My second dress, going solo for the first time.

After I had danced for a year in my Paul Keith solo costume, I decided I needed a new. I had worked on some dresses together with Lynne, who I did the embroidery on the black velvet dress for. We had been making dresses together for dancers in our school. Everytime I was the "embroiderer" and she was the seamstress that put the dresses together and did most of the construction work. So, after she explained to me what a lining was and how to make one, I felt I could now make my own championship solo....Boy, that was a lot more work than I had anticipated! I wanted it all, shaped hemline, shaped pleats, and sewn sequin. At that moment shaped pleats were completely new and mysterious to small time dress-making-hobbyists like me. The fashion trends in fabrics were also rapidly changing!

I was still borrowing the neighbours machine and I would cringe if somebody would do to my machine what I did to hers at the time (of course, she had no idea). Specially the battle of embroidering the shaped hemline and the sewn sequin is still a vivid memory. I cannot remember how many times the thread or the needle have broken during the construction of that dress...
I DO remember the lovely people of Voy's Celtic Flame Dressmakers Board . I would not have been able to make dresses without them. They are a wonderful bunch of dressmakers willing to help and share their knowledge with everyone who needs it.

When the dress was finished it was quite to my satisfaction. More importantly, I was now able to make a dress from start to finish, completely by myself (not counting the many hours spent on Voy and on the phone asking Lynne how to work out that puzzling lining :-)

The dress base is made of a green metallic cotton mixture. The applique is in black chiffon sequin, silver holographic foil, holo dots on black knit, cerise glitterdot and purple sequin on stretch fabric (never, ever get this kind of sequin to put on your dress!!! It is horrible to work with). The lining was a black knit that had green and purplish/cerise metallic effect on it.