Father/Daughter Ball

The theme for this year’s Father/Daughter Ball was “Disco.” When I think of disco, I think of Saturday Night Fever and the dresses Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) wore. I think there were two of them – one pale pink, and the other red – and they both had a wide ruffle at the top with one shoulder bared.

When I did a Google search for “disco dresses” I got a lot of 60s dresses come up in my search. They were mostly short, mostly shapeless, and a lot of them had long sleeves that widened considerable at the elbow. There were also a considerable number of pantsuits and jumpsuits, very tight fitting, which not only flared out at the elbow, but at the knee as well.

Didn’t exactly scream ball gown to me. Disco party, maybe. But not a formal affair. However, this was the picture I was sent to create this year’s dress. The only other input I got was that the granddaughter liked sequins, it should be blue, and maybe have more of the underskirt showing.

I found some stretchy, sequin encrusted material in blue, and some navy satin to line it with. Later, when I was looking for the netting for the underskirt, I found some rainbow coloured chiffon that I knew the granddaughter would love, so I got some of it too. Apparently I forgot how much I hated working with chiffon. You’d think after last year’s dress it would be engraved on my brain.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time researching how to work with sequin encrusted material, and the best advice I came across was to use a leather needle on it. I had to come up with my own pattern, and the granddaughter was very patient with me as I used her as kind of a living dressmaker’s dummy. LOL First I fitted tissue paper to her to make a pattern, then I did a mock up of the top part of the dress to make sure it was going to fit.

I still didn’t like the idea of a short dress for a ball, but it was disco after all. We decided to make the asymmetrical top shorter, to show more of the skirt. I made the top part with the sequins as a separate thing, and attached the skirt inside at the waist.

Well . . . when I tried the finished bodice on the granddaughter, it fit great, with room to spare. But the skirt . . . oh, man, the skirt was one of the worst sewing disasters in history. To make it more flared at the bottom and less bunchy at the waist, I decided to make the skirt circular. I should have known better.

Hemming chiffon is a pain at the best of times. This was a very lightweight chiffon, and it was in two circles joined together. It was so thin you could easily read through it. So what colour thread would you use on rainbow chiffon? I settled on a turquoise, very close to one of the colours in the print. And if I hated the way the seams showed through, I absolutely loathed the way the hem turned out. Worst. Hem job. Ever! But there was really no other way to do it.

Finally, I sewed the skirt to the bodice, and made the sash to go around the waist. The dress was done.

It didn’t look awful . . . while on the hanger. But when I took it over for the granddaughter to try on, the added bulk from the skirt made the whole thing bunch at the waist, plus unless we could find some kind of matching hot pants for her, the skirt needed to be lined – which would add more bulk.

I have never been so disappointed in a sewing project in my life. And I was very happy I finished the dress a couple of days early in case adjustments needed to be made. Thank God for Amazon Prime. The daughter whipped out her phone and started looking, and found a beautiful dress, which I happily paid for. It’s not exactly disco themed, but it is a sparkly ball gown.

Looking back, I think where I went wrong started with the sequin material I bought. After studying the original picture more carefully, it appears the sequins are embedded on netting, which is lined. And the bodice and skirt are two pieces, not one, with the skirt gathered at the waist. Had I found the proper material, and maybe lengthened the underskirt instead of shortening the bodice, things might have turned out differently. I guess we’ll never know.

But when all is said and done, I actually enjoy the challenge of creating a dress with nothing to go on but a picture. I used to do that with the granddaughter’s Christmas dresses. And while I’m bummed that I failed to meet this year’s challenge, I can’t wait to see what next year’s will be.

Hopefully it’ll be a better theme than this year, because everyone knows, disco sucks!