Thread: I'm so not a seamstress, help me fix this costume!!

Hey everyone! I just bought my first costume off the swapmeet!..g.: I tried it on today but a few issues presented themselves. Here is a look at it (so pretty): http://www.bhuz.com/forum/bellydance...s-shiping.html

Now, first thing, right above the slit in the skirt, the stitching (cannot be seen from photos) seems a little stretched out, and I would hate for those seams to bust open while I' dance! LOL The skirt fits but it's heavy with all those beads! What can I do to keep it from slipping down and showing the world my crack?!.w.:

Lastly, the bra. I am well endowed, and my D's are kinda squashed in there and I am getting side boob action, (these are hard cups) but then....the straps are not tacked down, and the side straps are set too wide for me, if I can get it to fit right, maybe then I can address the "girls" a little better (I haven't fixed those problems as I just got the costume today!)....how do I readjust this to fit me?

Keep in mind, I'm not a seamstress, and I have very basic sewing skills (and no sewing machine). It'll be me, the needles and thread on a date!..l;,

What kind of clips, hooks, eyes, and accessories will I need to buy and sew on to secure the costume?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and taking the time to answer if you have any tips! I'm still new to this costume thing...they don't teach you how to sew in dance class! LOL (well....one old school teacher tried but I was never interested or committed enough to care....but now I am, and that's not available to me anymore..cr.:) Please...show this baby dancer some love! ..l;,

hi birdielee, happy new year!
i'm burning cds for shows tonight but will come back later this weekend and tell you how to keep your stretch skirts up without an elastic band. don't waste your time messing with an elastic band for heavy skirts imo.

i'll take pictures of my grosgrain ribbon method for you, probably on sunday .

for the bra, the 1st step is to fit the back band with large trouser hooks. then use velcro to secure the overlap of the strap. the back should hold the bra up by itself, like a strapless. yes...it has to be that tight.

then you will know what you need to do to make the shoulder straps fit.

sew all hooks with capret thread or dental floss. stronger then regular thread.

sorry this is short, but i gotta get dressed now. congrats on your first project. i'll fill in the rest later, if the others haven't done it first ;)

I'm not a seamstress either, so I'm of NO help what so ever. I just popped in to read and wish you the best of luck.

Good Luck......

OMG I bought that same exact costume from the belly dance store early last year (2009!). I really loved the color but I had a lot of fit problems too, especially with the top. Not to be particularly unhelpful, but I wound up just remodeling the whole thing and transferring to a regular bra. Sabrinabellydancer is right, to get a good fit you are going to have to put some serious hooks in the back, and it will be VERY tight. One of the biggest problems with this style costume bra is even though the cups may be long and wide, they are not deep, so boobs don't have anyplace to go except squashing out the sides, top and bottom of the cups! Once you get the top tight and straps adjusted, you could try and add some coverage with a gathered chiffon scarf tacked between the center of the cups and threaded over the cleavage area on each side and under the straps, and then tacked along the top of the bra sides and tied in the back.
As for the skirt, I usually just use some body adhesive (like a roll-on body glue) to glue myself into that style skirt. Sticky but effective.

As for that seam you mentioned above the slit, if you flip the skirt inside out you will see the seam material is pressed back on each side and you can even see the (rather weak) stitches going up the material. I just sewed right over that with a small, tight stitch looped right across both sides of the fabric all the way up. If you keep the stitches small in a similar color thread it will not be seen from the opposite side.

Thanks Sabrina, I will be looking for some trouser hooks soon...guess I'll be hitting up Joanne fabrics! Would love to hear more tips from you.

Jolynn, I'm glad you chimed in since you've had this costume before. You're right, the cups are not really deep enough to hold the boobs inside! Did you take the fabric off the original bra and put in on a lingere bra? How did you do it? A few months ago, I bought a DD bra and a friend of mine covered it with a bunch of stretch sequin lining and other things from Joanne Fabrics...it shrunk the bra to my regular size D...but I don't know how to deconstruct this bra without making irreversible damage! sigh.

Oh yes...I forgot...happy new year ladies!

Happy New Year!!!

I just popped in to see your beautiful costume, you're having a problem with. I love the color!

I agree with Sabrinabellydancer, that gross-grain is much better than elastic, but I'm not sure exactly how to explain it.

I've been trying to upload pics, to show you an example of a 'thread' casing for the last two hours, but I haven't had any luck.
:-(

I'll try again tomorrow.

I can't make the photos small enough for Bhuz.
Here's a link to the inside of a belt I have with a 'thread' casing.
It's over elastic in the pic, but you can do this with grossgrain. The outside of the belt is posted in the album.

Or, you may want to sew the gross grain only to the top of the waistband, in where the zipper seams are, of your skirt.
Please wait for Sabrinabellydance's post, she knows more about this style costume than I do.

Good luck with it, the color will look great on you!!!

belt inside - tribe.net

Thanks Gothique, I appreciate the effort, and I hope you can get those pics uploaded eventually! I am feeling a little discouraged though....sigh....the costume if sitting folded up on my couch, little sparkly sequins peeking out at me. ,f:: I want to wear this thing sooooo badly!!!! But she needs some work first....in the meanwhile....it's back to my grueling restaurant job for me!,r:; I don't wanna go!!!!....cr.:

Now, whining aside...bring on the tips everyone, I'm all ears!!!

