Is there anything cuter than a class full of tiny ballerinas? Probably not! My girls have been doing dance since age 18 months and 2 years, respectively.
After getting my bearings as a “dance mom”, we moved to a Studio better suited to developing young dancers (less baby ballet classes between booty-shaking classes for teens). It’s not a full-blown classical ballet school, although they do include many classic teaching traditions including dance cover-ups. Go ahead, Google & Easy-Search “Dance Cover-Up”. Nothing but crickets.
So what’s a mom to do? Most wear dresses as cover-ups. In the winter, jackets count. Of course, my little spoiled princesses demanded specific “Dance Cover-Ups”. I found it a perfect chance to use some of my fabric horde. I used the Simplicity 1380 sewing pattern which includes a cover-up along with swim suits & accessories, even matching ones for dolls. I just needed the cover-up pattern, but am saving the rest for future projects (it’s currently loaned out to my mother who has something in mind!).
The girls picked from my yard-ish stacks of fun fabric and I added a soft liner left over from when I tried making cloth diapers (not worth the trouble to make IMHO, by the way, hence the large amount of left-overs). I had some left over bias tape as well that I used instead of making my own from the pattern. I made them a size too big so we can get a couple years use out of them, and used fun buttons (with slightly over-sized holes for young hands) instead of the tie so they can manage them by themselves.
Of course, being me, I also opted to embroider their names onto the front (before sewing together since I’m a stickler for things like that). You’ll notice that only one has trim on the sleeves which is entirely because I didn’t have enough. She doesn’t mind at all.
Her dance teacher loves them. The dance moms love them. Now everybody wants them. Ahhh, if only there were 1000 hours in my day, it would be dance cover-ups for everyone!