Fraggles Never Fool Around, Fraggles Never Shirk...

Workin' workin' workin' workin'...
As I plow in to the final few weeks of recital sewing for the year I face down the largest challenge of the season. Because apparently making ten firebirds and ten gnomes and ten rabbits wasn't enough...
Dragons. I'm suppose to be making dragons. Mostly what I am supposed to be making is miracles. "Here, take this 30 year old leotard that looks like someone ran over it with a car and make it in to something fabulous. But not TOO fabulous, because we have to be fair to all the kids. Have fun with that!" Sigh...
My task is to make dragon costumes from around the world. Dragons for many cultures and countries. Which is commendable enough, but for cryin' out loud.
My "Egyptian" dragon was given to me as one extremely ugly nude unitard and a picture printed out from Google image search. It is a nice enough drawing, very pretty, but I am pretty sure that it has very little to do with actual mythology. Egyptian history is divided in to the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom, right? I think of this dragon as coming from the DeviantArt Kingdom.
Anyhow. The dragon has no feathers, no scales, no demonstrably "dragon" characteristics. It has wings but I didn't really want all of the dragons to have wings because so many of the dancers are also going to be firebirds. But the only other really distinct features of this drawing are it's collar and cuffs (which I did) and it's long pointed tail.
Now, let me tell you something about tails on stage. I learned this while working on a professional production of CATS! several years back: from stage there is a REALLY fine line between what looks like a tail and what looks like a great big novelty wang. On a nude bodysuit it was just... not a good look. I do not want the little boy wearing this costume to be mercilessly taunted about it for the rest of his life. I mean, it's bad enough he has to be the only little boy on a stage full of girly girls anyway, right? So, the tail was vetoed. Wings it is. Of course, Egyptian wings are awesome and amazing, but also super annoyingly intricate. This whole costume has been a lesson for me about not biting off more than I can chew and simplifying everything because no one but me will notice the difference anyway.
I will present this costume to the gal in charge today, here's hoping it is met with a round of hearty "oh you are just so creative"s rather than shocked and slack-jawed disapproval.

PS: I have reached the point in the recital season where my sewing studio looks like this and all I want in the whole world is to be able to vacuum the bloody floor:

not that I can FIND the floor...

Dear Danskin,

Why U put such big ugly tags on the OUTSIDE of your dance skirts? ARGH.

PS: I do love this, though: When you tear open a garment and find a little memento of it's construction frozen in time, like this chalk mark at the CB waistline. Makes me feel a little closer to the other hands that have worked on it:

I Call This One "Somebody Else can Press the Damn Skirt"

More Peau D'ane. Maybe? For her moon or stars dress? Who knows. This is another "here, take this tutu and this thrift store salwar kameez and make it a Cinderella dress"
I refrained from making another lace-up Swiss waist, but only because I don't want another teenager to hate me. ONE IS ENOUGH.

Princess Furball (or Whatever)

My instructions for this were just that it had to be a Cinderella dress that "looked like the sun". I'm not certain which version we are dealing with, but that pretty much sounds like Peau D'ane to me. Or Catskin, or Sapsorrow, or Princess Furball, or... You get the idea. Princess Furball was pretty much my jam back in elementary school. That and The Paperbag Princess.
So, anyway. Peau D'ane is a Cinderella story with a princess who goes to three balls, wearing three beautiful gowns: one as silver as the moon, one as golden as the sun, and one as sparkling as the stars. There you go, that is pretty much all you need to know.
I was given a plain little white romantic tutu and an ugly (and boxy) thrift-store Indian (?) skirt and blouse of orangey cationic chiffon with beaded front panels. And then told to do whatever. But without being able to fit the dress on the girl who will be wearing it, so it needed to be somewhat adjustable, stretchy, and forgiving. I was also instructed to add sleeves come hell or high water. This is what I ended up with using only the materials provided:

It really did not photograph well. And in the end I had to get it done in a hurry, so some of the sparkle and jazz that was going to go on the white bodice never happened. Sigh... Anyhow, I left the boob region mostly uncovered, for the sake of fit. The little underbust bustier thingy laces up the back (again, for the sake of fit) and I love it and want one! The sleeves are puffy, which you would be able to see if I had bothered to put the arms on my display form. The skirt is slit down the center front so that the white skirt tulle flashes through as she leaps, mostly to balance out all that white on the bodice that I couldn't get rid of. It looks pretty awesome on the girl, but I am almost sure she despises it because it takes so long to get in to and requires a helper. I dunno, guys, I just don't know.

