Check out the Mad Skillz of the Adult Beginner!
Skillz!
Of Madness!
And Math!
My ballet gear is all very very basic stuff. Two black leos, two black shorts, three pairs of pink tights, one pair of pink leather slippers. A severe wardrobe, but my thinking was that maybe the Adult Beginner should learn a thing or two before she gets all done up like a fairy flower princess unicorn ballerina doll.
So, none of that fluffy stuff.
But then I made this amazing observation: dancers like stuff that’s pretty! And new! And pretty!
Except shoes.
Apparently the more destroyed your shoes are, the cooler they are. The best girls in class secretly feed their shoes to badgers every night.
But other than that weird shoe thing I suddenly remembered all the complements other girls have received in class, about their pretty sweater, new hair-do, fun color combination, and it occurred to me that if I, in my mind-blowing ignorance, am going to be making a mockery of my teacher’s life’s work, I should at least give him something pretty to look at.
So I made some fluffy stuff.
These wrap skirts are pretty easy, just measure your waist, then one and a half times your waist is a circle, find the radius of that circle, add to the radius the length of your skirt, that becomes the radius of the larger circle that is the hem of your skirt-
Hey, where’d you guys all go? I was explaining something cool! Ok fine! I’ll stop making math sounds!
Anyway, I wore the aubergine skirt to class today with the black cap sleeve leotard and black footless tights, and it totally did the trick. There I was, murdering some chainé turns, again, but this time Smirnoff was distracted from his corrections by the twirling chiffon!
Ha!
Do you sell these? Or am I a moron who missed the big red arrow that says “Buy Adult Beginner’s Handiwork Here”?
Nope, just whipped these bad boys up one day.
I just stumbled upon your blog….pretty funny. If I weren’t at work I would have laughed out loud since I can relate to most of your stories. Anyway, I was wondering how your hemmed your skirts. I am trying to make my own skirts but the material is getting caught in the feed dogs of my machine. Any tips??
Yeah, the hem is the heartbreaker.
You’ve got four options:
1. Overlock. Using, you know, an overlock machine. A lot of commercial skirts have overlocked hems, personally, I don’t love the look.
Really the best is-
2. A professional merrow machine. Makes a very tight, small, dense, pretty sort of overlock. The bummer is that the only way you can get your mitts on one of these is if you have access to a costume shop. I do, so that’s what these babies have.
3. Glue. Mark your finish line on the skirt, paint on a thin layer of clear-drying fabric glue (which you can buy from a fabric or craft store), about half an inch wide, let it dry, cut through the dried glue. Your skirt now has about a quarter-inch clear glue edge. This works fine and is generally nice and invisible.
4. Fire. Ok, I’m not even going to tell you how to melt a hem, because I wouldn’t even attempt it on such a long hem.
Go with glue. Try a little sample first.
Oh, here another I just thought of:
5. Zig-zag. Set your machine to a tight zig zag, like you’re going to do a satin-stitch. Mark your hem but don’t cut it. Lay your fabric on top of a piece of tissue paper, sew through chiffon and paper along you hem mark, when you’re done, tear away the tissue paper and trim very close to your new fancy zigzag hem.
Have an awesome time twirling!
wow, a plethora of tips. thanks!! I’m still waiting for my one, perfect pirouette too. one day…..
AB, this may be a dumb question, but did you just create your own ties out of the chiffon? I tried to make a skirt using an elastic “ribbon” of sorts and it was really stiff… couldn’t figure out another material to use that wouldn’t come untied during class.
I used grosgrain ribbon, folded over and stitched down to enclose the seam allowance at the waist of the skirt, left flat on each end to form the ties.
Seems like elastic would just complicate the whole thing? This kind of skirt doesn’t really call for stretch, since the fit is determined by more wrap or less wrap, so I’d just stay away from any kind of elastic.
Satin ribbon would work too, after all, pointe shoes are tied on with satin ribbons and they stay put throughout class.
Chiffon ties would be really pretty, not a dumb question at all.
Thank you, that helps a lot! The only skirts I have are from Body Wrappers and, for some reason, they have these stretchy ties. I might try your satin suggestion–that would be pretty.
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