Zero to Hero

A few weeks ago my neighbors approached me about a dance costume for their daughter. She had a recital coming up but they couldn’t seem to find a military-themed costume for her to wear and definitely couldn't find anything that would come in in time for it. So they asked me if I could make her a costume to wear for it. Because of how complicated fitting knits can be (especially dance costumes much less kids to boot), I asked them if they could find a plain black leotard in the style they liked and wanted, then I would decorate it to look like the dance costume they wanted and needed.

These are the photos they showed me of the costume they wanted… Needless to say I had a bit of work ahead of me!

While they ordered and waited on the leotard, I ended up at Joann’s (shocker) to look for the materials I needed: silver holographic fabric, silver buttons, a silver chain (picked up from the jewelry section), and some black and silver fringe.

While we waited for it to come in, I doubled up the fringe and sewed it to give it more coverage. The second they told me the leotard arrived, I ran over to pin where the buttons and trim would go before coming home and getting to work.

I started off by cutting out and sewing together some silver cuffs since they were so simple. Next up was sewing the fringe along the sleeve seams which really made the costume take shape. I grabbed my buttonhole marking tool and drew the lines where each button would go before sitting down to sew each of the 6 on. As soon as those were set I made the belt by serging it up and adding little loops to hold the chain around the hips.

Naturally I saved what would be the difficult part for last - The Epaulettes. For those, I cut out rectangles of the fabric that would be sure to cover over the entire shoulder as I needed plus some extra to play with. Once I laid everything out and could see where my “epaulet” would have to cover, I kept it on top of the leotard and cut out the shapes, following the curve of the neck and leaving about 1/4” of excess around that I could tuck under as a seam allowance. Then it was just a matter of topstitching around 1/8” away from the folded edge. I was shocked by how simple they were once I had figured out the piece shape and I can truly say they completely pulled the outfit together!

Then, of course, what are these days for if not for wearing masks?! I had a bit of fringe left over so I decided to surprise them with a matching mask! I made one of the simple styles I’ve been making in all black and sewed the top edge of the fringe along the top of the mask!

We’re all sooo happy with how it turned out! You’d almost never know it was originally just a plain black leotard…