You Might Need Some Body

I still haven't summoned up the balls to tackle the horrific mess that is my sewing room, but I did brave the carnage for long enough to rescue my latest project, the blue baladi dress.

I'd been pondering for a while how I was going to decorate this, as I had a load of turqupise blue satin to play with, and didn't fancy making appliques or cut-outs. Then I was inspired by Shira's glorious burgundy/rose dress, but was a bit stymied by the prospect of trying to sew non-stretch satin onto very, very stretchy velvet.

Clearly the solution was to buy a dress mannequin off eBay for a cost considerably higher than all the costumes I've made so far put together (which admittedly says more about my penchent for recycling and cheapness than the cost of the dummy). I set it up in the living room when it arrived, much to the horror of the dog, who first growled at it, then barked, then tried to pee up it and was summarily ejected into the garden.

I've redraped and ruched the satin since this shot, but it gives some idea of how I wanted to arrange the swirl of fabric. It's actually quite a flattering design for an apple shape like me, as it makes me look like I have a waist (if you look closely you can see how I had to pad the mannequin with a white towel to get it to match my waist measurements!).

The satin is the bottom six inches of a cocktail frock that didn;t fit, and as it was already beaded, has saved me hours of time and effort. I've gathered it up about every seven inches or so, and I'll add some accents of fringe under each gather. The bra is still in progress- I have some of the beaded material left over so I'll gather it in the same way across the top of the cups. I'm not going to go over board with the deco on this outfit as I don't want to swamp it in sparkle. I feel like the material should be the main feature, and any embellishment should just help show it off.