Thread: Making felahi dresses, need some advice

I am sewing a couple of felahi pieces for a folk number and could use a little help. I'm starting with a "granny nightgown" type pattern, but need to make it fuller for the "swing and sway" of the dress. If you have such a dress, would you mind measuring across the bottom of the dress to tell me how wide it is where the ruffle attaches? Then I know the fullness I'm shooting for.

Any other advice on sewing these babies is welcome as well. Thanks!!

My troupe has the really full dresses so can't measure but here's a pic (if it works):

The green and orange Abla dress you can see in the back is cut much narrower.

HOLY GUACAMOLE!

Practically a full circle dress! Not sure if we'll go quite that big!

Thanks for the photo. That's a great help.

They don't really need to be that big. Got the purple and yellow ones from Scheherezade Imports, and they're at least twice as full as the others we have.

Rats! Trying to post a pic of Ranya Renee wearing one of the less voluminous ones that she borrowed from me but the link won't work. You can find it in her Facebook pix, though.

Love the pots/jugs. It's a great pic.
xxx

Originally Posted by gloworm25

Love the pots/jugs. It's a great pic.
xxx

Aww, thanks, Evelyne!

Ranya!Doesn't she look sweet!

OK, I bow to your superior skills. How did you get that Ranya pic to show up??

Originally Posted by bintbeled

OK, I bow to your superior skills. How did you get that Ranya pic to show up??

Got it from her website, not FB, as I find FB weird with photos. I clicked the photo to make it show up big... then right-clicked for the pop-up menu and chose "save image location." Pasted it in here and crossed my fingers!

Aha, that makes sense. Thanks!

Bintbeled, met with the dance director over the weekend. She DOES want the great big dresses! I'm going to add big gores to the sides of our dress pattern to make them bigger. So maybe by the end I'll have a similar photo to share!

Although I sent this to you in a PM, I decided to add it to the thread as well, for the benefit of anyone else thinking of making one of these.

My fellahi dress is nowhere near as full as the ones Latifa posted in her troupe photo with the jugs.

I measured this one just above the ruffle and it came out to 106 inches (ie, 53 inches on the front piece, and 53 inches on the back: Belly Dance Costumes | Belly Dance Store.com: gallery

When I dance around in it, I can pick up the hem and swing it around, but there's definitely no excess to spare. I tried playing with the "kobri Banha" section of Mahmoud Reda's "Ahsan Nas" choreography that he taught on his U.S. tour last year. (Ie, the section immediately following the Saidi section.) I was able to do the dress accents as seen on the video, but it felt just a wee bit skimpy for that. If I were going to make one, I'd probably add another 24-36 inches of fullness (ie, an extra 12-18 inches to the front and an additional 12-18 inches to the back).

Let me know if you want me to post a picture of me swinging the ruffle.

Originally Posted by tigerb

Bintbeled, met with the dance director over the weekend. She DOES want the great big dresses! I'm going to add big gores to the sides of our dress pattern to make them bigger. So maybe by the end I'll have a similar photo to share!

Ooh, how exciting! And you'll probably use nicer fabric. The Egyptian ones don't breathe at all and get quite toasty. Can't wait to see how these come out. Please document with pix!

Originally Posted by *Shira*

Although I sent this to you in a PM, I decided to add it to the thread as well, for the benefit of anyone else thinking of making one of these.

My fellahi dress is nowhere near as full as the ones Latifa posted in her troupe photo with the jugs.

I measured this one just above the ruffle and it came out to 106 inches (ie, 53 inches on the front piece, and 53 inches on the back: Belly Dance Costumes | Belly Dance Store.com: gallery

When I dance around in it, I can pick up the hem and swing it around, but there's definitely no excess to spare. I tried playing with the "kobri Banha" section of Mahmoud Reda's "Ahsan Nas" choreography that he taught on his U.S. tour last year. (Ie, the section immediately following the Saidi section.) I was able to do the dress accents as seen on the video, but it felt just a wee bit skimpy for that. If I were going to make one, I'd probably add another 24-36 inches of fullness (ie, an extra 12-18 inches to the front and an additional 12-18 inches to the back).

Let me know if you want me to post a picture of me swinging the ruffle.

Well, Madame Shira knows all, sees all, because that is EXACTLY what I'm making the dresses for!

I was tracing and altering the pattern tonight and estimated that we would add two 24" wide side gores to our existing pattern, which has a bottom circumference of 80". That will give us 128" inches total, which sounds just about right!

(For a funny mental image, imagine me with a four yard veil looped around my ankles and attempting to mock-swing this "hem" back and forth.)

Thanks so much for the measurements. Now I feel firmly in the ballpark. (Also, I feel firmly grateful I bought a ruffler foot for my Janome.)