Jessikah's Bellydance Blog: Transforming an Indian Sari into a Belly Dance Costume

I took a Bollywood fusion workshop with a couple of friends where we learned a dance to the then- super hot song "Jai Ho" by the Pussycat Dolls and A.R. Rahman, and we were going to perform it wearing Bollywood-style costumes, which we all thought were so beautiful. I found a store that sold beautiful saris from India, and bought one in hot pink and orange. After the performance, I decided I could make a better costume though, because it was hard to dance in, and it didn't stay put in a flattering way. It simply wasn't made to move. As much as I liked it, I really struggled to make the original sari work for dance.
It came in a few pieces - a hot pink decorated tank style top, an orange large chiffon circle skirt and a large orange chiffon veil with lots of embellishments. I never wore it as it originally was, because it was not practical to perform in at all, so I wore parts of it. Photo - Left performing Jai Ho at Gitana by James Komen - The top with dance pants by Melodia Designs and a hip wrap - Middle - the sari skirt with a different top & wrap performing, and Right posing after I already made the belt repurposing and up-cycling the "veil" piece in the far right photo.

The hot pink top was a bit big on me, as you can see in the left photo. The circle skirt was really big, and extremely heavy. It had a tendency to fall down as I was dancing.
So to fix this, I took the large, beautifully embellished veil and used the fabric from it to cover a bra (photo below), make a matching belt and finally some matching armbands. I did some of my own beading to add to the look and put that at the center of the bra top, and on three sections of the belt. I had found some matching orange stretch fabric from the clearance rack and that was used to make my very first mermaid-style skirt, using Mao's Sparkly Belly tutorial.

The belt was lined with matching orange cotton underneath the chiffon, and backed with interfacing. Luckily, I just happened to have the center orange appliqué from one of my belly dance shopping trips in the past, which worked perfectly as a lovely accent.

This fabric was also perfect for the armbands, so that they would stay up on my upper arms and not fall down. I had so much leftover orange fabric, I also used it on several other Sparkly Belly sewing tutorials (including the shoulder shrug, tribal overskirt, and cowl neck top), which you can read about in this entry on my blog.