How to Make a Belly Dancer Dress

Clothing, Halloween, Sewing Patterns

Oh, will I ever stop with posting Halloween costume ideas???@!! No. I won’t. I love dressing up for the occasion, i.e. Halloween.

And better still, if you ever are going to take belly dancing classes, you’ll have your costume ready for the first class as this is a pro belly dancing dress.

What You’ll Need
A. 1x the length of your body (shoulders-floor) of stretchy glitter fabric. Or 2x this length if the width of your fabric can not go around your body.
B. Coordinating chiffon for 6 mermaiding inserts (length: 3″ above your knee to floor) Width: 24″ or wider (the wider the more flair on the finished dress)
C. 1 m of 1″ non-roll elastic waistband
D. Thread the color of your dress
E. Safety pins for fitting.

How to make a Belly Dancer Dress

(Womens Halloween costumes)

In this free tutorial you will learn that a belly dancing dress is remarkably simple to make. Essentially, a belly dancer dress is a tube of stretchy fabric with shoulder straps, a few tugs and loads of embellishments at the right places.

And at this point, I have to give credit to the belly dancer featured here, who was kind enough to share her pattern online — Links below.

Step 1: Measure the width of the hip from side to side of the person to will be wearing the Belly dancer costume. The hip is usually the widest part of the body. Add 5 cm or 2-3 inches for hems on either side. Buy enough shiney stretchy fabric that is at least this wide.

Step 2: Before you go to your fabric shop, measure the length of the person from armpit to the floor. Add 8 cm or 3 inches for hems on the top and bottom.You need 2x this length for your dress. You can make the shoulder straps from remnants, or add 2.5 inch to the required length of your fabric to purchase.

Step 3: Cut your dress length including hem twice. Sew the sides of the dress as a tube, with the shiny side on the inside.

Step 4: Cut a 2.5″ of fabric for the shoulder straps. Sew them as one long tube. Measure how long each strap needs to be by measuring from the front of the armpit to the back, going to the shoulder. Allow for a hem. Cut of two strips like this. Turn the tube right side out, and insert elastic band to give the shoulder straps some body and a better hold. This will be more necessary for some fabric than others, but it will be useful for all.

Step 5: Fold a 1 inch top hem of the tube twice, pin and sew it while stretching the fabric. Let whosoever the dress is for put it on. When on, attach the shoulder straps to cover the normal bra straps of the person wearing the dress. First pin, then sew.

Step 6: With the dress on, determine a nice V shape for the dress by pulling the fabric down at the top front till it looks right. Pin it. Then take the dress off, smog it a bit so it looks tidy, and sew the section secure in its place.

Step 7: Add strings of sequences all along the top of the dress along the V-line to make an attractive ‘bra’-section of your dress.

Step 8a: If you have a perfect body, just hem your skirt section and you are done. More details on how to make this belly dancer costume were here at https://www.freewebs.com/sewfordance/glitterdotdress.htm, but as they’re no longer there (2021), read on ….

Designing Flattering Dress Details

Step 8b: If you have a curvy and pear-shaped body (like many of us), you will love the flattering effect of ‘mermaiding’ the skirt-portion of your belly dancer dress.

Mermaiding means placing triangle inserts into your skirt to gives it more body around the knees and lower legs (see picture on the right). A detailed step-by-step tutorial of to mermaid your belly dancing dress was here (https://www.freewebs.com/sewfordance/insertsormermaiding.htm). (Again, sorry pattern no longer there.)

More info on how and why to detail your belly dancing dress to suit your body shape.

Step 9:Do the finishing touches: Wrap a sheer scarf with loads of dangling coins around your hip (as per the ‘Do’ drawing and the lady in the photo).

As well, cut and hem a strip of 2/3-1 yard (50-60 cm) of sheer fabric as a veil to play around with.

Last but not least, a glamorous necklace is a good flattering costume detail as well, as any kind of top shoulder coverage. See the ‘Do’ picture for more ideas.

Great Halloween Costume Design Tips!

Remember that good design is all in the details.
Help from a friend will make fitting a lot easier.
Your costumed Halloween appearance will be even more spectacular if you can do some genuine belly rolls. To learn how to do belly rolls, click here.