Mention tulle to someone, and you will quickly discover that they either love it or hate it; there does not seem to be a middle ground with this fabric. I personally love it! I especially love the delightful watercolor effects you can achieve with different color layers stacked on top of each other, as well as the effect that different lining colors can give to the same layers of tulle.

However, most people only associate tulle with weddings, and in shades of ivory and white, or modern Goth fashion where black tulle is a staple. There is so much more to tulle than fluffy white wedding gowns and black Goth extravaganzas! Delicately colored layers of tulle were used for many of the fabulous 1950’s evening and cocktail dresses loved by vintage fashionistas today. Many modern designers such as Tony Ward, Zuhair Murad and Elie Saab have used tulle layers and much brighter tulle colors in their recent collections. At the moment, some of the most inventive uses of tulle are found in quinceanera dresses. In Latin American cultures, a quinceanera is a girls’ 15th birthday party, her “coming out” party, and is a HUGE deal with an elaborate party and preparations. The family often spends more on it than they will spend on her wedding. Some of the dresses are a bit overdone to my taste, but to each their own! To inspire you with ways you can use tulle in your own designs, I’ve put together a collection on Pinterest, Tulle Inspirations, of classic and modern couture, as well as vintage cocktail and modern quinceanera dresses.

Tulle is an amazing fabric, with so many different possibilities, but getting a designer look using tulle can be daunting at first. It can be expensive to purchase by the yard (and you need a LOT of tulle to make an impact). And then there are the colors. Do you use light or dark? What colors will work together and which will clash?

Through a set of experiments, I hope to demystify the use of colored layers in tulle to help create the couture looks you want to achieve, and hopefully inspire you to play with the translucent delight of this wonderful fabric.

 

Buying Tulle

Tulle can be purchased by the yard in just about every fabric store, but most of the time there will be only pale pastels or whites and ivories in stock. My local stores did not carry the vibrant, rich colors I wanted to work with. The darkest color available was a pale dove grey, and this jade color which almost vanishes as a single layer.

 

Thankfully, there are lots of online retailers that do carry other colors by the bolt, it is also much cheaper to buy it by the bolt than to purchase it by the yard. Tulleshop.com has a 40 yard bolt of 54” wide tulle for $8.95, 22 cents a yard, far cheaper than the $1.50 that my local fabric store wants to charge! Save-on-crafts.com has the same size bolts for a bit more, $18.95, but they have colors that Tulleshop.com does not have, and Papermart.com is another source for tulle, at $15.95 a bolt, with a slightly different range of colors than the other two shops. There are also Amazon and eBay as well, search for “tulle by the bolt” and see what’s available in the colors you desire.

 

Colors in Tulle

The color of the tulle on the bolt is highly deceptive. Tulle en masse can be very dark or bright on the bolt, and then be almost invisible as a single layer. Do not judge the color of the tulle by the bolt color! Try and see a single layer, or a bunched photo of it to get an idea of how the color will look when used. Often on a website, the tulle bolts will be photographed folded up, but the tulle spools or tulle circles will show what the color really is in a single layer.

On the left, is the color of the brown tulle on the bolt, it is very dark, almost black. but at 1 layer, seen far right, it is almost invisible. 

 

The colors I chose from Tulleshop.com were the following from top to bottom (actual color names in [brackets]):
Black, Ivory, Green [Emerald], Blue [Periwinkle Blue], Purple, Pink [Shocking Pink], Red [Burgundy], Brown.

 

The colors change dramatically when you unwrap the tulle from the bolt, and that is when the fun of blending colors begins, as the colors meld and blend together, or at least some of them do! The tulle in this photo is in the same order as the photo above, but you can see that the colors are much softer and lighter in a single or double layer. The Jade tulle, barely visible between the Emerald and the Ivory, far right, was purchased at my local craft store. In retrospect, I wish I had purchased a yellow and an orange, as that would have allowed for even more possible color variations, but 9 colors allows for plenty of variations, 362,880 to be exact!

 

Blending the Colors

To experiment with blending the colors, I started with a one yard piece of each color of tulle for easy handling, and began trying different color combinations to see which ones would work together and which ones would clash. There were some surprises in these combinations, the Pink-Jade combination was much prettier than expected, but the Blue-Green, Purple-Blue and Pink-Purple were simply stunning.

Top row: Blue-Green, Purple-Blue, Green-Purple
Middle row: Pink-Brown, Pink-Purple, Pink-Jade
Bottom row: Pink-Red, Red-Brown, Red-Blue

 

Once I had an understanding of what color combinations would work together, I then moved on to more complex combinations. I have three ensembles that have been in the planning stages for a while: Rose, Lake and Sunset. For each ensemble, I picked four colors of tulle that blended with each other, and photographed a few variations of each, as well as adding black as a top and bottom layer, to see how the color shading would change.

With four colors you can create 24 unique color effects, with five colors there are 120, and when you add a sixth color there are 720! Obviously I did not photograph all of these, but mixed and matched the layers in the following sets. To keep track of what color was used where in the four color stacks, I assigned each color an abbreviation, and noted down next to each photo number what the order the colors had been in the stack. As I discovered during the photo editing process, being able to reproduce the color effects would be impossible just by looking at the photos alone and not having the notes. 

