New Nutcracker costumes

 Two years ago now, Scott Dolphin (scottdolphinstudio.com) and I started the difficult process of making new Nutcracker costumes. Since Nutcracker is the money maker for any ballet company, the costumes for it need to be beautiful and in good shape.
After more than 25 years of hard wearing, ours were well past needing to be replaced.

 Old Waltz of the flowers costumes

Scott made new designs for the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Waltz demi-soloists costumes that were style updates of the original costumes.
 I made new tutus for the Waltz corps de ballet, Waltz demi-Soloists, Dew Drop fairy, and the Sugar Plum fairy.
The artistic director wanted copies of the original costumes not new costumes which meant that I had to find tutu net in the same colors. I took the original tutus to the store and tried to find matching colors but had little luck.

Old Dew drop bodice, Old Sugar Plum, Old Waltz demi-solist costumes

As I have mentioned previously, there is a fashion in colors and after 25+ years, the colors that these tutus were made of were no longer available. It did not help that the tutus had also faded significantly and so the colors were no longer true. I found out after I made the tutus that the original corps de ballet tutus were red and gold (not rose pink, orange and peach as I thought), the demi-soloists were olive green and teal (not lime green and grey blue), Dew drop was white and silver (not ivory and grey) and Sugar Plum was white with almost bubble gum pink layers and pants.
The Dew Drop fairy was easy as white and white sparkle tutu net is widely available. The pink tutu net for Sugar plum was also not a problem. Scott choose a lovely dusty rose velvet for Sugar plum's new bodice and basque. He also designed the new demi-soloists to be up-side down bachelor buttons in shades of Celedon green, light sapphire blue, Williamsburg blue and gold.
Scott and I tried contacting every supplier of tutu net we could find but were unable to find the colors we (thought) we wanted, when we wanted it. Standard tutu net comes in a fairly limited range of colors: white, ivory, rose pink, hunter green, black etc. Everything is possible with enough time and money (i.e. special ordering and special manufacturing) but our budget did not run to that. The solution was to use tulle for some of the layers, as it was readily available in more suitable colors and hand dyeing lots of white netting. The only orange I had been able to find was extremely bright Halloween orange, which was not what was needed.

Hand dyeing netting for waltz corp tutus

Scott was an expert at dying fabrics and had dyed the tutu pants for me. I on the other hand had never dyed anything. At that point we were faced with an emergency because it was less than a month to the performance, I had six half made corps tutus, no light gold tutu net and Scott was busy making other costumes.
"How hard could it be"? were my famous last words.
Well I soon found out. A few tips to the novel, tutu net dyer:
1) Go to the RIT  site and read all the instructions, many times, write them down carefully before starting
2) Do your dying during day-light, not starting at say 9 p.m. after your children have gone to bed
3) Always do several test strips to make sure you get the color you want, not what you think it is on the screen.
4) When washing the netting after dying, use even less soap then you think you need.

I started the process of dying, eleven yards of tutu net (cut into strips), at around 10 p.m. By the time I had heated up the dye, dyed the net, washed it out in copious amounts of water to remove the unused dye and put it into my washing machine to wash it was late, very late (or early as it was way after midnight). I knew from washing out the old tutus in my bathtub, that a little soap made a lot of bubbles. Eleven yards of tutu net, even with 1 teaspoon of Woolite makes a lot of bubbles when agitated in a washing machine. I watched in horror as the little window on my front-loading washing machine filled up with bubbles and then slowly orange foam started to erupt from the washing machine hose as the rinse cycle started! Not what you want at 2 a.m. believe me.

I ran the rinse cycle a second time and that took care of the problem. I then had to hang the net up to dry as it could not go in the dryer. In the end the color was a perfect match to the corp de ballet tutu if not the original. I felt a bit like a crazy Rapunzel with all that orange netting.

Eleven yards of hand dyed tutu net, and the old Waltz tutus

After that is was a matter of pleating and sewing like crazy to get the tutus finished.  My assistant Carrie and I sewed as if we were possessed and sewed the last ruffle on the day before the dress rehearsal. The day before the performance, I was still steaming and tacking the corps tutus, Scott was finishing the demi-soloists and Sugar Plum and we were both a bit insane at that point.

New Waltz corp de ballet tutu

Waltz demi-soloist tutu

 New Sugar Plum tutu before tacking

Here is what the costumes looked like upon completion.

New Waltz Demi-solist costume, designed by Scott Dolphin, tutu by Hilary Sharp

New Sugar Plum tutu, designed by Scott Dolphin

 New Sugar Plum Bodice, design Scott Dolphin

Last year I  made a new maid's dress and a second Sugar plum costume

Second Sugar plum bodice, plate and tutu by Hilary Sharp

and an exact copy of the Marzipan girl's costume (see below). The original costume was too fragile to be altered any more. The original costume was made of a lilac taffeta and a light two tone teal fabric (possibly a sateen ) and had a Schifli lace overlay.

 Bodice of original Marzipan

Many years ago, when the original costume had been made, Schifili laces were still manufactured in New Jersey and other mills in the United States. All have gone out of business. Schifli laces are now only made in Switzerland, India and China and are very expensive,  starting at $150/yd. I was extremely lucky to find some affordable lace at Lacemart. The lady who runs this store, collects laces mostly bought from the New Jersey factories when they went out of business.
At this point I was a pro at dying fabric, but it still took me about six hours of making test strips, and then dying the actual fabric to get the right shade of teal. The result was very convincing and it fit the dancer perfectly.The original costume had been made for a much smaller dancer and so was much too short in the bodice and skirt for the other dancer.  Dancing is hard on costumes and this costume had been in constant use for over 15 years being let out and taken in for many dancers. Having a second costume in a different size, is always helpful.
Initially there was a plan to update the Waltz corps de ballet bodices but this had to be put off due to time and budget constraints. To see what the costumes looked like go to  Nutcracker on stage

 New Marzipan dress

Original Marzipan dress