I measure time by remembering how long ago the Corona pandemic hit. Because that was the moment when a lot of my belly dance activities stopped. No performances, no hafla’s and no deadlines to create new belly dance costumes. With the increased the vaccination rate in our country I have some events and performances to look forward too. Time to dive into my closet and get some stuff together!
Instead of creating a completely new costume, I bought some second hand items in need of TLC. Partly because I love the beaded style and look of ‘vintage’ costumes and partly because at this moment I don’t have the time and resources to create a costume from scratch. Today I present to you: the hipscarf with corroded coins.
Triage
This scarf is part of a set with a top and a skirt and the main issue is that the gold coins have tarnished. The beading and fabric is still in excellent shape. As I want to wear this costume for performances and there are no coins on the skirt or top I replaced the coins with large holographic gold sequins. But before I could get started, it was time to deconstruct!
The coins were attached with gold beads, which also lost their shine. I removed the beads and the coins completely from the scarf and started rebeading with large gold rocaille beads and 3 cm big laser sequins.I choose the larger sized beads because I am going for a bigger visual impact, and he larger beads work well with the large sequins. There were also little clusters of fringe scattered over the hip scarf. I took these off for replacement too.
I can’t stress enough how much easier it is to use bigger beads fir these kind of beading. Easier to pick up beads, easier to string and faster to finish. What’s not to love? And doesn’t the new cluster fringe look sparkly?
Rebeading the edge took most of the time, I did this in four one hour sessions to make sure I wasn’t putting too much repetitive strain on my hands.
There was however one more thing. The hipscarf sort of matched the skirt and top, but did not have similar silver beading. So I unpicked the hearts of the flowers and redid them in silver seed beads to make the scarf match the costume. I did not take pictures after adding the silver beading so you’ll have to wait for the pictures of the finished costume 🙂
I am a professional bellydancer, costume-a-holic and dance studio owner living in the Netherlands. My passion is teaching and performing bellydance and I’ve been doing that for almost two decades. I am a teacher at the online Belly Dance Business Academy, where you can find courses and workshops to help you grow your belly dance business. If you like to be kept in the loop, please like Kyria Bellydance on Facebook , subscribe to my Youtube channel, follow me on Twitter or find me on Instagram.
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