Nutcracker Headpieces

At this time of year, Nutcracker is just the thing. There are lots of post and ideas out there for tutus and costumes but maybe not so much for headpieces and certainly not for certain roles. If you were to search for it you can find endless Sugar Plum's, Snow queens and probably Arabian but how often have you seen a headpiece for the Dew Drop fairy, Chinese, the Merlitons or the party guests?
Several years ago I made a series of little hats for the party guests in the Nutcracker, including a rather fancy ruffled lace bonnet for the grandmother. In the version of the Nutcracker our local ballet company performed, the party guest come through the theater, and then walk onto stage, acting out that they are arriving at the house.
Nutcracker is often set in some middle to late Victorian style so I made the hats like late Victorian "bonnets", usually a small hat, festooned with ribbons and lace that sits towards the back of the head.

Late Victorian style hats

 Lynn McMaster has some wonderful tutorials and patterns for hats and period costumes. I do not own any of her patterns (yet) but did use her information as inspiration to make the hats I did.

Grandma's "bonnet"

 Milliners used to use something called a poupee or stylized head to drape and display their hats.
If you try searching for this, you will often see images of this:

A wig stand used as a poupee

but this is actually a wig stand. A real Poupee has a stylized face and they are very difficult to find.

If you do find one, they are often very expensive. You can have one custom made in Spain but again it is expensive. While looking for one I found an Etsy store: handworkstudio that sells instructions and kits to make a felt poupee. My daughter loves to do needle felting so I asked her to make me one.

I love my felt poupee by Handworkstudio

 This lead to the "birth" of Ruby. She has soft, pale pink skin, lovely dark brown hair, done up in a classical ballet bun and bow lips. She still needs to be felted (more) but she is lovely.

I was so thrilled with her that I put her to work right away to create a Chinese themed Nutcracker headpiece.
I had become interested in soutache tape bead embroidery

example of soutache tape bead embroidery

and after looking at several Chinese bridal headpieces

Chinese wedding headpiece

decide that it would be a perfect technique to use on my "creation". The traditional bridal headpiece is too big and has too many things sticking up and dangling to make it a practical or safe proposition for a ballet headpiece. I took some of the elements, mostly the gold, red (a color symbolizing good fortune) and turquoise colors, a few smaller side dangles, made with wire so that they would move but not bounce about, bend and become entangled in hair, or worse put the dancer off balance, or poke someone in the eye (if partnered). I sat and sewed layers of red, gold and sparkly turquoise soutache tapes around red crystal bicones, and blue/green round mock jade beads to create snakes or dragon shapes and added eyes, scales and other details with hot fix crystals and sequins. The little dangles were made of gold colored, lazer cut butterflies, Swarovski bicones and little gold colored leaves. I wanted to have something that would move and catch the light without being too heavy or a distraction to the dancer. I had found a very interesting gold mesh which I used and shaped along the front and back of the headpiece and to support the gold ruffled lace at the back. The whole headpiece was built on a sturdy wire frame.

Close-up of the soutache tape "dragons" and front jewels of the Chinese headpiece.

Completed Chinese headpiece on Ruby, my felt poupee

When Tutu.com announced a Nutcracker headpiece competition, I decided to enter this just to get some sort of feed back on the ideas. To my utter (happy) surprise, I was chosen as a semi-finalist. Since this sort of thing usually seems to be dependent on how many Facebook friends and relatives you can get to vote for you, and I only had three votes (two from my brother and his wife, thanks!) I did not expect to make it through the first round. You can still vote for my headpiece at Tutu.com Facebook Nutcracker Headpiece competition till the 30th of November 2013.
Earlier in the summer I had made a Sugar Plum

Sugar Plum headpiece made with Swarovski and RG premium crystals in crystal AB, Fuscia, Tanzinite and Light Colorado Topaz

and a Snow Queen headpiece

Snow Queen made with Swarovski, Czech and Vintage Crystal AB and sapphire

, both modeled by the lovely Bridget, and I still want to make a Dew Drop fairy but time is a strange thing in my house. I truly believe that the fabric of time is somehow broken as some things seem to take forever (laundry, house cleaning, anything tedious) but creating costumes seems to make time disappear. What seems like 5 minutes actually turns out to be hours.
I am now deep into making leotards and my first YAGP costume (very exciting) so  it will be a while before I can get back to these headpiece. It does look as if  after Christmas, I will be working on a comission for some very exciting headpieces but that will have to stay under wraps for now.
Have a happy, not too nutty, Nutcracker season.

What no posts lately, better fix that!

Hi everyone, I suddenly realized it has been a while before I posted something here so I really have to fix that.
It has been an "interesting" few weeks here. After having my machines cleaned and serviced this summer, I was hoping for a "worry" free time. Hope springs eternal but it was not to be.
My main machine developed all sorts of issues from sucking fabric into the throat plate, jamming and breaking needles. My "new to me" Bernina-530-1 (it had been my mother's, I used it for years until I replaced it with my current Lily) came back from my brother's and the first time I used it, caught fire and had stinky black smoke pouring out of it.

A Bernina 530-1 record machine

 This meant that within the space of a few days I had no sewing machine. About a week after they went in for repairs, I got an order for two tutu bags. Thinking that I would not be without a machine for as long as I have been, I took the order. Well the fabric + notions arrived but still no machines. I cut everything out, cut miles of bias for cording and still no machines.
Finally, I sent out an appeal to friends and was able to borrow a machine and I "requested" that the store lend me a machine, so I could make the cording for the bags. Finally today I received a call that the Bernina is ready, the Husqvarna not sure when it will come back.

Being with out a machine for a while allowed me to finally finish the Nutcracker coat I had started to make. I added trim, buttons and loops of navy and gold cording to the front of the jacket. I had seen some photographs of dress uniforms, which I used as inspiration for "my" coat.

Dress uniform originally worn by Prince  Albert Victor

Not everything could be used on a dance coat as dangeling loops, and big medals can be dangerous and just too heavy. I think that I came up with a good compromise that worked well on the coat.

Another (German) dress coat. see the detailing on the cuffs

I took some of the detailing from the cuffs and made appliques on netting. This allows the cuff decorations to be removed before laundering (the sleeves are detachable).

cuff applique detail

I am not sure what the back of a dress uniform looks like but with Jeremy Bardoni's(the designer of the pattern and instructor at tutu school NY) help we came up with this design.

All the loops on the front of the coat are firmly sewn down onto the coat so that a dancer cannot catch on it. I made black dance-boot toppers at tutu school and also have two sets of tight pattern so once I find a suitable dancer I can complete this costume with matching navy blue "pants" and boots as in the photograph. I am very happy with how everything has turned out so far.

Completed front of the Nutcracker coat