Hey, I Made That! Tutus at the Oregon Historical Society

MY HISTORY — ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 30, 2018 ON INSTAGRAM@THEPOINTOFYOU

Look what is currently on display as part of the Oregon Historical Society exhibit honoring Oregon Ballet Theatre 's 30th Anniversary season — one of 12 tutus (2 white + 10 blue) I helped to build in 2008-09, when I spent a year working in OBT’s costume shop. I was thrilled to be selected to make all of the tutu skirts for the ballet, Raymonda, while others made the beautiful bodices, head pieces and arm bands. This was definitely one of the most fun years of my life, and (back then) I seriously considered setting up a business to make high end tutu skirts. Turns out it was just one of many steps towards the creative work I get to do today.

TUTU FUN FACTS:

Each tutu skirt takes about 80 hours to construct — not including trimming (decoration).

If all the layers of un-gathered tulle and netting for a single tutu skirt were placed end-to-end, they would stretch nearly 120 yards — longer than a football field.

The longest single layer of these tutu skirts is the “hoop” layer, which includes two overlapping pieces of tulle/netting that are each about 60 feet long, before gathering.

If all 10 layers of tulle and netting for the 10 blue tutu skirts were laid out flat, they would cover an area of about 2500 square feet — nearly 1.5 times the area of the Keller Auditorium stage floor.

In total, these 12 tutus are trimmed with nearly 400 feet of gold lace and trim.

In total, more than 12,000 tiny rhinestones were glued on 1-by-1, and more than 600 teardrop-shaped stones were each hand sewn on.

Principal dancers featured in pics: Yuka Iino Capizzi @yucapizzi, Alison Roper @ali_all_in, and Ronnie Underwood @ronnieu93