Swan lake on Stage

Leila Drake as Odile

Swan lake on stage:

I have to confess that Swan lake is not really my favorite ballet. It can be either overly dramatic or if the principles are not strong Odette can be insipid and Siegfried a bit of a fop. If the corps de ballet is only a bit off, than it just looks bad. If it is done well, it is wonderful but since Swan lake is "the ballet" it often is not. Like Nutcracker, it can be done to death.

Queen mother and Siegfried (Ryan Camou) Swan lake
 (photo credit Johann Studier)

This performance of Swan Lake was done well. The dancers looked fabulous and they moved as one.The two principles Leila Drake and Ryan Camou were wonderful to behold. No insipid or foppish characters here. Leila Drake was a strong, yet vulnerable Odette with flawless technique. Ryan Camou was dashing as Prince Siegfried. His lifts and jumps were effortless. Together Leila and Ryan made their roles come alive and made this performance of Swan lake exciting to watch.
Here are some great photos and a short video clip so that you can judge for yourself. Swan lake dress rehearsal: Little swans on stage

Leila Drake as Odette & Ryan Camou as Siegfried
Swan lake 2012
 (photo credit Johann Sudier)

Leila Drake as Odette & Ryan Camou as Siegfried
Swan lake Act 2
 (photo credit Johann Sudier)

I tried uploading some small video clips of Swan lake on stage but I was unable to do so. Instead I have added a few more photos of Swan lake on stage.

Leila Drake as Odette and Ryan Camou as Siegfried
 Swan lake
 (photo credit Johann Sudier)

 Swan lake Act 2, 18 swans on stage
 (photo credit Johann Sudier)

 Swan lake, Act 4, 20 swan on stage
 (photo credit Johann Sudier)

Leila Drake as Odette, Swan lake
 (photo credit Johann Sudier)

Swan lake, Swans
 (photo credit Johann Studier)

Swan lake: Leila Drake as Odette, Ryan Camou as Siegfried
 (photo credit Johann Studier)

My apologies for the quality of this video clip but this was the only one I could get to work. This was taken during the dress rehearsal of Act 2 of Swan lake. Leila Drake as Odette, Ryan Camou as Siegfried.
There are no photos of Leila as Odile on stage. I have included one here of her in the studio in the costume I created:

Leila Drake of State Street Ballet as Odile

Flower circlets

Flower circlets are a very effective headpiece and relatively easy to make. Variations of these headpieces can be used for Nutcracker's Waltz of the flowers, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty but also for a bride or brides' maids.
How to make these circlets is described in detail in Claudia Folts book Finishing touches, so I cannot "share" those instructions here but I can describe some of how I made the circlets.

Materials for flower circlets

For my project, I choose pale pink silk flowers and leaves, some of which I dyed pale blue and pale lilac with RIT dye, to match the costumes I was making. I also had some artificial spring flowers (apple blossoms) in pale yellow and peach pink, which I used as is.
Most artificial flowers sold at craft stores such as Michaels, A.C. Moore and Jo-Annes are made of a polyester based fabric, which cannot be dyed with RIT or Dylon dyes. Polyester requires a special dye which is more difficult to use for the average non-professional user. You can use Design Master spray paint to color these types of artificial flowers.
I started by making a wire circlet and then covered it with strips of fabric. I used scraps of tulle because tulle does not ravel but ribbon, or bias cut strips of other fabric can be used.

Flower circlets wrapped with tulle and some flowers added

The flowers were sewn to the circlet using some milliners thread and then glued with Fabrictac (tm) glue.

loops for pinning

I also sewed on some millinery elastic loops to the circlets to make it even easier to pin the circlet to the head. The circlets are fairly flexible, so they can be pined without the loops but this way it is easier to do so invisibly.

Completed flower circlet

To finish the circlets and give them some sparkle, I added 4 mm hot fix Swarovski crystals in pastel shades to some of the centers and flower petals.

