This project has been made possible by donors to the College of Fine Arts Fund for Excellence, the University of Arizona's School of Theatre Film & Television, and the individuals who have generously donated to the Medici Scholarship Foundation (specifically Ms. Robyn Kessler and Robyn and Jeff Timan) . Thank you for all your support!
Good morning!
So yesterday in the shop, my adviser and I re-evaluated the tutu-esque costume that I am re-creating. You can see it below:
You can see the tutu is circular, but I thought they were concentric circles, and she was under the impression that it was a spiral.
So I tried my very best to find more images of this particular dancer, and there are several re-creations that are similar, and several other costumes with either circles or spirals, but there are no other pictures of this dancer in this costume from any angle that actually helps us to determine which it is.
So we made a command decision...they are now concentric circles. This is actually something that people in costume technology do quite a lot, so it wasn't really hard to make this kind of concession. If there isn't enough research, or the designer isn't around to make the final decision, we need to make these sort of decisions ourselves in order to further the progress of the project.
So, with that decision made, I began attempting to pattern this out. How in the world does it stick straight out like that? In my experience, I've never really made or explored support structures like this before, and I think it is affecting my confidence in this project. But yesterday I pushed through and started drafting some patterns I thought would work. Referring to the tutu construction, I thought I may as well start that to understand the way it is put together and hangs off the body.
I decided to draft a circular skirt pattern (note: skirts are literally my weakness, so this was my first time drafting and executing a circle skirt...)
I am using the mock up organza here, which is similar to the final fabric I will be using, if a little stiffer. It is 16 1/2 inches out with the waist created by dividing the waist measurement by 6. I determined the length by looking at where the skirt seems to stand at the arm; it looks to me it stands just under the middle of the forearm. I placed the tape measure at the waist of the dress form and held my own arm out to see what the length was.
The reference picture of the tutu I'm using for the construction of this has a middle bone as well, so I placed that about halfway, landing at 8" (middle mark on the pattern). The construction of the first half was.... I'm gonna describe it as 'whelming'. I boned it with the 3/4" rigilene and encased it with twill tape, and it just fell flat. I should have taken a picture of it, but again, it was not impressive.
So the second half of the skirt was added. It was also not impressive, as the rigilene, if pushed to its limits, created a wave rather than a straight hem. I truly thought the spring steel bone would just weigh the whole thing down, but we tried it anyway for the sake of exploring all avenues. Below is the result:
IT STAYS UP BY ITSELF!
The steel boning is 1/2", and to get the thin lines I think I will have to order smaller boning for the final piece.
I consulted my original budget, and it looks like I designated $150 to various boning materials, and $50 for synthetic whalebone.
So it looks like I am $10 under the projected dress form cost, and I can cut 25 yards from the fabric order as well, as I think each tutu will be about 2 yards each, which was the bulk of the order initially. The revised fabric total for 100 yards of the nude or white polyester organza would be $509, according to mood.com. If this number doesn't change, that gives me $127.25 plus the $10 = $137.25 that I can now use for the (quite expensive) spring steel boning for this piece. I am going to consult my adviser before re-designating this portion to the steel boning, and order these pieces today.
Also, my other check has cleared, and I now have access to all of my funding. YAY!
Today's to do list is to experiment with the male dress form (now dubbed Cornelius) and figure out the balloon top/pants/skirt situation.
Thank you for reading!