Dance in the Renaissance period were interwoven across Europe, such were many fashions/trades of the time. Each region of Europe influenced each other at different times and we have to turn to written records for any great detail. Unfortunately, these records would have been written by the wealthy and educated so once again, we have limited knowledge of how the common people of this era enjoyed dance.
Burgundy and France – In Burgundy, dance had an important place in court life. This particular dance is known as the “basse dance” and is the best documented dance from the 15th century: it is performed by nobles and is a measured and steady dance with the intent that such movements display their magnificence. Usually this dance would be performed as couples but there are more ambitious routines were varying numbers of dancers part, come together, circle each other, and continue executing these movements to draw patterns with their bodies. Typically films set in this era will show the more complex form of the basse dance when noble people are seen partying.
Italian Dance – In the second half of the 15th century, a new style of dance was invented that combined the bassadanza with elements of popular dance. Today, such a dance is commonly known as the “Italian ballo”. It wasn’t unusual for these dances to accommodate up to 10 dancers and spread throughout the courts of Italy, with variations occurring depending on the regions the dance was performed in.
Dance in England – English traditions of 15th century dance can be found in the Gresley manuscript that documents 92 dance titles but only 26 choreographies, music, and surprisingly, no step descriptions. There is far less detail written about English dances during the Renaissance than any other European country and it is believed that the reason is because the dances were so well known that there was no reason to write them down.
Dance at Herod’s Court, an engraving by Israhel van Meckenem, ca. 1490.
We know little of dance in the Medieval period other than what can be understood from surviving illustrations and written music/literature. Paintings show dancers moving in either lines or circles, known as a carole/farandole dance. Such dances would have followed a verse and chorus sequence. Estampie, believed to be one of the earliest known solo couples dance can be seen in some of the illustrations from this era along with branle, a dance that can be found in late 16th century sources. Music through the Middle Ages is known to have lively rhythms with poetry speaking of how singers sung in the same breath.
Costumes worn in Medieval dance varies according to class. Upper class men and women would have worn dramatic and vibrant gowns made with luxurious materials such as silk, some of these costumes would have been sleeveless while others would have long, billowing sleeves for a dramatic effect when moving their arms in dance. Women would have also worn corsets under their dance attire in addition to headdresses that were worn for social occasions. Unfortunately little known is known of the dancewear for more common folk as it is mainly the wealthy that are depicted in portraits/paintings.
Dancing shepherds, from the Hours of Charles d’Angoulême, 1475-1500, via Medieval Dance Online
Lancelot at the Carole Magique, Lancelot du Lac, c. 1470, via Medieval Dance Online
This additional week has been spent bringing the tutu to a display worthy state, sewing smaller pieces I didn’t have time to before, and fixing the bodice decoration.
The big issue with the bodice decoration was that the layers below shrunk as the piping was sewn between the seams. To account for this, I added 5cm seam allowance to the outer edge of the pieces as I remade the decoration.
Surprisingly, the bodice decoration didn’t shrink as much as it had previously but it still didn’t fully tack down flat. The backing fabric has bubbled a little bit but that shouldn’t be noticeable when it is sewn to the bodice.
With the bodice decoration looking better than it had before, I just needed to hem the edges and secure it to the bodice. I haven’t perfectly centred the bottom of the decoration and it annoys me that it looks a little wonky but I don’t think there’s an easy way to fix it.
After fixing the bodice, the next two days were spent properly stitching the decorations to the top plate so it would all lie flat. I had expected them to keep some three-dimensionality to them but when sewn properly, all the decorative elements seemed to blend together and lay almost flat with the top plate. From there, I also attached the fastenings up the left side of the centre back decoration so it could be closed.
With everything else done, the final steps to completing the tutu were securing the bodice to the tutu plate and adding elastic to the leg channels in the knickers that I didn’t have time to do beforehand.
With everything finished, here is the complete tutu!
It’s the final week before the first hand in so I spent as much time as possible finishing these decorations. When sewing the petals, the central one is slightly different to the others. The one in the centre has an extra layer with a loop of piping that the bodice decoration sits inside, while the others have a single strip of piping sewn up the centre. I did notice that the layers distorted and wrinkled a little as they were sewn, ending up with excess fabric on one side that shouldn’t be there.
Moving back to the bodice decoration, I unpicked the piping and cut up the centre. I then re-sewed everything, lining up the layers at the centre instead of the outer edges. In doing this, I noticed that the layers at the bottom had shrunk across the width. It’s better than how it was before but I am really not happy with the shaping of it now.
