Fancy Bellydance Top

Take a look at that! Does that look like something you'd be proud to wear or what?

So here's the deal with this beauty. We ordered a ready made 2 piece costume off of e-bay for our June recital. E-bay is a wonderful place to order cheap costumes, they just happen to come in one size. A size that fits the beautiful, slim, vertically challenged models (who are presumably Chinese given the locations the costumes are shipped from). I won't even attempt to claim that I've been too tall for anything, ever. Nursing babies and some leftover baby weight however have left me with a bra size that in no way resembles that of a tiny Asian model. I pulled this top out of the parcel and couldn't even hold it to me well enough to guess what it would look like! Add to that the fact that this costume has more sequins than I've voluntarily gone near in my entire life and it made for a fairly bleak picture ;)

Take a good look at this photo. Notice three different parts; the pleats along the top, the sequined cup and the beaded embellishment along the side. Now look again with this in mind: the edges of the sequined cup were the original edges of the bra. Almost everything I added to this was actually done to cover the larger bra I sewed this to!

So this is how that works. You take your too small decorative bra and take out the under wire. You get a properly fitting bra (hypothetically in the same colour, unless you plan on making unnecessary work for yourself like me). Line the cups up on the bottom front and sew on. Fill in the extra space. Some lace or fancy trim all around usually does just fine, but in this case I had huge gaps to fill and had to get creative.  Careful sewing the band though, it still needs to stretch when you're done!

You can actually see pretty clearly on this side where the original bra ends if you're up close like this. The sleeves drape down quite far when it's on and cover most of this though, so the main thing was to make sure that it all sparkles. Flat, not shiny pieces on the costume would be far more obvious from the audience than differently shaped sequins.

What beautiful flowers... Oh, you didn't notice that was covering the fact that the original bra didn't make it around my torso? Bet you didn't notice that you haven't seen a clasp yet either. I wouldn't recommend asking me about the wisdom of sewing a bra with a back clasp onto one that does up in the front. I don't find it to be amusing while I'm trying to wiggle into it. (Life lesson: sequins are sharp!)

I also added some extra rows of beading hanging down and sewed some cute little flowers on top. I swear it lies flatter when the top is on but there was no way that sort of photo was going to be floating around the internet!

Lets take a look at it all together again. Doesn't it look sweet and pretty? I try to add some beauty and personality to a costume I'm altering. Otherwise it's easy to fall into bad mindsets, especially when you order every single costume with the knowledge that you are going to be too big for it. I can't imagine anything more depressing than having a costume that's clearly different because you've had to expand it. I want to have the costume that's different because it's so beautiful :)