I finally bit the bullet and have made a start on new tutus. One of my big dreams is to build a collection of costumes to offer for rent or sale and have real live people rent or buy them. My dreams are big but my budget and wallet are not. Also, very few people "know" my work. Seriously, would you shell out upwards of $500 to a complete stranger to make something for you? No, neither would I.
I am hoping though that a few people might be willing to take a chance of renting something, see the quality of my work and then decide to buy.
Efin, what have I started making?
Over the summer I attended Tutu.com's tutu school and besides working really really hard, I learned to make some beautiful items including Spanish skirts. I also went to a mill store with my mother and found some wonderful black and burgundy fabric which just had that Latin feel to it.
A Spanish skirt takes between 40-42
yards of ruffled lace trim which even at the low price of 50 cents a yard gets pricy. You can imagine how happy I was to find several yards of lovely burgundy lace at a thrift store for next to nothing. All it required was for me to cut it into strips and ruffle it.
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| Strips of lace to be ruffled for trim |
Next I cut out the fabric for the under skirt and the four tiers of ruffles and started ruffling.
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| Underskirt, lace strips and fabric ruffles |
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| Ruffling lace for trim |
After ruffling lace for what seemed like days, I sewed my trim to the fabric layers of the skirt and then went back to ruffling the fabric layers.
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| First ruffled layer sewn onto underskirt |
After each layer was ruffled, it had to be pinned and sewn onto the underskirt. The fabric I used didn't ruffle as tightly as the sparkle organza I had used previously so I spent a lot of time pulling up the gathering threads. Still as each layer was sewn on the skirt began to take on a lovely shape.
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| layer 2 sewn on, half way there |
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| Layer 3, one more layer to go! |
Once I reached the top layer, there was a lot of lace and fabric but the skirts really looked good. After the top layer was sewn on, the basque was attached, then hooks and eyes and voila, a super ruffly Spanish skirt.
The other projects I worked on was a tutu for a competition. I decide to use a stretch satin to make the bodice and basque since i had found 12 yards of it a local thrift store again for next to nothing. The fabric was great to work with (surprisingly easy) but once made I was not happy with how it looked.
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| The Snow Queen (by Hans Christen Anderson ) | costume |
The sheen on the satin made the whole ensemble a little too Halloween costume like. Good news was that the costume was for a Halloween contest but it wasn't what I had originally envisioned. I may some day remake this in a silk chiffon.
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| Kokoshnick style headpiece |
Together with dh, I did make a stunning headpiece. It was done as a Russian kokshnik, with silver mesh, diamante jewels, crystals and some lovely trims. The front diamond was made of a vintage diamante triangle (possibly it was a brooch or a belt buckle).
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| white practice tutu |
The final thing I worked on were three practice tutus, two black and one white. Thanks to all I had learned at tutu school (and the fact that I had surpassed the 90th tutu mark) these went together much, much easier than in the past and the result was even better.
My next project will be to finally take the online craftsy class, the couture dress, I started on this summer and give tutus a rest for a few weeks.
