Problem solved ....more or less...

 But it took a couple of tries.

After the first dress rehearsal, the costume comments were that the floof on the red drapey thing (which our dancer referred to as 'the affliction') was a little too much and needed to be toned down.  And the magnets just didn't hold it toghether well enough; she actually had to try and keep it hung up in the skirts as she danced.

So, on Thursday, I  worked part of the day and then clocked out and went back to the sewing room looked it over.  I took off all of the pieces that weren't actually sewn down, moved them around and actually left one off.   The result was something that had longer, less floofy loops; notably, the bulky bit in the front was now gone.  Good enough.   My sewing cohort Miss K. brought me some larger, stronger magnets and I switched them out.  These were STRONG...'get the ends within a half inch of each other and they jumped together with a click' strong.

Thursday night's dress rehearsal ran through the presentation twice.  The first time, the magnets were too strong and 'the affliction' didn't even come off at all.  Before the second run through, I recommended that the magnets be hooked together  on the opposite side...the one that had all the turned back fabric, so they were connecting through (she counts) 10 layers of fabric instead of two. The bond there was not as strong, so that should work.

And it did...but somehow, in the movements of dance and dramatic crawling, she managed to actually step into one of the longer loops, despite it being on top of the underskirt.  Which meant it caught on her leg, nearly tripped her and had to be pulled off to finish the dance.

So...I tied a couple of knots in that puppy on Friday.  More than one way to shorten a loop...

We were going into the Friday night service without that contraption actually working correctly once yet. My townsperson character wasn't just jockeying for a place to see what Jesus was doing...I was actually trying to see...praying...that it would work.

It did.

Afterwards, several folks told me that that moment brought tears.

Whew.

I took a couple of  pictures backstage so you can see the costume:

Here's our dancer (an official church photo), before the affliction is removed. You can just see glimpses of it through the layers.

And just before we started tonight, she showed me that the shoulder seam on the brown over tunic was starting to come unstitched.   So I have a wee bit of mending to do tomorrow.  Probably will just needle-and-thread it.

Two services tomorrow...and then it's all done but the laundry.  And the data entry.

Just for grins...I made My Sweet Babboo wait to change after last night's service so we could get a picture.  Our costumes are OLD...but so are we, lol.