After consoling with Carisa, the primary costume fabricator of the dance department, we began planning out the skeletal structure of our skirt. We decided to use an elastic waist band, and suspend plastic tubing with fishing wire.

Time to shop for materials! We headed to Jo-Ann’s to pick out some fabric. We knew that we wanted something sheer like chiffon to lay over the EL wire; however, we were unsure about color.

We found a row filled with different colored chiffon. To test, we held up the colors to Noemi (which was also helpful to get a rough estimate as to how many yards of the material we should get).

We ultimately settled on these two bolts of chiffon in different shades of blue. We really liked the effect they had when laid over each other.

We got some plastic tubing from Lowe’s for the skeleton of the garment. Tiffany already had some fishing wire at home!

We met again at my apartment to being the construction of the skirt! First, we decided to test the overall shape by creating the skeleton support. We curved the plastic tubing into a loop for the bottom of the skirt, and suspended it with fishing wire to an elastic waist band. Tiffany also had some fishing line weights, that we used at the bottom of the skirt to help keep it’s shape (it originally kept wanting to fold up on itself). Noemi moved around in it a bit, and liked the movement it provided.

We decided to measure out the other tiers of the skirt.

First layer done! We basically folded over the fabric on both sides to create a little pocket for both the elastic band and the tubing. Unfortunately, I did not allow enough seam allowance, so this ended up being shorter than we wanted. But that was okay! This would become the shorter tier, and now we know better for the next one.

Second tier completed the next day!

Now time to assemble the piece together.

And add lights! Tiffany, Janelle, and Noemi worked on laying out the lights in an organic pattern.

They tacked on some stitches to maintain the desired curves.