So you want to know how ballet shoes work

Let me preface this post by saying this is not a guide for anyone looking for the perfect ballet feet.  I am a semi retired ballet dancer, and I haven't taken a proper class in over 4 months.  As a result, my feet aren't nearly as strong as they used to be.  This is a post mainly for artists who want an explained reference of exactly where the ribbons go, how elastics are placed, and the general anatomy of ballet shoes.

Normally, tights that match the color of the shoes are worn, but for the sake of showing more contrast between the pink shoes and my pinkish skin, I wore black tights.  Sometimes shoes are colored for character roles onstage.  For example, in The Nutcracker, the Spanish dancers and Chinese dancers often wear black pointe shoes with their pink tights.

A note about tights:  Once dancers reach close to pointe shoe age, they switch to convertible tights.  They have a hole on the bottom which allows for easier access to the toes to adjust padding and bandages.

Flat Shoes

Forgive the holes.  This is an old pair.  On the left, improper elastic placement.  On the right, proper elastic placement.

Flat shoes are worn by both men and women, beginners and professionals.  Most flats are made of either leather or canvas.  Canvas shoes tend to be more often used because they're quieter, easier to take care of, and easier to dance in.  On the other hand, leather provides a better workout for the feet since they offer a little more resistance in pointing feet.

Showing split-sole shoes

Most dancers prefer split sole shoes.  This refers to the pattern of having a sole under the heel and under the balls of the feet with a gap in between.  This gives a more flattering line when pointing and allows the shoe to move with the foot better.  As a contrast, a picture of full soled ballet shoes can be found here.

Improper elastic placement on the left, corrected on the right.

In flat shoes, all the weight is balanced on the balls of the feet.  These shoes do not have the support to allow the dancer to stand on the tips of the toes.  The shoes themselves are rounded at the toe.  Flat shoes tend to not have much of a shape on their own.  Think of the shoe itself as a really thick sock made of canvas.

Most shoes come with one end of the elastic sewn, allowing the dancer to sew the other wherever he or she pleases.

Elastics are used to hold the shoe on the foot.  Commonly, elastics are sewn in a criss-cross manner.  The cross should be very close to where the foot meets the ankle.  This makes it easier for the heel of the shoe to stay on.  One side of the elastic is sewn closer to the heel, and the other is sewn no farther towards the toe than the instep.

Another method of sewing, which I personally use, is to sew the ends of the elastics together to make one giant loop.  From there, the loop is crossed at the ankle, then passed over the toe to rest at the instep.  Personally, I find this more flattering since I have a relatively high instep and flat shoes tend not to hug it super well.  This forces the shoe closer to the instep and shows the arch of the foot a bit better.  While this is not demonstrated in the picture above, it can be seen in the video.

Some very traditional schools, particularly in Russia, use ribbons on flat shoes similar to ribbons on pointe shoes instead of elastics.  It's not very common, but if you see pictures of ribbons on flat shoes and get a little confused, that's why.

Pointe Shoes

Properly tied pointe shoes.

Pointe shoes are probably the most misrepresented articles of clothing in the western world.

Shown on the right, a properly tied pointe shoe.  On the left, DEAR GOD PLEASE NO. 

Let's start with the drawstring.  Pointe shoes have a drawstring that helps the shoe fit the foot better.  The strings are never showing.  If too long, this poses a safety hazard.  In the smaller steps, a dancer could step on her strings similarly to how someone could step on loose shoestrings and trip themselves.  While it is up to the dancer exactly how she ties her drawstrings, they end up neatly tucked into the shoe.

Now the ribbons.  Most stereotypical ballerina drawings show the ribbons crisscrossing up the leg and tied in a big bow.  This just doesn't happen.  They are crossed at the ankle in the same placement elastics in flat shoes are, then wrapped around the ankle and tied.  The excess ribbon is neatly tucked in the wrapped ribbon, between the Achilles tendon and the bone that feels like a little ball.  Like the drawstring, loose ribbons are a safety hazard for the same reasons.  Ribbons are usually one inch in width.

Pointing to my instep.

