How to Make Appliques for Belly Dance Costumes – 3 Ways

Appliques are usually pieces of ornamented fabric that you can attach to your clothes, bags etc. For belly dance costumes, beaded appliques are used often, and placing a few appliques on the costume bra and belt or skirt gives the whole costume a uniform and balanced look.

This video was inspired by a long thread about how to make appliques on the belly dance forum Bhuz, and it was specifically about what to use as a base for making appliques. I had the same question before, and I thought to share what I learned and decided to use in my applique making. 🙂

So in this video, you will see 3 ways of making beaded appliques for your belly dance costume.

Click here to download the flower applique pattern mentioned in the video 🙂

1. Bead on costume directly

This is not exactly how to make an applique, but what I noticed is that often costume designers draw patterns on the fabric directly and do beading work right on the fabric.  

To do this yourself, take a fabric marker and draw or trace patterns or shapes you want on costume. Then bead on them directly.  

2. Make an applique out of felt

Often, pre-made appliques are made on mesh type of fabric, because it is easy to blend with fabric that the appliques are attached onto. But mesh is very soft and flimsy.  

If you are making appliques for your costumes yourself, try using felt as a base. Felt is a lot thicker, so it is sturdier and I find it a lot easier to work with.  

 Try to match the colour of the felt with the fabric it gets attached onto. Draw a shape you like or trace a pattern like this on a piece of felt. If you want this flower pattern, sign up for my newsletter and get the download link from this link below.  

Click here to download the flower applique pattern!

Cut the pattern, and bead on the piece of felt. Trim the excess, if necessary, and attach it to your costume.

To make it seamless, you can attach the applique to your costume, then do beading in a twist line around the applique.

3. Make an applique out of lace

Lace often comes with beautiful patterns on it already. Find lace with designs that you like. Bead on the design as you like.

For this one, I just placed a stone in the middle and followed the flower petals with beads and sequins. Cut out the beaded applique and attach it to your costume. When you cut, be mindful of the beading stitches, you don’t want cut them by accident!

Need an inspiration for applique design? I often find nice pattern ideas from embroidery or crochet work. Search “embroidery design” or “crochet design” and you will find interesting patterns that you can recreate with beads and sequins.  

Hope this video was useful, and if you make your own appliques, please share a photo on Sparkly Belly’s Facebook page.

Next week, I will do my first skirt tutorial! If you don’t want to miss out, sign up below for my newsletter and get the free flower pattern.

Click here to download the flower applique pattern!

Thanks for reading, and keep sparkling!

P.S. For your pinning pleasure… 😉

Want to make more costuming bits yourself?

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