Sunday 21 February 2016

The Jazz Diva Dress


It's not often that I get the chance to wear a long evening gown so when the opportunity arose, I simply had to take it. We were playing for the first time at the Ellington Jazz Club and it was our CD launch for the gypsy jazz band I sing with, Voudou Zazou. It was a pretty special event for us so I decided to go all jazz diva and sew up a long sparkly gown for the occasion


The fabric I used was a black sparkly velvet which looks particularly good under lights (I had some leftover from another stage outfit that I made some years ago). I wanted the dress to be fairly understated but let the fabric and the side split be the feature and Vogue 8357 seemed like the perfect pattern choice.

Silver Frog Bling
It was dead easy to lengthen the dress and insert a split at the front side panel seam. Overall it's a pretty straight forward pattern to sew but the shoulder straps are a bit fiddly and seemed to take longer than it should have. Also velvet is not really the most sensible fabric to be sewing with in the middle of summer.


I was a bit concerned that I'd be sweltering on stage in this dress, but figured I'd be in an air conditioned venue and it would be fine. Well, we just happened to have a heat wave that week-end, it was near 40 degrees and the venue's air con packed it in. It turned out to be one of the hottest gigs I've ever done, but the dress looked fabulous and the show sold out so it was all worth it in the end!


And here's the dress in action - not the best shot but you get the idea:



10 comments:

  1. Ooh lovely! I can imagine it looked wonderful in person under the lights. Xx

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    1. Thanks Ree. Yeah, it's great fabric for stage, it's not so easy to capture that in photos though.

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  2. Sorry you were so hot, but this looks wonderful. Well done. Great choice of fabric.

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    1. Thanks Louise! In the end it was so hot that it probably didn't make much difference what I was wearing. Very pleased with how the dress turned out.

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  3. Congrats on the dress - it's another beauty. And congrats on the CD!

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  4. Your dress is gorgeous! I love the embroidery knot frog.

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    1. Thanks Lynne! Yes, it needed an extra bit of glitz and the frog did the job perfectly.

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  5. Very beautiful! The frog closure at the top of the split is a great touch. I cannot imagine how warm you must have been on stage; stage lights are hot enough as it is, let alone during a heatwave with no A/C! You should have gone full Diva and demanded that someone fan you during the show, haha!

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    1. Thank you! Funnily enough we actually had a dancer with us for a few songs and she was using feather fans - it would've been perfect! :)

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