Tattercoats

The theme for this year's recital is Cinderella. All the Cinderellas. So many.
This is a goose hat for the little girls portraying geese/footmen in Tattercoats, an English variant of the story. I wish I could find a picture to show you, but the internet has failed me. Regardless, the hats are based on an illustration for a 1976 picture book version. You are just going to have to trust me that they are a pretty good facsimile.

Now, here's the thing. Each story was supposed to have five dancers doing their thing. You know, five geese. Or five lily pads. Or birds, or whatever. But it keeps changing. There are currently TEN geese. This is why I see no particular end in sight for this recital sewing. It's like little girls keep coming out of the woodwork. If you haven't been to class in six months do you really need to be in the recital? Holy cow, people.
Anyway.
Many goose hats:

It Begins

Recital season. It isn't really approaching all that quickly, you know? It's a couple of solid months until the performance. Regardless, I am already working on costumes. It's good, really, to get started ages in advance because the Summer brings with it an early theater season and a wedding I have to sew for/do anything else I am asked to for. Also, apparently I am supposed to make all sorts of stuff from scratch for this recital? Which was news to me, but whatever. I've been dragging home piles and wads of tutus, dresses, fabrics, and even a couple of thrift-store wedding gowns that I am going to be chopping to bits. My sewing studio is already a sight to confound and distress.
See?

It's not supposed to look like this.
 Would you believe I have a proper cutting table? You wouldn't know it from that stupid cutting board on the floor that I perpetually use to the detriment of every joint in my body...

Anyway, that is the state of the very small sewing-related union. I'm currently mid-way (or less, there might be more girls added to the dance) through turning five really ugly little tutus in to water lily costumes for a group of teeny tiny girls (maybe 5-6 years old? So small.) Here is an awful blown-out flash-in-a-dark-room-at-10pm glimpse of the progress:

Well, you can see what I'm getting at, anyway.

They would be much cuter worn with little froggy head dresses, IMO.

"A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever" - John Keats

People give you stuff when you sew. Like... "Hey. My granny just died and I was cleaning out her closet and I found this garbage bag full of polyester double knit and plastic beaded fringe from 1974 and I thought of you immediately!" And of course you accept it, because that's really nice (and besides their granny just died so you feel bad for them). And... well... because you can't pass up a sack of fabric! It might come in handy some day. You never know what treasures could be in that sack! I've got lovely silk brocade hanging in my closet that was buried at the bottom of a garbage bag full of broken trim and powder blue metallic netting.
Apparently, if you run a ballet studio people do something similar. But with costumes. "You teach ballet! Wow! You won't believe it but my second cousin's great aunt's neighbor's niece used to do jazz and tap and somehow I ended up with an entire storage unit full of AMAZING costumes!" Your gratitude is assumed.

In preparation for the studio's big Summer recital I am going through tupperware bin upon tupperware bin full of random tutus, leotards, and other costume bits and bobs that somehow ended up in the studio's possession, weeding out the ones that are beyond hope and fixing the most egregious flaws in the remainder. I have spent a couple of weeks, now, going through these, and it's totally awesome, to be quite honest. Especially because I get to remove/trash the ones I would rather burn than work on (a rare and empowering experience in the world of costuming!). Below I present some of the most heinous incredible creations that ever graced the form of a 7 year old in tap shoes and pigtails...

Now. Some of them aren't so bad. This one, for instance, could use to be soaked in Oxiclean for a month and gone over with a steamer to remove wrinkles, but you can see what they were getting at, anyway:

I'm thinking Tinkerbell.

And there are things that... well. They aren't really SO bad. Not when you consider that they must have come from 1987:

I mean, yes, it's ugly. But check out that sky-high French-cut leg opening we've got going on, here. You

just can't be mad at a leotard inspired by Jane Fonda AND Gunne Sax, can you?

No. You can't.

Of course, then there are things for which words seem inadequate:

It inspires one to poetry, does it not?

The neon pink fringe

it lay-th below

acid green sequins,

all aglow...

And then this happened:

I want to point out that this neon yellow and pink

leopard print unitard, here, is an ADULT size small.