Like elastics, ribbons are sewn on the shoe no further forward than the instep.  Dancers will tailor their shoes individually based on how they like the placement, but that is generally the rule.  Different dancers will cross their ribbons with either the outside ribbon on top, or the inside ribbon on top.  Outside meaning the outer edge of the foot, and inside meaning the inner edge of the foot with the instep.  Personally, I like the inside on top, but as long as you stay consistent, it doesn't really matter either way.

The overwhelming majority of dancers also sew elastic to their pointe shoes.  Some sew them in a criss-cross in the same manner flat shoes are sewn.  In this case, the elastics are always sewn to the shoe and never sewn in a loop and wrapped around.  In other cases, myself included, a single piece is sewn on in a small loop to be worn near the base of the ankle.  It is not shown in these pictures because I took them as a reference for a particular show where the dancers don't wear elastics.  I sew mine on very close together on the heel since I have trouble with my heel staying on.

The overwhelming majority of pointe shoes have single soles.

Generally, properly tied pointe shoes seem to show a single band of ribbon in the back.  This doesn't always happen in real life, but is close to what we go for.

Now for the shoe itself.

A Point-of-View shot of pointe shoes.  Elastics are shown.

The flat part of the shoe on which the dancer balances is called the platform.  It usually is slightly larger than one square inch, but the size itself differs between brands of pointe shoes.  The part on top from the platform to the drawstring is known as the vamp.  The vamp usually covers the length of the toes.  The brand I wear does have an especially long vamp since I need a little more support there.  The underside, which is where the sole is, is known as the shank.  A helpful diagram can be found here.

Showing the platform head-on.

Pointe shoes hold their shape much more rigidly than flat shoes.  This support, along with the strength of the dancer's feet and legs, is what allows the dancer to balance on the tips of her toes.  (Google "X ray of pointe shoes" for a fun time.)

First position on demi-pointe 

First position en pointe.

Not a lot of people seem to realize that it is possible to stay on the balls of the toes in pointe shoes.  It makes sense, but not a lot of people think about it.  It is actually the intermediate phase between being flat on your feet and fully en pointe.  It allows for "rolling" up or down, which is proper technique for getting on and off pointe, and also tends to be safer for the dancers.  Some steps do require dancers to hop straight up onto pointe, but rolling up is considered proper technique.

Other References

I think that's everything I have to offer at this point.  If you want to see dancers who have really good feet for references, search for Svetlana Zakharova, Sylvie Guillem, and Isabelle Ciaravola.  They all have beautiful feet and their shoes fit them perfectly.  From there, your search engine should give you similar searches for other professional dancers.  Most professional dancers have their pointe shoes tailor made to their feet, instead of trying on a lot and trying to find a style that works for them like most non-professional dancers like myself.  If you want to draw a good ballerina, they are much better models than I am.  I just wanted to show you how ballet shoes worked.

When it comes to proper technique, I am unfortunately way too out of shape to be of use.  However, Zach and Ryan both run quality ballet blog and are themselves, extremely talented dancers.  For references on proper ballet technique, poses, and inspiration for art, check out their blogs.  If Tumblr is not your thing, photographer Gene Schiavone on Facebook is a very talented photographer and posts beautiful images of dancers every day.  He shoots professional dancers as well as students, so he also has a very wide range of references that you can use.

Video I made of 360 degree view of different types of shoes in different positions.

If you have any other questions or want to see something in particular, feel free to ask me anything.  If I can't answer it, I will be glad to refer you to someone who can.

Ombre Tights

Being involved in a musical takes up a lot of time.  Especially serving as a member of the cast and being on production staff, most of my time in the past four weeks was dedicated to doing various things.  Whether I was practicing my songs, staging choreography, or even just driving people from place to place, the show dominated my life.  Now that it's over, I'm not entirely sure what I should do.

Let's start with dying some tights.

Hello World's Most Flattering Camera Angle

I saw a couple pictures and tutorials about dip-dying tights, and with my love of all things dye and unwillingness to shell out $40 for a pair of ombre tights, I had to give it a shot.

I don't have fancy backgrounds.  Just my door.

I made the blue ones, loved them, and decided to try my hands at a black and red pair, similar to these.  I figured this would be a cool thing to post, so I went ahead and documented how I did it.