Because they were so distorted, the petal decorations and bodice decoration needed a backing fabric to try and pull them back to their original shape. I have run out of the fabric that should be used, so I had to resort to using the old blue cotton to back the petals. This hasn’t quite given it the support it needs but when everything is sewn down to the tutu plate, it looks better. The only other thing that needed doing before sewing everything together was to hem the petals and bodice decoration.
With all individual elements complete, it was time to start putting the pieces together. I began with a test fitting, pinning the petals and orange decorations into place with the bodice on top to decide on the positioning of them. The hardest part of this was trying to make sure it looked as symmetrical as possible.
The remainder of this week was just spent hand sewing with a ladder stitch all elements to the top plate and each other. The only difference is between sewing the petals and orange decorations to the plate. On the illustration, there are two grey shapes underneath the lower bodice shaping and I haven’t been able to plan those pieces until now. With the petals permanently in place, I cut the oblong shapes to size and sewed black markings on them to replicate what is seen in the illustration. These were allowed to be a little oversized as the edges become covered by the decorative elements on top.
To get the tutu ready for the hand in, I quickly appliqued the bodice decoration to the bodice and secured the bodice to the tutu plate.
While this is the finished state for the hand in, I do think I will make changes to the tutu before it goes up on display. I am really not pleased with the shaping of the bodice decoration and all elements need to be sewn to the tutu plate with a tighter stitch than the loose stitches I have done for the sake of speed. There are a few smaller things that also need to be done such as the fastenings on the centre back orange decoration so that it can be secured closed without the use of pins.
The navy decorations I had been putting off because I know they will take the most work, so I finally started them at the beginning of this week. I cut the patterns along the lines were bias binding is to be sewn and added seam allowances to them. The intention was to then cut the patterns from the fabric but there’s one issue, I underestimated how much fabric it would take to sew the decorations so I have to put this on hold until I have ordered some more.
While waiting for some more fabric to be delivered, I took on the task of stringing the layers of the tutu plate together. This is done by knotting loops that are staggered from the outer edges towards the middle, sewn only a few layers at a time. I do feel that I made these loops too tight. The idea is that the loops connect everything and keep the plate flat but instead, it seems to make the plate droop a little.
At the midpoint of the week, the new fabric arrived. As I had to get more anyway, I took it upon myself to order a fabric that was darker than the original one to better match the design. I cut all the patterns from the fabric and went about making the bias piping that I need to sew between the layers.
I tried sewing the bias binding on the bodice decoration to start with but I ran into some glaring problems. The pattern pieces were lined up perfectly at the outer edges but the middle has become too short, puckering away from the backing fabric. Another issue is that sewing the bodice decoration used more than half the bias tape I had so I have to wait again for some more to arrive before I can complete the petal decorations. With working on this for so long and having so many issues pop up in one day, I stopped at this point. I’ll return to working on it when I have enough bias tape and I will try to fix the bodice decoration then.
Following from the end of last week, I permanently hand sewed the lower bodice into place. This was painful sewing around that tight corner and it was hard to line up evenly as I hadn’t marked the position of the overlap properly on the upper bodice. These issues with lining it up resulted in the lower bodice sitting higher up at the back than expected. While not intentional, the more I look at it, the more I like it being higher at the back.
With the two bodice halves sewn together, I wanted to hem the bottom edge. First though, the boning on the centre back needed to be sewn in place as it is encased inside the bodice. This was done by sewing a channel in the right side of the centre back and cutting a piece of boning to length to slide inside. This way, when the top and bottom of the bodice are hemmed, the boning will be held inside.
When hemming the underside, I also trimmed down the seam allowance from the top half of the bodice to reduce bulk and snipped into any tight corners so that the fabric would fold nicely at the hem.
To further reduce wrinkles on the bodice, boning needs to be placed along some of the seam allowances. Casings are sewn in petersham, the bonings are cut to size, inserted into the casings, and sewn onto the centre front, side-side-front, and side-side-back with a herringbone stitch. Ballet dancers have to maintain mobility so boning can’t be sewn onto the bust seams or side seams.
Now that the boning channels are sewn into place, it’s time to finish the bodice. To finish the top seam, piping had to be sewn on. This was made by cutting a strip of the top fabric, matching the grainline to the bodice, and sewing with a piping cord inside.