Boy, I understand what it's like to want to don that costume and take it out for a shimmy 'round the block right away! If you are not a big fan of sewing by hand or don't have the patience or experience for it, the transfer of the covering is a last resort option, it is very time consuming. If you can pick the brain of an experienced local dancer who can see the costume on you and help fit it to your body without taking it completely apart, that is the way to go. For me, I deliberately bought it in a D cup even though I'm a DD knowing I was probably going to wind up doing major surgery on the costume (they didn't have it in that color in a DD at the time). But, here are the gory details anyway on how I did it (this is going to go on for quite a bit):
First, I took pictures, up close of both cups and straps, all over, so I could repeat the pattern. I already had a lingerie bra for my transfer, I use the ones that have convertible straps and can be worn strapless; I buy them at Macys and they come with the straps in a little separate bag attached. I like the ones with the thick elastic back strap, it's usually two wide pieces of elastic shaped like a V like this >< that are covered with the bra fabric so you can't see the elastic except from the inside. These are very supportive & sturdy. I buy them in a 36 DD, because all the sewing will shrink them to fit my 34DD frame, with a wee bit of room left over for plump days. Then, I carefully removed the stitches from the costume cup and back strap; each side is its own single piece of fabric (cup and strap together) and the center of the bra is its own little piece of fabric. Only do one side at a time, including transferring it, so you can have the other side for reference. This is very slow going, because of all the beading, edge beading gets removed entirely, but the beading on the cups can be kept mostly intact because it is not sewn through the cups, just the fabric. If you are very careful you can use a seam ripper to coax the little stitches that get caught in outermost layer the hard cup material out of the material with out ripping the stitch. If you do rip a stitch, I certainly did, remove some of the beads until you have about an inch of exposed thread, and fold a piece of scotch tape over that thread. The whole point is to leave as much of the design intact as possible, it is much easier to fill in gaps then to repeat the whole design. [Continued in next post]

Once you get one side off and have all your loose bead ends taped, you have to go through and pull the tape off one end at a time, pull it through the material to the back side and tie it off. Now you can fill in all the bead gaps, which is why you took the picture and tried to leave most of the work intact, so you can just follow the pattern that is already in place (it is drawn on, in pen under the beading, so you just follow the lines). Once you have re-applied the holes in the design you can sew the material onto the lingerie cups, noting you are really going to have to stretch it to fit it on a larger cup, I actually had to put mine on upside down and backwards (opposite cups) to make this work, and then I had to add some chiffon i bought in a matching color to cover the edges. Also, you have to decide how you want to cover the back straps, because you will need to fill in edges with purchased sequins and beads or not use the back strap material at all and just completely sequin it instead, because there may not be enough material to cover the back straps depending on the type of lingerie bra you choose. You may even have to add extra sequins or material to the tops or sides of the cups if the fabric won't stretch as far as it needs to go. If this really sounds like something you would want to attempt, send me a pm, and I will give you my email address and try to help you through the process. However, I will tell you, it takes a long time to do this, I worked on mine a few hours a day, two or three days a week and it took me about a month and a half to finally finish just the top. Also, I made a lot of changes to make the costume a little more unique to me, which included adding some extra fabric and beading around the cups, and changing the bottom of the skirt. I recommend the matching scarf or chiffon material added to the top of the bra as an easier way to go. I'll also see if I can get around to taking some pics of my reworked costume to show you what I did. Good luck!

Also, because I am apparently all about blabbing nonstop today, here is a link to a good thread on bra alterations

http://www.bhuz.com/forum/belly-danc...ra-bigger.html

And if you feel like all you might need is some extra fabric, I have some left over from my costume alteration I can send you if you cover the shipping cost ( you can have the fabric for free)

Thanks Gothique for the picture, I see what you're talking about, but I don't think that the elastic band will work for this skirt b/c it really is sheer and doesn't have much of a "waistband"....I dunno if that made sense. If I put a band of elastic around the waist, I'm sure it would be visible, it's pretty form fitting, it's not like one of those chiffon type skirts. But this is a good idea, and I will surely be waiting for Sabrinabellydancer's next post!

Jolyn, thanks for the description, that helped me visualize the transfer so much better...I'm kinda scared to go through all of that though...I may be brave enough to do that after a little more "costume rehab" experience though. And thanks for the fabric offer! If I change my mind, I will definetly come to you for it.

Everyone on bhuz is so sweet and helpful! ..g.: I REALLY appreciate it!!

if you can't sew in elastic in the waist of the skirt you can sew in gross grain ribbon to the width of your hip and it won't slide past that point, or you can sew a drawstring in, or try that rubber stuff like whats at the top of stay up stockings, or last but not least double sided tape, which you'd have to redo for each performance. As for the bra, if you angle the straps to be a halter that would help also if you detach them from the top of the cup you can angle the cups more then reattach them. Good luck.

Oh, I don't want you to use elastic!

I couldn't find a gross grain ribbon example, I just want you to see how a thread casing looked.

I sure hope you can make it work for you!

:-)

Originally Posted by gothique

Oh, I don't want you to use elastic!

I couldn't find a gross grain ribbon example, I just want you to see how a thread casing looked.

I sure hope you can make it work for you!

:-)

Ooohh! okay! lol

Ok, let me know by PM if you change your mind about the fabric, I'll also include some of the leftover beads and sequins, they're just taking up space in my bead box, and there aren't enough left for me to really use on anything else. Make sure you take good notes on how you adjust your costume to fit, it will make it easier for the next costume!