A little while ago, The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles put a call out for volunteers to help with a project for the English National Ballet.

The project was to cross hatch some fabrics that would be made into a bodice, for each dancer, in an upcoming production.  We were humbled and fortunate to be selected by The Guild to be one of the volunteers.

The English National Ballet were sending all fabrics and thread that would be needed.

What’s complicated and difficult about that? you may ask, it’s only cross hatching.

Well, it seems it wasn’t as simple as first thought!

This project was a coming together of 2 different disciplines, costume making and quilting. 

First of all, the ENB sent 3 layers which were:

• Organza, which was to be the fabric closest to the ballerina’s body, and what we would normally class as the backing fabric.
• A cheap, really cheap, wadding which is the Polyester stuff that comes in 2,4,6,8 oz. Yes, that horrible stuff that you use once and realise it’s not the best for quilting, lol. This was going to be the layer between the Organza and the outer of the bodice.
• A pink silk fabric, which was to be the outer part of the bodice seen by the public, as shown in the photograph.
• Not forgetting the bright pink Coates thread. Allegedly, Coates used to have a brilliant name as being the best thread in the world. Now it’s made in India and the quality is just not there, in our humble opinion.
• And… a paper, hand drawn pattern template that we had to work to.

Here’s were the fun started!!  ……

• Fabrics sliding on each other.
• Threads snapping.
• Poor quality material.
• Working out size of crosshatching – had to be a particular size but the template ranged from 1^1/8” to 1^5/16”
• Marking up of fabric from pattern provided.
• Fabric had to be done in a particular way as instructed by ENB. This entailed leaving a gap halfway down the length of the fabric equal to 2 rows of stitching, or 2 1/4″, then one side hatched to left and one to the right.
• We chose to do the horizontal lines on the longarm and then cross hatching on the Bernina B330.
• Alan volunteered to do more pieces, due to the complexity which forced some volunteers to drop out.

Because Alan has a chronic back problem, and doesn’t sleep much during the night, this afforded the wonderful chance of pulling an ‘all nighter’. 

Benefits of an all nighter were:

• Amanda went home, no nagging
• We had pizza for sustanance.
• Alan’s ability to able to play loud rock music, opera, jazz and techno music to his hearts content.
• The building was empty from 6pm, but still had a coffee machine!
• The resident ghosts including a horse! (We are in an old Royal Mail Sorting Office building dating to approx. 1850) more on that in another blog.
• So, for 14 hours Alan was in his own little world. The downside of that was that it took 3 days to recover, c’est la vie.

Eventually all pieces were completed and sent back to the English National Ballet, phew.

We think there was enough material sent to Alan to do 11 bodices as the pieces were going to be cut to fit each individual dancer.

The beauty of this project for us, was to work outside of our comfort zone.  We, as quilters, generally use precise measurements, sometimes of 1^1/6”.  Costume making, from Alan’s experience, has the ability to nip and tuck where needed. Fabric can be pinched a bit here and let a bit go there to get the perfect fit for the wearer. 

Using both disciplines, the range of fabrics, and, not to mention using the longarm and Alan’s Bernina B330 sewing machine, made this an exceptional experience and one hopefully to be repeated.

Thanks to The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles and Gerry, the lead costumier at the English National Ballet for giving me this opportunity.

As an update: Alan was sent more fabric to do so in all we think that we done enough material for 15 costumes.