I have reached the point of handing off the troupe dresses for other people to work on. I have no idea how many hours I put into them. I started to keep track on one of the dresses, but then the next afternoon I had a friend over helping and so I was jumping around from dress to dress getting her to do stuff that’s easy to delegate and then coming in for the trickier stuff and so I lost track. But before that point, I had about nine hours into that one dress and it was together except for the bottom ruffle. The bottom ruffle pinning and sewing on is about a 2 -3 hour job. And hemming one dress is an entire evening. Then there was an entire day spent on sewing four veils. Plus numerous fittings and alterations. So even accounting for all the help I got, I’ve probably personally put 60+ hours into these dresses.

Yesterday I was a machine. I shortened the sleeves and body on one dress. I sewed sparkly gold trim around the bottom of all the dresses. And I whipped up a red circle-skirt for the dance friend who gave up most of her last week to help me with the Nubian dresses.

But then, heading to Thursday night practice, with two dresses still needing hemming, all the dresses needing sparkly embellishment and the veils still needing hemming, I brought them all to practice and then sent them home with various people. “Can you hem the veils? You hem your own dress? You take the rest of the dresses and embellish them all.”

Now I have to finish my black Bedlah set. Here is what the bra looks like this morning:

The sides are still in the process of being reinforced. The cups are covered with black fabric. So I need to finish the sides. Cover the whole thing. Add straps.

And then embellish it enough that it looks… finished?

I have four days.

Well, three plus performance day.