to dance again.  She wanted something soft, fluid, and beautiful.  Even the choreography was a little bit "unicorn-ish" and hard to describe.  She referred to it as a waltz, although the music was in 4/4 time.  But I appreciated what she meant when I saw the work.  It was full of spirally, turning, waltzy action, and without sound, I might have thought it WAS a waltz.  The piece is also praise to God for her recovery, so there was is a hint of spirituality to bring out visually.  We tried to use color to represent "heavenly", and "angelic" with our gentle crystal blue.   And texturally, we also kept everything soft and cloud-like.

 

Here, she is performing the piece last April, when the gown was made.  Which tells you how far behind I am in my blogging!  But a pause in my work allows time, so I will take advantage of it.

 

 

Theater Arts pieces frequently involve a story, lifts, and other movement that requires well-fit clothing, and fabrics that are both not sticky, and not slippery.  The character in this story is Kim as a ballroom dancer, simply presented, joyful in being able to move and be physical in an easy, happy way.  But I think, with the addition of rhinestones and more specific focus, the gown can also grow into being a more traditional ballgown when the piece it was created for is put to rest.

 

 

Thank you so much Kim, for letting me be a part of your telling of this story, essentially liturgical dance, with a ballroom twist.  And thank you too for the beautiful photos you provided for me.  They tell the story of the gown MUCH better than my traditional studio stills.  I am thrilled that you are dancing again, and glad to be a part of that!  And a final thank you to Pro Scott Anderson, who appears here with Kim, and created this lovely piece for her with the assistance of his beautiful daughter, Megan Anderson.

 

Nancy's Silk Skirt Gets a New Lease on Life

Seven years ago, Nancy brought me a wonderful silk georgette skirt.  She wanted it used to create and ballroom costume and we decided that costume could be both a rhythm gown and a smooth dress, by making the skirt removable.  It was her first ballroom costume collaboration and the results were good!  This is the rhythm dress we created, and the skirt pulled on underneath the dress to convert it to a ballgown.

I wish I had taken a photo of the skirt alone, before I incorporated it into Nancy's new ball gown, but I did not manage to do that.  I did take a quick shot of the embellished leotard with the skirt before it was assembled into the new gown, so you can see the relationship in the graphics.

AND I can show you the skirt in its new configuration!



In both cases, the embellishment details for the gowns were suggested by the graphic design in the skirt.  The first was a simpler, brighter, bronze level result,  and the new one is, for me, a WOW! 

My partner Michele and I debated and sampled several different processes to recreate the graphic on Nancy's new French Vanilla leotard base.  We knew we wanted the lines to be defined in the same way as they were on the skirt and then embellished with jet stones and flatback pearls.  After testing appliqued strips of black fabric, and the meticulous application of black permanent fabric marker, we decided that the latter had the most similar visual effect to that of the skirt.  After careful design and planning, and much pre-washing of the red lycra to avoid any post process color bleeding, we were very plesed with our results!

This is certainly the gown of a more advanced and more experienced dancer, one who knows she will be seen, even in black.  And a more elegant and serious look than the original.  When she picked up her gown, she brought in a Light Siam choker style necklace and bangles I had made for another costume of hers, and they looked perfect!

I am really wishing I could be at the Arthur Murray Showcase this weekend to see Nancy, Christy, and also Linda, who has a new Gently Used Rhythm Gown dance, but I will be at MN Star Ball on the other end of town.  I hope you will make it to one event or the other, and I hope anyone at the Arthur Murray showcase with a digital camera might send me a few images to keep me posted on what I am missing!  Good luck to you, my lovely ladies!

A Cure for the Blues for Cathy

I made this rhythm gown just over a year ago, but never got around to writing about it.  I thought I would wait until I saw Cathy wear it, so I could include photos of her dancing, but somehow, I never made it to an event of hers, and did not get the photos I had imagined.

There is another opportunity coming up, (which I would have missed again, given I will be at the MN Star Ball on that day) but Cathy broke her foot and is not able to dance in the Arthur Murray Showcase on the 19th, and I know she is SAD about that.  So hopefully, this little post will lift her couch-bound spirits!

 

We began with words from her teachers, and each had the word "precise" in their lists.  Also, we considered "legs" "fast" "light" and "sassy."  We also wanted a little tummy disguise, and amplification for that precise, fast movement.  We got "light" from our airy fabric choice of mesh in the kimono style top and the skirt.  We kept the skirt short, to show off those great "legs" and repeated the mesh in the skirt to allow us to see lots of leg without question of good taste.  The movement of the mesh around her leotard and compact skirt provides the amplification we were seeking, offering great light, "fast" action with her movement.  We actually added speed to the skirt with the weight of the row of stones at the base of the mesh. And the "sassy"?  Well I hope that is in all the action and swish this little gown has!  Plus, Cathy has that herself in spades!

 

All the lines and shapes in the gown are clean and angular, (in the interest of her "precise" dancing)from the v-shaped neckline and upper back, to the pointed open oval details we made good use of both as a collection point for the ruched skirt top, and frame for the tail of dance crepe we used.

One of my favorite parts of this costume is the jewelry!  We had originally designed something quite different, and at the final fitting, we re-designed to make better use of the angular design accent lines.  Yum!  I love the peek-a-boo necklace, and wish I had a shot of it on the form.

As she did on her last gown, Cathy did an excellent job of the rhinestone application, both as a means to stay involved with her design, and to ensure the lowest possible cost for a great result.

Cathy, I am so sorry you can't dance this weekend, but I hope this gives you a smile and some great memories.  I hope your will be up and animating this gown SOON!