Adult. I am just going to leave you with that.

ze Queen and ze firebird

How is the "no ballet in opera" scene from Amadeus not on Youtube? How am I supposed to make this post even vaguely related to ballet without a visual aid of the most ballet-related thing going on in my life right now? GEEZE, PEOPLE!
My husband has been gone to visit family for the past few days and I have spent my alone time eating entire pints of sherbet straight from the tub and watching movies set in the 18th century for fabulous rococo costuming inspiration (so depressing, all these movies! All of them! Why are there no happy movies with panniers and giant hair?) and because I am reading a biography about Marie Antoinette.
Did you know Marie Antoinette was a dancer? Ballet was different, naturally, than it is now, but she loved to dance. Here she is performing a ballet with her brother at a state wedding:

Last week my teacher gave me a copy of all the videos from last Summer's recital. All my costumes! Eeeee! The Firebird looked so cool! I wish I had stills to share with you guys, or that the videos weren't in such a shitty low resolution that I could take screen caps that weren't awful. It looked really nice moving around, with all the flamey bits swishing about. Sigh...

I would blur out faces but the resolution on these is so dreadful that I am pretty sure they count as anonymous.
PS: I am not responsible for the weird little poky-outy feathers at the edges.
Someone just did that. I had no control.

How is the Firebird Tutu Going?

Well, I don't know... but at least I'm ready for the Royal Ascot.

"Heart beats speed up

I have never been so keyed up!"

Firebird: Part the First

One of the more daunting projects I have been tasked to complete for the studio's recital is the transformation of a drastically normal black Sansha rehearsal tutu (with a serious case of the chicken butt) in to a Firebird soloist costume.
If I was doing it with no limitations I would probably dag the netting and taper it back from a shorter poofy front to a longer and more sleek "tail" at the back. But, these suckers are spendy and we need to be able to rip it down and refashion it next year.
So far I have just about figured out what I am doing with it. Here is a progress shot. Not that it is in anything like finished condition, here. For one thing there will not be any weird gaps in the flame-y fabric overlay, and the wonky bit at the back will hopefully evolve in to more of a tail-like thing as I go. The extra bunchy stuff at the waist will be tacked and folded over to create a short layer of points that "float" with the dancer's movement.

Right now my problems are: A) this is going to require a curved needle to implement and in all these damn packages of needles I seem to have there is not a single curved one to be found (they are STUPID hard to come by, I think I have owned two in the past fifteen years. There was a near-sacred one in my mom's sewing tool box when I was a kid. I used to be utterly fascinated by it, as well as the electric shears that she steadfastly refused to part with but never actually used), and B) in the perfect world I would be working on this while it was on a pants form, or dress form with legs. As I do not own one (so sad) I am going to have to put it on and attempt to sew it WHILE I am wearing it (I will have to put in on backwards to do the butt!). This is only an issue because the panty part of this sucker is stretchy, so you just pull it on over your hips rather than hooking it together down the back. I wouldn't even bother if I was certain exactly how big the girl wearing it will be, but as it is I have to allow some stretch and wiggle-room so it's gotta be done while the skirt is held taught. I think I am going to have to borrow a bar stool and sit on that while I work, because sitting on the floor is already getting pretty tiresome!
Okay. I am done rambling, now. In my own defense my two glorious hours of sleep last night are being buoyed entirely by sugar and caffeine right now. I think I will go lay down and hope for the best before I try to work on something and just screw it up royally.

the Purple Tutu

Still working on recital costume repair/alteration/etc.
You see this tutu?

This tutu makes me sad. It's not constructed badly. It's made from a pretty standard pattern. There is a full underlining/flat lining. The basque and bodice are separate pieces. It's all as it should be. But the materials they chose to make it out of? They are awful. The acetate satin is bad but forgivable. But that skirt, regardless of the fact that it is constructed exactly the way a classical tutu should be constructed, is made with such limp and lifeless tulle (that has then been washed a hundred times, probably) that it just sort of... droops. It makes me sad because someone must have put so much time and effort in to it, and the result is so... just... sigh...
Oh, and it was closed all the way down the back with velcro. I don't know if you have ever accidentally caught tulle (or lace, or your pantyhose, or that beautiful silk chiffon blouse you just made...) on the scratchy side of a piece of velcro, but it's insanity. I couldn't even wear my wrist braces while working on this thing because the tiny edges of velcro that hold them closed kept catching on the tulle and shredding it. As you can imagine, the velcro closure has done horrible things down the back of this little guy.
My seamstress's heart. It aches for you.

how are the tutus going, RPrin?

it's tutu much

SO MANY TUTUS

The first batch of OH SO MANY unfortunate burgundy tutus that I have to alter in to wearability before the next recital:

I regret everything.

As I was carrying the giant trash bag full of these things out to my car last week my teacher said I looked "just like Santa Claus! But with the ugliest tutus EVER."

Selfies Because Tutu

I apologize, but the following post is pretty darn gratuitously narcissistic. You have been warned.

