My Latin Dress: Colour Schemes

Well I talked about my inspiration in My Latin Dress: Inspiration and the proposed design in My Latin Dress: Design, so now I have to work on the colours I want, and how they work with the fabrics I'm looking for... 

So I spent an awfully long time on different websites and ebay. The main ones I looked at were 
DSI - London a company which sells fabric and accessories as well as making couture dresses (including some which are used on Strictly Come Dancing) and
Chrisanne a similar company selling fabrics and dancewear.

We actually get a discount from DSI as I am a university student, so hopefully that will make anything I find with them a bit more affordable. The prices of the materials from these companies are fairly expensive, but they are extremely good quality, probably worth a bit of investment.


Colour choice:

Well our university team colour is Turquoise, so normally when I look at dancewear I always go for something with a Turquoise colour. But for this fringe dress I decided I didn't want it to be all one colour but instead to have a colour gradient down the dress. 

Which gives me a lot of options... 
Turquoise --> White
Turquoise --> Purple
Turquoise --> Dark blue
Turquoise --> Green
Turquoise --> Pink
and pretty much any other combination you can think of...

So this is the colour range available in the 15cm fringe from DSI

and this is the colour range of 15cm fringe from Chrisanne. (It also includes the metallic fringes)

But I actually fell in love with the Jade fringe colour so went away from it being turquoise at all:

Which unfortunately only comes from Chrisanne. But I did a colour mock up in photo shop to see how the different colours might mesh together...

Settling on the following colours:

Jade - Chrisanne

Amythest - DSI

Purple - DSI

So the dress should hopefully look something like this:

I looked to see if I could find a leotard in the jade colour but I decided the likelyhood of actually managing to get one in a design I liked and matching the colour perfectly wasn't very high. So instead I would go for a nude leotard base, since none of the colours will clash with that. 

Actually finding the leotard was an effort in itself. I tried a number of different dance websites but actually settled for a leotard from American Apparel as it had the halterneck and low back that I was looking for.

Now to wait for the supplies to arrive and then hopefully I can get stuck into making the dress! =)

Nikki

My Latin Dress: Design

Following on from my previous post Latin Dress: Inspiration I sat down and drew up a design for what I wanted my Latin dress to look like, what materials I might use and any additional features it might have.

Since this is my first dancing dress I want it to be fairly simple and straightforward so there aren't lots of crazy pattern pieces and fiddly stitches. In general there aren't many patterns out there for dancesport dresses (made with stretchy materials and with lots of embellishment) so it's going to be a dress without a pattern.

I took a lot of inspiration from this dress:

I decided to make it a fringe dress, because that should be significantly simpler than having a skirt to sew and attach. 

Well you can't see the image hugely well. But it's an asymmetric fringe design on top of a halterneck leotard. (using 15cm fringe layers)

It should have a low back, with the line of the fringe following the curve round to the back of the leotard. 

On the front it will have stone/applique detail on the non fringed section and stoning detail on the fringes and possibly under the fringe as well.

If I manage to find a pre-made leotard with the shaping that I want hopefully it will mean that there is only a minimal amount of sewing to do. 

Other things I will need to add are:

elastic straps across the back

sew in cups (as I won't be able to wear a bra)

possibly put clasps in the neck

Well now to go and look and colours and see if I can find all the items I need without breaking the bank... Exciting!


Nikki

My Latin Dress: Inspiration

So I compete in Ballroom and Latin dancing with my university and in the competitions people wear some of the most amazing sparkly, fringed, sequinned outfits and with my love for these outfits and for sewing I've been wanting to make a dress for ages! So I finally decided I would just go ahead and do it, starting with a latin dress, because to be honest it's just far simpler. 

In this post I'm going to go through some of the dress and styles that I looked at to get my inspiration. A series of posts should hopefully follow this showing the design and making of my dress all the way through to a lovely competition dress *fingers crossed*

 I love love love this dress with it's cut away sections and of course the colours of it and I think fringe dresses are really pretty and move well on the dance floor, however I hate to think how many stones there are on that top section and how long it took to put them all on there...

This has such great appliqué and stoning work. The contrasting colours really make it stand out. 

I really like the colouring and shape of this dress, but I think it might be a little too short, and that's definitely saying something in the world of ballroom dancing...

I would love it if I could make something like this with all its cut out sections, but for my first dress I think it might be a little too complex. Maybe another time.

Although I'm not a huge fan of the colour (that's easily changed) this draped style of dress would be lovely for Rumba. Not so great for Jive maybe...

A full bodied skirt with binding to make it stand out in a curved shape. I really like these skirts, although I have absolutely no idea how it would all be put together, it look pretty complex. 











Well that's a brief look at some of the different types of latin dresses. Now time to go away to my sketchpad and draw (badly) some ideas of what I want my dress to look like.


Nikki

The trials and tribulations of florentines

So I may have made a promise to a friend that I would bake him something to send him on his return for a crazy cycling trip... (and by crazy I mean cycling 900miles through 8 different countries in 8 days)

Since I was working from home yesterday (trip to the dentists – so not so fun) I decided it was probably the best evening to do some baking. I had quite a tough time deciding what I wanted to make though, because it needed to be post friendly. But I eventually decided on Ginger Florentines and some Coconut slice.

