Appliqués from Sparkly Belly

I was fortunate enough to be a part of Mao's Sparkly Belly appliqué project for dance teachers, where she mailed teachers her DIY Appliqué kits for free, with the hope that they be sewn and completed with the teacher and their students at a "sewcial," and then posted on social media.  I had done a similar sewcial (without any materials from Mao, but using her tutorial), with my West Covina class previously, to make her 3 panel mermaid skirts (read my blog post here for the mermaid skirt sewcial).

This project was more of a challenge than the mermaid skirts.  It was to be completed within two months, and the ultimate goal is to get the appliqués on actual costumes that we create for our troupe.  I began by starting an appliqué by myself to see how it worked, knowing that time is our most valuable asset and people are busy.  I have never actually beaded anything before, so this was a new challenge for me.  My Mom is a sewer and a beader so I enlisted her help initially to guide me with the beading.  Together we did a large and small appliqué prior to working with the group.  Once I got the hang of how to do the stitches, it went smoothly and easily.  I have to balance my time being a mom, teaching classes and working on this project so that was my challenge, fitting in the time to sew.  Mao sent us the teardrop style in purple.  Everything we needed was included in the kit.  The only thing I used that was mine was scissors.

I scheduled the sewcial to take place after one of my dance classes on the weekend.  I had three of my dancers join me for the first sewcial, all non-sewers.

Mao's instructions were very good, well thought out and clear.  The biggest hurdle was time, and the initial learning curve, because none of us were experienced in beading.  After meeting with my dancers and having our first sewcial, we realized that we needed to do several of these "workshops" because of the detail in the appliqués, and because we wanted to make our own costuming to utilize the appliqués.

The appliqués look very professional and definitely add a nice finishing touch to costuming.

Our plan was to create the Sparkly Belly 10 minute DIY wrap skirts with ruffles and matching sleeveless choli tops and place the appliqués on them.  We have two guys in our group so we also are going to do the harem pants tutorial.

After finishing our appliqués, we agreed to meet again and work on the costuming tutorials to put our appliqués on the following week.  Stay tuned for my next blog post, hopefully we will have the costumes done with our beautiful appliqués!


Thank you to Mao for sending the beautiful appliqué kits for myself and my students, we had a great time sewing together and learning!  Visit Sparkly Belly to learn more about Mao's wonderful costuming tutorials and to get your own DIY appliqué kits to make your costuming look amazing! 

 You can find info on my troupes at my website.