Odette-Odile headpieces

 Swan lake headpieces: Odette (Swan queen, white swan) and Odile (Black swan)
There are many different styles of headpieces for these two roles. Thanks to the movie  Black Swan,  the only style you can find via Google seems to be copies (both good, bad and ugly) of the ones seen in the movie.
Mine were inspired by Laura Cuthbertsons' Odette headpiece, as seen here:

 and Polina Seminova's Odile headpiece as seen here:

Civil war ball gown

Our homeschool group has held a Civil War ball for a few years now. It is our alternative to a prom. The first year I made E13 a dress using the birdesmaid dress pattern from my wedding dress, the second year E13 made her own dress using a pattern we made from Authentic Victorian Fashion Patterns, by Kristina Harris. This year I designed a new dress for E13. She made her own elliptical hoops using a pattern from Laughing moon Mercantile and I made the bodice, sleeves, and skirt from slopers I made for her.
She had decided she wanted a bodice and skirt (which was more historically accurate) rather than a dress. After having studied many period outfits, with many features she did not like, we came up with her version. The bodice was to have a rounded neckline in front and in the back that was not too low, a small puffed sleeve with a cuff,  a sharp point in front and back, corded edges and a zipper instead of hooks and eyes. The skirt, which had four panels, was to be flat in the front, gathered at the sides, lightly pleated at the back and have a scalloped bottom edge revealing a lighter colored layer. We choose a deep plum colored taffeta (the photograph looks blue but the taffeta is a deep plum purple).
I began by taking E's measurements and drafting a bodice sloper on graph paper. After making the paper sloper, I did a quick "eye-ball" fit and then cut the bodice and one sleeve out of an old sheet.
I used the fabric sloper to make adjustments, mostly adjusting the armcyse for her and adjusting the depth of the neck-line, and then cut out the bodice lining and fabric.

Side view of bodice and small puffed sleeves with cuff

To give the bodice an authentic shape, I added boning channels to the lining which I then flat-lined to the top fabric.  Once the bodice was assembled, I inserted spiral steel bones into the channels and hand stitched the openings shut. The zipper was hand sewn into the bodice.

Back view of bodice with a zipper

 

 

 

 

 

 

Front view of bodice

Front view of bodice and skirt with scalloped edge

side view of bodice and skirt

Next I sewed the four skirt panels together, gather the sides, and sewed the skirt to a narrow waist band. To create the bottom edge of the skirt, I hemmed the skirt, then drew vertical lines on the inside to show where to gather the edge. By hand, I sewed a small line of stitches and gather up the skirt. Next, I sewed a hemmed strip of light purple satin to the bottom of the skirt.
The bodice fit E perfectly and as a whole I think the dress was lovely. I think I would still like to get right of the slight puckering and wrinkling on the bodice. This may be due to the zipper as opposed to hooks and eyes and also because I sewed another lining to cover the inside of the bodice. Still E was the belle of the ball. I added a small flower corsge to her left shoulder but otherwise left her dress plain.

Reverse enginering

Seam lines thread basted on pants

I started taking an online Craftsy class, called Jeanius. If you are not familiar with Craftsy, I can highly recommend them. The classes are very well done, the instructors are knowledgeable, you can get feed-back from the instructor and what is even better you down load the class once and can look at it  when you  are ready. This has been perfect for me because life keeps getting in the way, and I have to put the project on hold to deal with it.
The class Jeanius,  teaches how to do something called "reverse engineer" a pattern from an existing garment. You do not need to take the garment apart (in fact you should not deconstruct the garment).
I'm making two patterns, one for a pair of my husbands favorite pants and one for a friend.
My husband put his knee through his last pair of Fletcher Jones pants. Sadly, Fletcher Jones has gone out of business so we cannot buy any replacements. My friend has some beautiful linen pants she bought in Europe and that too is not practical to replace, so both are perfect candidate for reverse engineering.
 At the start, the whole garment is thread basted, to show the seam lines. Next, the lines are transferred to a piece of silk organza (this is called making a "rub-off") and then a paper pattern can be made.
I have just reached the stage where I can begin to transfer the thread-basted seam lines onto silk organza to make a so-called "rub off".
 I'll keep you posted as this project progresses.