I didn't want to put the tutu on. It just happened. You know how it is.

Decent posture, kid, but you look pretty grumpy. Also: pinky fingers WHAT.

I'm coy because I am leaning against the wall.

Channeling Anna Pavlova (ignore my foot in coupé, it knows better than that. On the other hand

I would like to send this image out into the intervoid

with the title "SUCK IT, RHEUMATISM AND SCOLIOSIS!"
I know it's not that amazing compared to a lot of dancers, but I
am pretty damn impressed with myself)

 OH THE TRAGEDY! (don't look at those feet, either)

This is probably the most honest picture of myself I have ever taken.

PS: those sequined straps suck and itch like the devil.

And they aren't even cute. What a gyp.

The Shoes Heard Round The World. Or Something.

Many years ago...
I took a belly dancing class once a week, along with my mom and sister and a family friend. It was probably terribly good for us. Anyway...
As I was practicing turns in the living room one day I caught my toe on the carpet, thereby folding it under my foot. And quicker than you could blink I stepped on it, breaking my toe. It was pretty dreadful. This risky barefoot tradition (with the attendant way your feet get all grubby on the floor during class) remained in my mind as the peril of belly dancing.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago. I had recently quit my retail job and I was stoked to start expanding my online store. I had been tossing around the idea of dying shoes for a while so I was on the prowl for cotton canvas shoe blanks that could be experimented with. I remembered my previous experiences with belly dancing class and decided that some canvas ballet slippers would probably be the perfect medium, with the added bonus of having an obvious market. Breaking toes is just so outré.
So I went online and bought some canvas slippers from Discount Dance Supply...
Which reminded me of all the pretty ballet shoes there are in the world...
Which reminded me of how much I wanted to dance again...
And the rest is history.

PS: I did dye those slippers! But then I discovered that the dye makes the leather soles go all crunchy and cardboardy... and I really hate lumpy soles anyway, so...
Yeah, I never actually put any of them in my shop.
But here they are, anyway, the shoes that started this whole crazy thing:

FLASHY.

Of Swans and Needles

So, my latest acupuncture appointment was canceled (usually at the last second) THREE times. I finally got in yesterday, for the first time in two months. So, basically, everything good that we had accomplished through regular treatment was completely thrown out the window and we started again from square one. And now I just hurt everywhere. She did work on my shins, though, but it remains to be seen whether or not it does anything useful for me. Annoyingly (because of the whole holistic approach to medicine that acupuncture encourages) the woman kept insisting that I have shin splints because I must have some horrible digestive issue. No. I have shin splints because I have an overwhelming and badly-controlled inflammatory response to, basically, life.

In totally unrelated news:
I finally got the ballerina mechanism for this ugly music box reworked and ready for the box. I refuse to admit how many hours of work went in to repainting this silly creature. She still needs a coat of varnish, and the lighting is bad so you can't see the iridescent finish on her costume, but here she is:

Now I just need to finish the BOX. Hahahahaha. 

Why do I get myself in to these things?

Ballerina Music Box

So, for some reason I got inspired to rework a ballerina jewelry box. You know, the kind every five year old girl has? So I poked around until I found one with a sound enough structure to repaint, decoupage, etc etc.
I ended up with this one, which I got for super cheapy online:

Isn't it awful?
All told, it's actually nicer than the one I had when I was a kid. But, seriously? I think the ballerina had probably broken out of mine before I ever got my hands on it. I don't really remember, but that is the sort of class act my childhood was.
Here is the horrible pink inside with the ballerina mechanism. She's going to be getting an entirely new paint job and the pink faux velvet is going to go far far away.

Since it plays Swan Lake I am sticking with the theme. But for grown ups.

Of Tutus and Beetle Wings

Like any crafty person I have what I think of as "lifetime" projects. I suppose you could call it a sort of creative bucket list (but I hate the term "bucket list". It sounds so stupid. I always visualize carrying around some big metal bucket with a leak in it). There are a lot of them. I want to complete a puff quilt (I started one years ago but then broke up with the guy I was making it for so PPPPBBBBBTT!) Build an herb garden growing wall. Stitch some ridiculously complicated  needlepoint version of the unicorn tapestries. One of my biggest lifetime projects has always been to put together a classical (pancake/platter-type) tutu (the whole thing. Bodice, skirt, plate/basque). I mean, I know how to do it, right? I just don't have any real reason to do it. I might at some point get stuck doing some horrid and disgusting alteration and/or repair work to one at the theater, but I really want to make one from scratch. Always have. Even when I wasn't dancing.
Recently, though, I was at a Renaissance faire with my peeps (yo) and saw a jewelry booth that reminded me of one of my other lifetime projects: beetle wing embroidery. If you're not familiar with it it's basically what sequins were invented to replace. In Asia (particularly Thailand, India, China, and Japan) there are these brilliantly iridescent wood-boring beetles. They only live for about a month, and afterwards you are left with their gorgeous exoskeletons. They've been used for ages as decoration, and pieces of fabric and clothing embroidered with them was always highly prized. You know that famous painting of Lady Macbeth wearing a green dress? This one:

