Week 2

Workshop 2:
Construction of the Tutu

This week was to Construct the Tutu, I was really nervous about having to pleat the net into the quarter marks of the knickers.

Measuring out the metres and metres of net was very daunting, and seeing where it was going to be attached too was aswell. I had no idea how it was possibly going to work.

Scalloping the edges is so the edge of the tutu is soft on any dancer that may be dueting with the ballerina, and also it looks better than a straight edge. Scalloping was quite therapeutic, I enjoyed scalloping the edges. I kept the bulks of the same sized pieces of net together and scalloped them in a group. It still took me a whole evening even doing it that way. Some edges weren’t cut properly/smoothly so I went through them and snipped the rougher edges.

I started on the smaller layers, so I was starting with the smaller pleats.
I found it ok and I was surprised how quickly I picked the pleating up, compared to my first samples.
Learning how to pleat by eye is a skill defiantly. Which i will be able to take into my 3rd year for EMP and into the industry, it will help advance my construction skills for the future as hop fully i can only get better.

When I had pleated them all I was happy with them all, the smaller ones more so as I found when I had to pleat the larger net the pleats went a bit irregular, and not as good as the smaller ones.

I think this is because it is a completely new area of construction for me, and having a dead line to adeah to aswell as learning the new skill is pressurising.

To attach the tutu net onto the knickers was straight forward if the hand out that Dexter did for us was followed strictly. It indicated which layer was to be sewn on which way the seam allowance on the net needed to face so the net was facing the right way, also where it needed to be sewn, on which layer of the knickers. This really helped because I have never done anything like this before I hadn’t the first idea how to construct a bodice, which later was to go where etc. Unfortunately there a miss communication on a couple of section through the group and Dexter which has caused a few problems later on down the line.

The channel and leg frill wasn’t cut out. The channel was meant to be attached before the pleating and the leg frill was meant to be attached half way through the joining of the net to the knickers. They both were really hard to attach after going past the construction parts of ‘no return’ but I went along with it and worked with what I had.

I found it hard to attach the leg frill at home as I don’t have enough space, I firstly attached it with the elastic stitch over the bias binding when it was supposed to be above the bias binding (the bias binding is used for the leg elastic, which I wasn’t aware of when I applied the leg frill the first time.) When I had to unpick it, which was a job that took me much longer than anticipated, and didn’t work very well with my schedule, set me back at least a day.

I re did the leg frill, re pleated and re attached which was a much better job the second time round, and I made sure I attached it above the bias binding. The second time around I was much happier with it, it looked much neater and the pleating was better too.

Over all i am happy with my tutu but i do feel i could have improve on the larger pleated net layers, i think this will come with time and practice. Over all i am happy with my tutu construction, do feel it could be better, but at the moment i am concentrating on learning the skills and practicing the new construction methods rather than spending so much time on just completing something and not being able to continue with the next step becuase i have spent so much time on the contruction.

Notes:
Dont rush to get onto the next job, only causes more problems and not high quality construction.

Make a "To Do" list when tasks seem to much to deal with. Day by day.