Your final step to fully becoming a hummingbird is to decorate your bodice. By now, you should have a stretchy top that matches the base color of your wings (the color that people will see on the other side of the feathered side). Decorating the bodice is frosting on the cake - don’t stress if you can’t get to it! But if you have the time, there are a couple of options:

  • Look at photos of hummingbirds for inspiration. How do their necks contrast or match their wings and tails?

  • Feel free to raid the “Amira’s Belly Dancers” fabric boxes in our Music & Dance room at the Armory

  • One option is to sew or glue “feathers” to the front of your shirt and neckline

  • For the prototype example at the Armory, I took the bottom of a red velvet dress and sewed it to the neckline of the shirt to create a cowl neck, then glued on “feathers”

  • Clever Melissa in the photo below attached feathers to one of the collars that she cut off of a shirt to make a feather “bib” - nice job, Melissa!

  • Another innovator, our dancer Ingal, glued feathers to a dickey. Yes, a dickey! So awesome, Ingal! Check out the photos below (blue feathers).

I’ll post more photos here as they come in. Happy creating!