Happy New Week! Hivers

Hope you all had a fun weekend, wishing everyone the best this week, and may goals be attained easily.

The weekend was also fun for me as I got another opportunity to style the dance group I'm a part of, consider me as the stylist rather than dancer lol but at least I get to play an important role in the group as styling is a full-time job on it's own.

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I've in the past shared some of the costumes I made for our dance group, sometimes when we get invited to an event the theme of the occasion determines the design and colors of our costumes, other times the celebrant determines our appearance as some occasions need us to cover a lot, but this time, the choice was ours to make as we got invited for a father's day occasion in one of the biggest worship centers in Nigeria when opportunities like this present itself,

we make sure to go all out in our costume design and appearance because this is when we showcase our originality in both our dance and costumes and not what someone decided for us, and as the designer in this group, this decision mostly falls on me, not without inputs from other members though, and this time we came up with something beautiful and exceptional that I'm still not over our appearance also trust us to deliver exceptionally with our presentation.

We already had a blue and golden fabric that we usually drape around our waist, but we needed a different blouse as we also wanted to save the cost of getting another fabric for draping, the blouse idea was supported by every member of the group, to give us that unique look, I suggested a sequin fabric, because of that glittering effect it gives especially when in a low lighted room, I imagined the lights bouncing off the fabric with glitter as we move our body and just like I thought, it delivered excellently.

I used the sequin fabric as the main fabric in making this crop top, while a satin fabric was used as the base/lining as the sequin fabric is made out of tulle and transparent, we decided on a crop top because we wanted to show a little skin around our belly area, it is beautiful watching a dancers belly twist don't you think do as well?

I started by drafting the basic bodice for both front and back which is the same neckline, since I won't be adding a zipper or button, the back neckline has to be low, the same as the front so it can easily pass through the head.

Next, I joined them by the shoulder after turning the raw edge of the neckline and armhole area

Continuing, I joined the sides using the seam allowance given

To hem the blouse, I made a loophole around its hem where I would be passing the string which I made out to the satin fabric, because it's a free blouse, the string will help in tightening the waist area.

And here is the final look of the blouse, it's looking plain here but from my thumbnail, you can see how bold and elegant we adored it with other cultural accessories from our neck and hand beads, the royal blue satin we draped around our waist, which we decided in the last minute as the gold was looking too much plain when we tried using it just like the picture above, so which color would you have preferred for the waist draping, the blue or gold?

Overall, we felt confident in our looks and the audience was happy with our performance.

All images used in this post are mine