This is a ballet tutu which is been in storage for some time and it has quite a number of
very hard folds. So I have a steamer which has very fine water vapour, and I'm going
to introduce some acid-free tissue rolled in between the layers, so this opens up my fold.
And hopefully the steam will relax it sufficiently.
Although the layers are stitched – so I don't have a lot of access to
humidify them individually – I am going to try nevertheless in between the the tacking, to relax
some of these folds so that when it's on the mannequin it looks better and has more volume.
So
it's a good idea to humidify before
mounting so we can judge exactly the degree of underpinning it might need to
display the so it's at its best, because when it's all compressed from storage, it gives the wrong
impression. And once we separate the layers and steam them, we can see how voluminous it is and
how much we need to add because of course we don't have the moving body wearing it.
So it's a very static display.
So I just hover over it and let the steam work into the net.
And the fold you just here is already disappeared which is brilliant. Quite magic really.
you