The piping was then sewn to the tack line and any excess fabric facing the inside of the bodice was trimmed to neatly fold the piping over. The piping is then sewn to the inside to create a finished edge, nearing the completion of the bodice.
The final step of the bodice and the last thing I did this week was sew the the fastenings on the back. These are sewn in the same way as the fastenings on the tutu plate. The more securely these are sewn, the better.
This last week has been a little bit all over the place so you will see me jumping between different elements of the tutu depending on what I felt like working on in that moment.
The week began by cutting the lower bodice from the top fabric, sewing up the seam and pinning into place on the bodice. I also placed the patterns for the decorations to see how it looks together. Doing this I noticed two things: the fabric is really wrinkled because there is nothing to support it and I will likely have to hand sew this lower bodice to the top part of it. It was really difficult to pin around the tight curve at the front and I don’t think it will be possible to sew that by machine.
Frustrated with thinking about how to solve some of the problems on the lower bodice, I took a break from that and made a pattern for a top plate. I remember being told that it is needed to help sew the decorations flat to the tutu plate and it felt like the perfect distraction from the other things that needed doing.
It seemed too daunting to cut the netting from the pattern for the top plate so I switched again to make the orange decorations on the top plate. To keep them flat, I tacked them down to a layer of netting to help provide some support.
Cutting and tacking the orange decorations was a long and tedious process because the thread kept catching on the netting as I was trying to pull the needle through. This caused me to become a bit tired of it so I resumed what I was doing with the lower bodice shaping. I wanted to see if a backing fabric would make a difference so I cut the pattern from the same fabric used to support the bodice panels and tacked the top fabric for the left side of the bodice to it.
Tired once again of what I was doing, I started to hem one of the orange decorations. This is a process that was worse than tacking the fabric to the netting. As before, the thread kept catching on the netting and mitring the corners was a bit of a nightmare. In all, it took between half an hour to an hour just to hem this one piece. Rather unsurprisingly, I only hemmed two out of the seven total because I was getting tired. I will continue to hem the others over the course of the next week or two, in-between other elements of constructing the tutu.
To finish off the week, I returned to working on the top plate. I am short on netting so I had to separate it into four parts, with a seam up the centre and a seam on each outer edge. I’m not entirely happy with how it looks with these excess seams but it isn’t too noticeable. To complete the top plate, I sewed halfway up the back as with the layers below so that it can be worn and then the top plate was hand sewn to the basque at layer 10.
Before the end of the week, I pinned in place the other half of the lower bodice to compare side with backing fabric and the side without. The left side of the lower bodice with a backing fabric looks much flatter than the side without, I will definitely need to take apart the right side next week and sew it to match the left.
Marking the final week before the winter break, week 6 was dedicated to finalising the tutu plate and doing any prep work so I can continue with this over the holidays. Now that all layers are attached and sewn to the basque, the centre back of the knickers is finished with a French seam. All layers are then sewn closed halfway up the back seam apart from layer 7 which needs to remain open until the hoop wire is inserted into the channel.
Before putting the hoop wire into the channel sewn on layer 7, the ends of the wire were wrapped in tape so that it doesn’t damage the tulle or the person wearing the tutu and the layers above layer 7 were held to the body of the mannequin, wrapped in spare netting, to make it easier to feed the wire through the channel. A pen cap was also used on the end of the wire to help guide it through the channel, alternately pushing the wire and pulling the netting until the wire is pushed all the way through. Once the wire is pushed through fully, the exposed wire was then joined by wrapping spare netting tightly around it 2-3 times. The netting was then secured with a cross stitch, preventing the wire from springing apart and hurting anyone during a performance.
The penultimate step in constructing the tutu plate was flat-felling the crotch seam. This was not easy to do because I had to squeeze some of the layers under the machine too so the seam isn’t quite as straight as I would like it to be.
Now the mass of tulle is finally starting to look like a tutu and it is very exciting at this stage. Before I could do any more though, I had to flatten the tutu. We did this by using a giant wooden board and placing sewing machines on top to weight it down. It has to be left for at least 24 hours like this to flatten properly and it is very satisfying when you lift the board and the tutu plate stays flat, instead of springing up as you would expect it to.