Every tutorial needs a shot of materials.

The tights themselves were these in ivory from JCPenny.  They were on sale for $10 a pair, so I figured why not?  I got them in an XL since the store was out of larges, but they ended up a little more sheer than I anticipated, so I'm glad I got the XL.  However, the most important factor of choosing these was the fabric blend.  These particular ones are 86% nylon and 14% spandex.  For those of you who may not know, Rit dye doesn't work on certain types of fibers.  Spandex is one of them.  The website says that as long as 60% of the blend is one that can be dyed, the color will take.  Since the ratio of nylon to spandex was so high, I ended up with a really good color saturation.

I use plastic storage bins whenever I'm dying relatively small amounts of cloth.  They're pretty cheap, and that way I don't have to worry about staining any good bowls or tubs or pots and the like.  I have two one-quart mason jars that I use to collect hot water and to do the actual mixing in.  I like to use a chopstick for stirring because they're cheap and a good length for the jars.  For measuring, I commandeered my mother's measuring spoons.  It's okay, I got her new ones.  After laying down a towel that I don't particularly care if it gets discolored, I was ready to go to town.

This is my favorite part.

The first thing I did was mix the dye.  I just used hot tap water straight from the faucet.  I live in a dorm, so it's probably not as hot as it could be, but I think it worked just fine.  Next, I mixed the colors.  In each jar, I put 4 teaspoons of wine, and two teaspoons of tangerine.  The dye colors, not actual wine and fruit.  When I did a test strip, the color was a little more purple than I wanted, so I added a teaspoon of scarlet and that gave me a nice red color.

Use a chopstick if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

After I poured the dye into the tub, it was time to submerge the tights.  Last night when I did the blue, I ended up sort of easing some space into each leg because the dye wasn't spreading evenly, but I didn't have a problem with it this time around.

The blue finally came off from last night.  Just in time to be replaced by red.

I really wanted a deep blood red color, so I let the tights sit in the red dye for about 10 minutes.  Then I rinsed the tights and the tub with cold water in the shower.  Looking at the red droplets all over the shower, I was really happy no surprise room inspections happened.

Note the red hand on the left corner.  The colors were actually much darker than they appear here.

Next, I mixed the black dye.  I put two tablespoons of black dye into each jar, mixed, then poured it in the tub.  Then comes the hard part.  I have a little bit of experience with dip-dying, since I used a lot of that in making bow ties over the summer.  I started it the same way I always do by doing one really quick dip of the entire thing (starting at the legs) into the dye.  The dye was a lot more pigmented than I thought and it started out a lot darker than I thought.  Looking back, it probably would have been better to start farther down since the color did diffuse upward a little bit and soften.  I moved the tights up about 2 inches, then let the dye sit for 5 minutes.  I moved the tights up about another 4 inches and let it sit for 5 more minutes.  As I got closer to the bottom, I started letting the dye sit for about 10 minutes to really get a rich black color.

Note the dye splashed all over the place.  I accidentally moved the tub too fast.  There's a physics problem in there somewhere.  We're learning fluid mechanics this week, so I'll let you know when we get to it.

When I finally finished, I rinsed everything out in the shower again, went downstairs, and threw them in the wash with a towel because I feel weird washing any one article of clothing by itself.  I threw in some underwear when I washed the blue ones last night.  I took a gamble because I noticed that the underwear was made of fabric that Rit couldn't dye, so I wasn't too worried about the color bleeding.  Lucky for me, that logic seemed to work and I don't have any blue undies that aren't supposed to be blue.

Freshly rinsed

Now I just have to wait for them to dry to see how they turned out.

Fresh out of the washer.

They ended up a little more purple than I anticipated, but since I couldn't decide between red and black and different shades of purple earlier, I'm not too upset.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how they look once they've dried!

Cookies and More Roses

This week I continued making roses for my flower crown, but I decided that plain solid color roses were a little boring.  After all, real roses come in many colors and patterns.  I decided to take matters into my own hands and use watercolors to paint a beautiful two-toned rose.  Yellow roses that fade to orange are my personal favorite color, so why not start with those?

