Making a Bedlah vi

The bra is 90% finished now, so before I completely finish it I'm moving onto the skirt and belt.  The reason I'm not quite finishing the bra is that I may want to change something after I've designed the belt, so it's in my best interests to leave some unfinished ends.  But how I'd change it I do not know!

Anyway, the skirt is a straight skirt with a slightly dipped and flared back hem and slightly raised and definitely split front.  It's white velvet (a teeny bit see-thru much to Manly Jack's disgust!) so I'll need to wear skintone knickers underneath or maybe line it.  I haven't completed the stitching because I'm not entirely sure whether I'll attach the belt to it or have the belt separate. It's a bit more versatile to have a skirt that can be worn alone, but given that I'm putting silver on it, I doubt I'll wear it with much else.  I'm not really a silver girl - gimme gold!!

The belt is shaped, and is constructed fairly lightly because I'm not adding a lot of heavy beading to it.  You'll see the shape below, but what I've done is used a darker grey fabric and layered the sequinned mesh on top.  This is to match the bra, and yes, I'll be adding more silver drape to it!

This shot illustrates the bra front and the skirt and belt - my infamous duct tape dummy! Made with much hilarity by my ever-patient Manly Jack.  He did enjoy the process of layering duct tape and smoothing it across my torso...perhaps a little too much?

Anyway, although it's a bit larger than I am, it works really well when I'm designing 'in the round'.  It means I can adjust fit easily and accommodate my rather sway back and generous hips!

I'm really pleased with the bra, especially now that I've added the front sparkle drape to it.  The belt will have a similar amount of sparklies too, although I'm not yet sure how I'm going to do the drape.  I'd thought the front would be a little wider but when I actually draped it on, if it had been wider I would have looked shorter - and I need no help with that!

You can see the back of the skirt and belt here. 
To construct the belt, I simply draped the fabric around the dummy and pinned it.  Then I drew a line on the fabric to form the shape I wanted, then cut it.  I did pin the fabric to the skirt at side seams, centre back and where the split is slightly to the left in the front. 

Then I unpinned the belt fabric and folded it to make sure it was symmetrical (and by golly it was, I do not know how!), so I cut the first layer out, then a further one to act as the lining, and finally another out of the sequinned fabric to form the top.  Do not cut out sequinned fabric with your GOOD sewing shears - they will be blunted in an instant!  And you'll need to vacuum up all the bits after you've cut that fabric because each time you cut across a sequin the half that's been cut falls off, littering the floor with sparklies.


I then pinned and stitched the belt, leaving one end unstitched and a gap along the bottom big enough to pull the thing through.  In these pictures I haven't yet got around to ironing it, which is my next step - then it will be time to position the silver draping!  Don't hold your breath - it could be a wee while before the silver gets done, but eventually I'll post it on here.