Alterations: Leather coat

Most of my(local) work is doing alterations for people and in the last week or so, I've altered a bridesmaid dress, hemmed dresses, skirts and pants, replaced a zipper (my least favorite job) and reset sleeves on a beautiful hand-made leather coat.

leather coat with reset sleeves

I was pretty nervous about the leather coat, because I had never worked with leather before.
I bought special needles to sew leather and the sales-lady at the local sewing machine store gave me some Teflon (tm) stickers to put under the pressure foot, so that it would glide smoothly over the leather.
Once I've saved up some more money, I am going to buy at least one Teflon pressure foot and maybe a roller foot for sewing leathers, velvet and other heavy, tricky fabric.
The customer who had brought me the coat, had taken it to a tailor but he had not wanted to do the job. It was not difficult, just fiddly. All the seams were top stitched, which required  me to redo them. My greatest concern was that it would show.
Thankfully it turned out very well and the customer was thrilled. That makes a job worth while to me, a happy customer.
Some people would say that doing alterations is boring but you can learn a lot from "deconstructing" garments and then putting them back together again. I think my sewing has gone up a notch and the business is good, steady work.

Chiffon dresses

I am slowly making progress on the chiffon dresses and rainbow colored skirts. What appeared to be relatively easy and straight forward was much more challenging than I thought. Maybe because it is the end of the school year/season, maybe because I simply underestimated the complexity of the task but for some reason progress is painfully slow.

I first made the mistake of miscalculating the amount of fabric needed for the circle skirts. I ended up with 6 half circles instead of 6 circle skirts. Thankfully that problem was easily solved and the skirts only required one fitting. Once the little girls were wearing them, they were so pretty and worth all the effort.

 The dresses turned out to be another matter. I started by pleating the chiffon for the bodice and broke several needles. This should not happen with a light fabric like chiffon but it did. After taking the pleater apart, and adding new needles it did not take long to re-pleat the fabric.

Adding new needles to the smocking

Next I managed to do something to my serger and it made a horrible rattling noise. Again, this is not supposed to happen with a light fabric such as chiffon but after some tinkering the noise went away and so I sewed on.
I decided to use French seams because I thought it would look better and be more durable. French seams do look better on chiffon but they make altering difficult. You also need to take into account that they reduce the size of the garment more than regular seams. I forgot both these things and ended up, unpicking the dresses several times.
I had drawn a new pattern because these dresses were meant for young women rather than children. This meant that the dresses needed some way of opening them, so as to be able to put them on (minor detail). After some fiddling, I worked out a way to open them under the arm, without distorting the lines of the ruching. This meant that I had to back smock (add smocking stitches invisibly to the back of the bodice front and back) all the rows of pleating, which takes a lot of time but in the end I think the result was better.

back of chiffon dress

front of chiffon dress

The final piece of equipment to give out was my ruffler; it just seemed to get stuck. After cleaning and oiling it, the ruffler was back to "normal" and I finally was able to assemble the dresses.

sky blue chiffon dress

lilac chiffon dress with headpiece

The dresses have little flounced sleeves and will be worn over leotards. I will also add some matching flowers to the left shoulder.
Despite all the hassles, I was very happy with the results and the dancers looked beautiful in their flowing dresses.
I think that is the best past of a project: if you can keep going through some (minor) frustrations to see the results at the end. A happy smiling dancer makes it all worth while.

Start of flower circlets

Flower circlet

 Finally I assembled the flower circlets, using directions from Claudia Folts' (Tutu.com) book Finishing touches. I hand dyed some of the silk flowers light blue or lilac to match the dresses, sewed on some little loops so that the circlets could be pinned onto the dancer's hair and added hot-fix Swarovski crystals in colors to match the flowers.