This is the moment I have been waiting for, to finalise the pattern of the bodice with the tutu plate for context. With the tutu plate complete, I drew a paper pattern to see if I could build the lower shaping of the bodice as a separate piece that could be sewn on. I have to say, this looks much nicer than when I attempted to build the shaping from the basque and this is definitely what I will use moving forward. Although only paper, the shape of it flows really nicely from the plate and around to the back of the bodice.
Before packing to go home that night I found a scrap piece of fabric that is the perfect size for the orange decorations on the plate so I have made a pattern from it and will use that to cut the fabric from. I am really pleased with how it slightly tapers to the outside.
The last pattern to make was the navy petal decorations and I drew these using a French curve to get smooth lines. I then placed it between two of the patterns for the orange decorations and adjusted until the pattern matched the design. The bodice and bodice decoration were also on the mannequin at this point and it was nice to gauge an idea of how the finished tutu might look.
Before taking my things home for the holidays, I wanted to at least have the bodice sewn together. the first stage of this was cutting the patterns from the top fabric and backing fabric, marking the backing fabric, and then tacking the two together. Tacking the velvet to a stable fabric like this helps to reduce the wrinkles and gives the fabric a smoother appearance.
With all panels tacked to their respective backing fabrics, they were sewn together and all raw seams overlocked.
Et voila! The base of the bodice is sewn together before I go home for the holidays. I do feel it’s a little loose at the front so I might adjust that at a later date but for now it is looking good and I am really happy to see it finally taking shape.
Week 5 has been a slow one. All layers were sewn to the knickers by the end of week 4 but parts of the tulle were gathered too tight so the knickers had to be stretched to snap any threads that were shrinking the knickers. This meant that I had to go back and hand stitch parts of each layer back down to the knickers to prevent it falling apart. With the tutu plate nearing completion, I tried a test fit with the bodice to see if the basque could be cut to form the shape shown in the illustration. The bodice doesn’t look quite right so I will have to form the shaping some other way, likely by appliqueing over the top of the bodice.
Knowing that the basque doesn’t need to be cut to a different shape, I followed the pattern to create the standard basque form. The back of the basque has to overlap at the centre front, this is done by folding the left side, touching the edge of the seam allowance to the marked line and trimming the right side to that fold. Now, when both sides are hemmed, they overlap at the centre back and match the centre front line.
The waistband of the basque was sewn in petersham with small elastic pieces sewn into the sides. This allows the waistband to be malleable and form to the body it is sitting on.
With the basque now complete, the Tutu plate is sewn to it by hand as it is difficult to try and fit all of the material under the sewing machine. The basque was then fitted with fastenings to close it around the body. My first attempt at sewing the fastenings wasn’t secure enough and all the stitches came undone so it is important that these be hand sewn well to prevent them from coming loose.
I began the fourth week of the tutu project by tampering with the shape of the bodice again. Coming back to it after the weekend, I wasn’t happy with how it was sitting on the mannequin and I felt that a full draft of the bodice would show a more accurate fit than the half draft. I also took the opportunity to mirror the paper pattern for the bodice decoration and draw markings for where the bias binding will be sewn into place. This has given me a better idea of how the finished bodice will look.
Before making any more progress with the bodice, I want to have the tutu plate complete. With so many decorative elements distributed between the two, it is hard to tell if the elements I am patterning will look good until they can sit over the tutu plate.
Finishing the knickers began with French seaming the front. At the centre back, the top half of the knickers were folded over and hemmed to create an opening, this is because the lower half will also be sewn with a French seam and the dancer needs an opening to get into the tutu. The final step before sewing the layers of tulle is to create a leg channel for leg elastic that will be inserted later. This is done by sewing bias tape 1cm away from the edge of the knickers to the outside, this is then flipped to the inside and sewn along the other edge of the bias tape so that no raw edges are showing.
Once knickers were sewn I had to begin the process of sewing the layers of tulle to their respective markings, pinning each layer at the quarter points so they are gathered evenly. This is done starting with layers 6 through 1 which are facing upwards. I still hadn’t prepared the leg ruffles until this week because it was daunting to think about scalloping them, so I spent Friday morning scalloping the edges and push pleating them. The leg ruffles are then sewn along the leg channels, being careful not to stitch into the opening. I continued sewing layers 7 through 10, facing opposite to the lower layers. The opposing directions of the layers helps to flatten the shape of the tutu plate. Some people on layer 10 pleated using chopsticks and I wish I had done the same. It is easier to pin the gathered layers to the correct length but it doesn’t look as professional and it was harder to push through the machine.