In the process of painting

I started by painting a colored band around the outer edge of the petals and then blending inward with only water.  I went around and did one side of every section, let those sides dry, then turned them over and painted the other sides.  Not every petal was just alike, but in nature is anything really perfect?  I feel like the unevenness added a layer of reality to the rose.

 I went ahead and made a solid red rose while the paint was drying.

Once the paint was dry, I had to decide which side I wanted to be on the outside and which side I wanted to be on the inside before curling.  I chose to have whichever side had more color further to the center of the section to be the outside.  This way, a hint of orange color could still be seen under the curl.  Even though this paper was much thinner and easier to work with than last week's, I still used a paintbrush barrel to curl the corners of the petals over.  I like how that method made them look.

All done

For some reason, this one gave me a harder time with the first three petals, and I had to make a series of tears to get them to fold at all.  I'll investigate more into this next week.  The watercolor palette I have is iridescent, so I ended up with a really pretty sparkly edge to the rose.

The two roses I made today.  I'll try to continue the exponential growth into next week, but after that it'll just be ridiculous.

A few weeks ago, I found a pin leading to this recipe for Thin Mint truffles.  Those cookie balls have been central in my thoughts for a long time, and last night, I finally decided that I needed to make them.  I used dark chocolate Ghiradelli melting wafers, since I don't particularly care for almond bark.  However, I found myself in a bit of a dilemma.  I went to my boyfriend's apartment to make them, and since he lacked both a food processor and Ziplock bags, I was worried I wouldn't be able to crush the cookies.  Thanks to his ingenuity, he found two stackable bowls and I was able to crush them by putting the cookies in the larger bowl and using the bottom of the other one to pummel them.  I let the balls freeze overnight before dipping them in chocolate to keep them from falling apart in the warm chocolate.  That has happened before, so be warned.

Complete with a decorative drizzle

I even had a little chocolate left over, so I dipped some cookies we also baked the night before in it.

The final chocolaty spread

Personally, I preferred my Oreo balls better, but these turned out to be exceptionally delicious.  The leftovers are currently in my freezer, hoping to survive the night so I can bring them to rehearsal tomorrow.

Oh baby

Even though I ended up not doing a lot of the things I wanted to over fall break, I managed to both catch up on a lot of sleep and make some pretty cool stuff.  These mint cookie truffles are definitely getting filed away for future reference.

Paper Roses and Pumpkins

That sounds like a hipster Tumblr URL.  Anyway, finally succumbing to my über-white girl and slightly hipster nature,  I have been yearning for a flower crown for as long as I can remember.  Not the cheap puffy flower kind with the ribbons that you get when you're a little girl (thanks, Mom), but the beautiful, elaborate, expensive circlets of the modern music festival.  One that says "I'm so in touch with nature, but mine's clearly better than yours because mine was $80 and yours was like, $60."  Since I am a poor college student who doesn't have $80 to spend on a fancy flower crown (pasta and ice cream on the other hand...), I decided I would make my own.  I found this tutorial for paper roses via Pinterest, and figured why not; I'll try to make a flower crown from it.

I also figured, why only have one color rose?  So I picked a few pretty colors of cardstock to fashion into fanciful foliage.  Then I went even further.  Why only have solid color roses?  Real roses come in many different color variations and patterns.  I figured that I could probably paint some contrasting colors, so I got some watercolors as well.  I've spent so much money at Joann's that I should probably be considered part owner.  (Or at least given a sponsorship.  Joann can ya hear me?)

My haul.  Look at those tiny little easels!  Look at them!

I printed out the rose petals from the tutorial and decided to use them as a pattern on my cardstock so I wouldn't have to worry about having a back and a front and all that jazz.

I started with a really pretty pearlescent peachy pink color.

I traced the template, cut them out, and used those as an additional template to trace two roses at the same time.  Then came the curling.  The tutorial says to use a pair of scissors to curl the paper, similar to how one would curl ribbon at the end of balloons.  However, this cardstock was WAY too thick to do that.  plus, the petals were so small and close together that it was hard to maneuver even my small scissors in there.  So, I took a paintbrush and used the barrel of it that to curl the corners under.

Freshly curled flat rose petals.