Unfortunately I didn't really have a chance to take any photos since I was quite pushed for time as it was. Feeling quite zombie-like from the lack of sleep today.

But my work paid off and they taste really good =) which I'm glad about and the coconut slice was fairly straight forward to make. The Florentines on the other hand...

I can never seem to get the Florentines to come off of the baking tray easily. If I use greaseproof paper it sticks to the paper and I have to wrestle with it to get the paper off, usually ripping the paper and breaking the Florentines. If I do them straight on to a baking tray they never seem to come off.

I remember a batch I made before where I ended up having to freeze them and then chip them off the baking tray after a while. Not a great success.

This time I tried shovelling (i think that is probably an appropriate word) them off the greaseproof paper as soon as they came out of the oven and putting them on a plate (after reshaping). This was reasonably successful, but as soon as they cooled down even a bit they just stuck to the paper and would not let go!

Has anyone else got a special technique for making Florentines? I was thinking I might have to try using a silicon baking sheet instead, but I didn't have one available.

The coconut slice in comparison was an absolute dream to make, although I did have to sacrifice one square to make it easier to cut all the others out. Oh what a shame...I just had to eat that one...

Nikki

Numbness

I am currently battling with dentist induced numbness which has rendered the majority of my top lip useless, having had fillings done on teeth on both side of the top of my mouth in one sitting...

I have feeling back in my nose but at one point that had gone too. Annoying but notched worse I have ever had, when the temporary fillings was done before my root canal I was numb all the way up to my ear!

In other slightly better news, a last minute shopping trip for the little things I need for my trip and I came away from boots with this gem:

A bobble bottle with inbuilt water filter, 

Which is a bottle that filters the water as you drink it which could prove to be a genius invention if it can reduce the chloriney taste of water in Southampton. Some times when running a bath or having a shower it seems like you are at a swimming pool.
And also when on the boat the water that we drink is often made on board through reverse osmosis from sea water and has it's own special taste so this could help to reduce that, although I don't mind it too much there are people on board who can't stand the taste.

I hope to be able to tell you how well it is working soon.

Relaxing Weekend

This weekend is going to be my last relaxing weekend before I join the Pelican which means that it is very likely to be the last relaxing weekend before Christmas... When on ship weekends dont really have much of a bearing on the daily routine, the ship still has to be sailed 24hours a day regardless of what common practice says about certain days being traditionally classed as days off.

So what did we do this weekend? We took the train over to Poole and went to see our grandparents and have a mini Christmas celebration for me as I am unlikely to be in the UK for Christmas this year, which in itself will be a first for me.
It was really nice to see our grandparents, who we don't see as regularly as we should, despite living quite close to them it is roughly a 2 hour journey by public transport to see them, and now that Nikki is working in slough it is hard to find time to see them. It is traditional that we see them at Christmas spending a few days down there with my mums sisters family coming over for one day, either Christmas day or Boxing day, depending on their commitments.
It is also traditional that Nikki and I cook the Christmas meal, and this year will be the first year she will have to do it with out me. So good luck to her :D Although all the timetables for preparation and cooking times are kept from year to year and so are almost calculated already.


When we headed home and got off the bus outside Poole train station we had a few minutes to spare and a gorgeous sunset, so the only thing to do was take some pictures...

Up till Christmas

Wow how time is flying, only just over a week left to go and I really am not ready yet, so much packing still left to do... Here is a short run down of the first two legs of my voyage which will take me up to Christmas. 

When I join the Pelican in Las Palmas I will be sailing to Salvador in Brazil, this is predicted to take 29 days, in most of that time I am not likely to be seeing land. The only land I am likely to see is Las Palmas, Salvador and possibly the Cape Verde Islands, which I am really looking forward to as I have never been there before, having just missed out on going there in my transatlantic in 2007. 


I am also looking forward to spending that much time at sea out of sight of land and out of communication and having a good time decompressing and away from the internet based stimulations from Pinterest and the many blogs I follow.

After I leave Salvador I am then sailing to Punta Arenas in Chile, which is one of the only bits of Chile which is accessable from the Atlantic Ocean meaning that we don't have to go around Cape Horn to get to Chile, which makes the voyage a bit easier as this is a notoriously hard bit of sailing to undertake. This leg of the voyage is suposed to take 37 days to complete and is the longest of the 7 legs that make up the sail training legs of the trip. The only leg not incuded in this is the expedition leg which sails from Punta Arenas to Rio and includes the time spent as a support vessel for the reenactment of Shackleton's lifeboat mission from Elephant Island to South Georgia.

The first two legs on my trip take me on a long journey through the majority of the Atlantic Ocean, which is going to be such an amazing experience, not least since is means that a) I will be crossing the equator for the first time by boat but also b) that I will have sailed the majority of both North and South Atlantic latitudes, having sailed from the UK to the canaries during my previous transatlantic crossing.

All this time at sea is the reason I have decided to take up crochet again, and also have laid the foundation for a journal/art journal and am loading as many books onto my Tablet as possible.

Do you have any must read books, or music that I should be taking with me? Free/cheap if possible...