That is actually a real dress. A theatrical costume. And it's entirely covered in beetlewing embroidery. you should click through here to see the real deal.
So anyway, I got to thinking about beetle wings and realized that my tutu project is going to need beading anyway... so... why not combine the two?
As this post is already too damn long I will try to wrap it up briefly.
Beetle wings come in lots of pretty color variations to choose from:

and my immediate thought was to sew them on to a black or dark green fabric. But, I am also quite taken with these antique pieces, where the wings are placed on a pale background:

So, now I have even more things to think about. Hmm... I'm pretty excited about how this tutu is going to turn out and I haven't even designed the silly thing yet. Of course, I have no one to make it for (excepting myself, and my weight is so unstable I certainly wouldn't want to do it now) and no room in my little apartment to store such a thing. But. I won't always live in a tiny apartment (hopefully) and as soon as I move I am buying some freakin' wings, 15 yards of diamond net and gettin' my groove on!

Skirts, Wrists, Boredom Setting In...

Apologies in advance if you get a ton of random and pointless posts for a while. This sprained wrist is driving me totally insane. I can't drive (motorcycle or car). Can't work particularly well (I have just spent three days pushing my hand to the very limit of it's ability, and I managed to finish one tiny little top with no closures or handwork. This SUCKS). Can't wash dishes (my male doctors may laugh it off when I say it, but for reals, guys. If I don't do the dishes they just won't get done. I think my husband has washed a plate and a couple of forks in the past two weeks). Can't read actual books because I can't hold them, even using my little clamp device (totally for old people, but it has saved my life). And having to do everything with my right hand has basically made the arthritis-y business on that side go crazy, so it hurts almost as bad as the sprained one!
ARGH!

And now for something completely different...
So. I have always been pretty resistant to the wrap-skirt-in-dance-class thing. I am not sure why, exactly, it just never rang my bells. About a year ago I made myself some little georgette tap pants to wear to class when I was feeling particularly in need of a little cover-up. But my big fat booty-boo has expanded so much recently that I no longer fit the silly things! I'm sure it's the Zoloft that is making me gain this weight, but if my choices are extra-booty-fat-but-hey-I-can make-it-through-most-days-without-crying or my-butt-is-still-pretty-big-and-I-want-to-beat-my-face-against-a-wall-all-night then I will take the Zolft, thanks. Anyway. So I figured something new (and more adjustable) was in order. A few weeks ago I ended up with a small stretch of black chiffon left over from another project (more on that later) and decided to piece it in to a wrap skirt and give skirt-wearing a shot.
This is how it turned out (or at least how it looks while I am improperly dressed and standing crookedly in front of my bathroom door with no lights on:

(As an aside, I saw this picture and had to do a little double take. 

Ballet has, apparently, given me some actual muscular definition, there. 

Hey! That is pretty cool.)

 Which isn't bad considering I was just winging it and my piece of fabric was way too freaking small and oddly shaped to use as-is. Honestly, it's okay. But if I tie it so it stays put I have to cinch it in super tight and then I can't port de corps forward all the way, and if I tie it loose enough to let me bend at the waist then it goes all flubbaly and bothers me to bits. I don't know. It's an experiment, I guess.

You have to admit, with a few rhinestones someone would think they were stylish...

Inspired by Get In Shape, Girl! (which, for those not in the know, was a ridiculous line of children's workout gear that all the girls were desperate for in the eighties. Someone gave me a book and tape that were pretty useless because I didn't have all the crazy pink plastic accessories that were required to actually do the exercises.) and the fact that my ballet teacher believes that room temperatures below 80* would make us all cramp up in to a wad on the floor or something I have created these little guys:

Cell phone photo taken at 3am with a grocery bag

background. Because I am just plain classy like that.

Sweatbands! Because I can't always be within reach of a towel while we are doing center work. Will they be useful or will they just be an annoying thing sitting on my wrist and heating it all up? We shall find out tomorrow night!