I won't go into too much detail on assembly since the original tutorial did a good job of it.  I glued the tab on the bottom of piece 4, and on the top of the rest.  The wire I used wasn't strong enough to poke through the cardstock, so I took a large sewing needle and made a hole in the center of every one after I glued them into the conical shape.  I put a ring of hot glue around the bottom of the outside of the cones to attach them to the next one.

A finished rose

This particular piece of cardstock was way too thick to properly wrap around and curl and manipulate.  After an hour and a half and only finishing one rose, I decided that my flower crown would probably have to be an ongoing project.

Not wanting to go to bed tonight without finishing anything, I picked up my watercolors and decided to do some painting on those adorable little canvases.  I cut a plastic water bottle in half to use as my brush holder, since I didn't want to give up any of my plastic drinking cups.  Also, it's environmentally friendly!  Sort of.  

Note the pumpkin pi.

At the end of the day, I'm happy with what I did.  Even though I didn't get my flower crown today, that rose turned out a lot prettier than I expected it to.  I thought it would be one of those Pinterest projects that is actually really hard and one has to be really skilled to do it.  It was actually really easy, and I don't really see a lot of places where it is possible to mess it up.  Even if it doesn't come out perfect, it makes it more realistic since nothing in nature is perfect to begin with.

So that's what I did today.

Making Letter Shirts

Today, I made letter shirts for my boyfriend.  His got eaten by the washing machine, so he enlisted my help in making a new one.  After a trip to Joann's where he carefully picked out the fabrics and Tshirts he wanted, he turned them over to my superior sewing skills.

Picking which fabric he wanted the letters to be

"The organic should be in the middle, framed by the geometric ones for balance." -Casey

I should probably mention now that I am not a member of Greek life.  I never have been, and I probably will never be a sorority girl.  Therefore, I have never done this before, so I just kind of winged it.  This tutorial was super helpful and was the one I followed.  We got the letters themselves from here, and since I am computer illiterate, Casey fixed them and printed them the size he wanted.  We tried making a letter sweatshirt, but that didn't end well.  It was so bulky, and I didn't have heat 'n bond and my sewing machine hated me that day, so that's sitting unfinished on a shelf somewhere in his closet.

Dorm life yo.  Check out my sweet setup.  I have all the essentials.  Sewing machine, cell phone, note cards, molecular model kit, shelf/printer, and motivational poster.

Thanks for the motivation, Ryan Lochte

I'm not going to go into much detail on how I made them, since there are other people who can do it much better than I can (see link above).  I will talk about how I knotted the fabric, though.  My sewing machine doesn't take exactly the same path in reverse as it does forward, so backstitching would have just given a messy finish.  To fix this, I took a hand needle, threaded the thread tail from the beginning and end of the stitching, and pulled in through to the inside of the shirt.  From there, I triple knotted it together to the tail ends from the underside.

I know yellow on yellow is hard to see, but I hope you get the gist. 

Regarding the Heat 'n Bond, I got the kind in the red package with the paper backing.  On my second trip to Joann's (the first being the trip to get the fabric), I got the kind in the purple package because it was supposedly more "sewable."  I hadn't worked with Heat 'n Bond before, so I was a very disappointed when I got home and it was nothing more than fusible interfacing that I already had 10 yards of for bow ties (but that's another post).  I tried to use that for the hoodie, but was more trouble than it was worth, so I went back for the fusible "no-sew" one.  My sewing machine had no problem going through it even though it said "DO NOT SEW."  It was EXPONENTIALLY easier than the first type.

From start to finish, each shirt took about an hour and twenty minutes to make.  The hardest part was probably setting my machine to a zig-zag pattern that Casey wanted.  Once that was done, it was simply aligning the machine to sew where I wanted to. 

The finished product.  He's a PiLam by golly.

I still have to iron on his nickname on the back, but that's easy.

Close up on stitching detail.  That's what bloggers do, right?  Check out that detail.  Hot damn. *wolf whistles*

For future reference, yellow letters on a purple shirt could probably do with a thin layer of interfacing or something so they don't get washed out by the darker background.

Anyway, sometimes I do things, and this was the thing I did today.