As you can tell I’ve been too busy to blog lately and I’m cheating a little by just uploading photos of completed tutus. Bear with me. there will be a complete construction blog coming up soon. For the next few weeks however,  I will just post the tutus I’ve finished to show you what I’ve been up to.

I’ve recently made a number of solo tutus for dancers from a Cechetti School in the foothills of Sydney’s Blue Mountains. The school director then asked to make her a trio of tutus for their wardrobe. I call these my flower faeries.

It still amazes me that a bundle of pieces of fabric can become something as iconic as a classical ballet tutu and that this jumble can be transformed to this:

I decorated the leotards before I sew on the net. It’s much easier than bending over a 40cm skirt to get to the bodice. If the appliques can survive the rigors of sewing on the skirt they will survive the rigors of eisteddfods and rehearsals.

The tutus all have white or ivory skirts (with a coloured layer a #3) so the panties are the same colour as the net.

Bluebell faerie was constructed on a cornflower blue lycra with an embroidered lace of pale gold, turquoise and sky blue. I used crystal AB rhinestones with a pink cast to bring the cornflower and other blues closer together.

I used small motifs from the lace on the bodice. Where I had to cut through the embroidery I used a rhinestone to secure the cut ends and then expanded the rhinestone design from there; form following function.

And the first of the faeries emerges

The Peony Faerie was made up of a rich coppery corded lace on dusky pink lycra.

Crystal AB rhinestones did their trick and blended beautifully with these 2 rich colours.

And finally, a pink layer of net added a soft blush to the skirt

And last but not least the Summer Rose Faerie using apricot ribbon lace on a sage green lycra. I wasn’t able to cut small motifs from the lace and I didn’t want a blocky design with no negative space so I fooled the eye a little by using rosebuds in 4 different colours to tie the plate decoration to the bodice. The rhinestones are unfoiled (transparent) so they took up the unusual colour of the lycra very well.

I’ve used the same rosebuds on the plate

and the Summer Rose Faerie