Sewing project: Gertie's layer cake crinoline, mark 1

Last night I really needed a change of pace from my homework routine this week, so I decided to get in a little sewing practice. I remembered that ages ago, I decided I wanted to make another one of Gertie's tutorial projects, specifically the Layer Cake Crinoline. It was cute and looked easy enough, so I picked up some netting from the sale bin at Jo-Ann Fabrics, a semi-stiff white with great embroidery in a sort of bamboo motif with scallops on the edges. I couldn't exactly remember, but I think I got some white rayon as well for the top part. But I decided to wait until my sewing machine arrived before I started, and once I got it I started working on other projects and never got around to it. So yesterday I dug the materials back out and gave it a try.

I found the netting and pressed it smooth because it had been folded up in my basket for quite some time, but the only silky white material I could find I'm pretty sure was leftover material from when my mom made the Hamlet banners. That meant it probably isn't a garment fabric, and the drape likely isn't ideal. Still, it would probably serve, so I pressed it as well.

Then I went on the Blog for Better Sewing and found the instructions. The Layer Cake Crinoline basically consists of a slip with some elastic at the waist made of a typical lingerie fabric, with two gathered tiers beneath it made of a fabric with more body. Gertie's tutorials are good, but sometimes I think they take for granted that you already have the process of garment making down in your head, which I would not say I do yet. So I cut out two squares of my silky material to make the slip part, sewed the side seams, and pressed them open. Then I needed to put the elastic on the top edge. I cut it to fit my waist (hips actually, because I prefer my skirts to ride lower), sewed the ends together, then marked off the quarters of both the elastic band and the top edge of the slip.

I had gotten the fancy picot edge lingerie elastic like Gertie recommends, and as far as I can tell she says to sew it to the right side of the slip with the scalloped edge facing down, then fold it down into the inside so that the scalloped edge is facing up, and sew it again so that it stays in place that way. She didn't specify whether to start on the right or wrong side of the slip, however, and I sewed it on the wrong. I could have gleaned this information from looking more closely at the pictures, which it is possible to tell from, but that didn't occur to me. So when I turned the skirt right side out, the picot scallops were right side up, but had a little frill of fraying, folded over material sticking out from under the bottom edge of the elastic. Attempts to trim this off were either not complete enough or resulted in cutting little holes in the slip under the band. So I dug around in my stash and pulled out some of the lace I used to make the garter that Caitlin wore in Margaret. Cutting off one of the two frilly sides, I attached it under the waistband to cover the holes.

Next I cut the second tier of the crinoline of the embroidered netting. Gertie says it should be only five and a half inches plus seam allowances, but I wanted to preserve the bamboo embroidery pattern, so I just cut to the top of the tallest stalk. I sewed the edges of that piece together to make a tube, then put two long basting stitches in on each side so I could gather it. I folded up the hem of the slip, pinned the gathered netting underneath it, and then sewed it all together. I didn't like the look of the stitching around the bottom of the slip, however, so I took the other half of the lace and sewed it on over the hem to hide it.

That is how it currently looks. I did cut out material for the third tier, but I feel like at knee length it's already long enough. I also love the pretty embroidered scalloped edge, and I don't want to mess it up by trying to attach anything to it. Here are the details from another angle.

I'm not sure I love the look of the lace at the waist, but it sure does look nicer than it did before I put it on. I think I do like it inverted at the slip's hem, though. It's not terribly voluminous, which is the primary point of a crinoline, to add volume to the skirt you're wearing over it. Thought the way it is, I don't think it would be terribly inappropriate to wear it as just a skirt, if the weather and situation allowed.

I'm got it on today beneath my other handmade skirt project, my full gathered red silk dupioni. I'm not sure it makes any difference; the dupioni may have more body and fullness than the crinoline. I kind of like the idea of the neat edge of the crinoline peeking out beneath whatever skirt I'm wearing, but I don't know if I like the look of it here. This is my unsure face...

I think I'm going to make a second version of this project. I have plenty of the netting, and if I don't have enough of the silky stuff I'm sure I can substitute something else in that wasn't originally intended to hang from the fly system in a theater. I really want to see if I can get the elastic band technique right, so I don't have to cover up my mistakes with lace. I'm out of that stuff now anyway.  But, whether I wear it or not, my construction here isn't too shabby. Every bit of practice leads to improvement!

Idea for a key necklace

Ideas to do and make things pop into my little head on a fairly regular basis, as you've likely gleaned by now. Ideas involving furniture or audio drama or fish dishes that tend to end up here on the blog in excruciating detail. Now I've taken it into my head that I want a key necklace, and since I couldn't find one that matched my typically exacting mental image of a simple piece with a big, elegant but not too ornate brass key on a long matching chain, I have decided to make my own.

To that end, I have made two inexpensive eBay purchases to attain the key-necklace-satisfaction I desire. The first arrived the other day in a padded mailer, the aforementioned big, elegant but not too ornate brass key.

It's about four inches long and heavy for its size, advertised as belonging once to the lock on a chest of drawers. I am very pleased with it. I have also purchased a chain of twenty-four inches to loop through it. I want one of those old-fashioned necklaces that dangles very low on the bosom, but that may be a little too long. I can always shorten if it I desire, though, so better too much chain than too little. When it arrives I'll put them together and wear it with some whimsical ensemble which you will be most assuredly privileged to see in photographs here. :-)

The collapse of the Sugar Plum Fairy

This week, both my ballet teachers said I was improving; in fact, on Tuesday Helena said in so many words that she was starting to go harder on me because I'm getting better. I am extremely pleased, as I've been working really hard.

My teacher on Thursday is Jessica Kreyer, who has for a number of years been the Children's Ballet Mistress for the Boston Ballet's annual production of The Nutcracker. One thing she likes to emphasize is how hard ballet really is, how the traditional way the dance is practiced is designed to push you to the very limit of your strength and endurance until you literally cannot go on. Obviously that's not how we're taught, but she says it is not unusual for the training of top-level professional dancers. She emphasizes this to help us feel better about how often we simply lack the strength to do certainly things correctly. Balance, for example, takes a huge amount of strength! To illustrate her point, she told us about the dancer who played the Sugar Plum Fairy in the most recent Nutcracker at the BB. Her choreography looks light, ethereal, like she's a floating weightless nymph. But to achieve that air, to execute that choreography so beautifully and technically perfect, she has to work so hard that the minute she came offstage she collapsed in a gasping heap. Jessie told us the students of hers who were also in the ballet were shocked to see it, 'cause the movies make you think that dancers just prance offstage with enough breath to have dramatic conversations and possibly stab their costars. But that is how hard the highest levels of ballet really are, and that sort of thing happens once the dancers get offstage all the time.

It was interesting to think about. That for even the very best practitioners of the art there are, it is still so hard, so demanding to them. That to do it right, even when you are a master you will never be able to give less than everything you've got. As one of my all-time favorite quotes says, from some random movie I saw in French class about Edgar Degas, it takes supreme effort to make it look effortless.