 

Rose
The Rose ensemble is inspired by pink and white tea roses. To capture the colors, I picked Pink, Red, Ivory and Brown to make the stack.

Because tulle is translucent, very different color effects can be achieved simply by flipping the top two layers as was done in Rose1 and Rose 2, or flipping the stack over from top to bottom, as seen in the difference between Rose 2 and Rose 3.

First I played with the blending of Pink and Red as the top layers in Rose 1 and 2, and then moved them to the bottom of the stack in Rose 3.

Rose 1: Pink, Red, Ivory, Brown

 

Rose 2: Red, Pink, Ivory, Brown

Rose 3: Brown, Ivory, Pink, Red

 

I then ordered the colors from dark to light, so that the Brown, Red and Pink all blended together in Rose 4, and flipped the stack over so it was light to dark in Rose 5.

Rose 4: Brown, Red, Pink, Ivory

 

Rose 5: Ivory, Pink, Red, Brown

 

Black was added to the top of the Rose 4 stack, creating Rose 6, and then flipped the colors, light to dark, keeping Black on top.

Rose 6: Black, Brown, Red, Pink, Ivory

 

Rose 7: Black, Ivory, Pink, Red, Brown

 

And flipped the whole stack, putting black on the bottom

Rose 8: Ivory, Pink, Red, Brown, Black

 

Lake
The Lake ensemble is inspired by the color of water in the lake by my childhood home. Part blue, part green and always changing, the lake is never the same color twice. I want the colors to flow, and meld together like the colors of water. For this stack, I chose Green, Jade, Ivory and Blue. The green is much more vibrant and pretty in reality, the camera does not do it justice!

First, I went for a very soft, light look, with two layers of Ivory.

Lake 1: Ivory, Green, Ivory, Blue

 

But this was too light colored, as I wanted the color to be a bit greener, so removed the second Ivory layer and added Jade. Lake 2 and 3 are the same stack, just flipped top to bottom.

Lake 2: Jade, Green, Ivory Blue

 

Lake 3: Blue, Ivory, Green, Jade

 

I moved the Ivory and Blue layers around next, and moved them from the top of the stack, to the bottom

Lake 4: Ivory, Blue, Jade, Green

 

Lake 5: Green, Jade, Blue, Ivory

 

And then added Black to the top of the stack for Lake 6, and then flipped the whole stack over top to bottom for Lake 7

Lake 6: Black, Green, Jade, Blue, Ivory

 

Lake 7: Ivory, Blue, Jade, Green, Black

 

Black wasn’t quite the right look for the lake effect I want, so pulled that out of the stack and replaced it with Purple, first as the top layer, and then as the bottom layer, the rest of the stack staying as it was.

Lake 8: Purple, Green, Jade, Blue, Ivory

 

Lake 9: Green, Jade, Blue, Ivory, Purple

 

Sunset
For the Sunset ensemble, I want a lovely melding of colors, as one sees during a really spectacular sunset. For this stack, I chose Pink, Blue, Purple and Ivory.

At first I put Pink on top, and then tried it on the bottom of the stack, keeping the rest of the colors in the same order

Sunset 1: Pink, Blue, Ivory, Purple

 

Sunset 2: Blue, Ivory, Purple, Pink

 

Ivory was moved to the top, for a paler look.

Sunset 3: Ivory, Blue, Purple, Pink

 

Black was added to the top of the stack, and then it was flipped over top to bottom.

Sunset 4: Black, Ivory, Blue, Purple, Pink

 

Sunset 5: Pink, Purple, Blue, Ivory, Black

 

While these colors gave a lovely impression of a cold winter sunset, I wanted something warmer, a little more tropical, so I removed the Ivory, and added Red. These two are the same stacks, just flipped top to bottom.

Sunset 6: Red, Pink, Purple, Blue

 

Sunset 7: Blue, Purple, Pink, Red

 

Adding black to the stack was a lovely addition, and created some great shadows.

Sunset 8: Black, Blue, Purple, Pink, Red

 

Sunset 9: Red, Pink, Purple, Blue, Black

 

Colored Linings

All of the above photos were shot on a white background, but what if the background color is changed? Sunset 6 and Sunset 7 were picked for this next experiment. In these two color sets, the color order is the same, but the stack is flipped from top to bottom.

The different lining colors produce radically different results, causing the tulle color which is closest to the lining color to wash out and become mostly invisible.

 

White

Sunset 6 on white

Sunset 7 on white

 

Purple

Sunset 6 on purple

Sunset 7 on purple

 

Yellow

Sunset 6 on yellow

Sunset 7 on yellow

 

Pink

Sunset 6 on pale pink

Sunset 7 on pale pink

 

Red

Sunset 6 on red

Sunset 7 on red

 

Ratios of Fullness

For all the photos above, I used the full width of the tulle, 54 inches, gathered and pleated by hand, and held down by a metal ruler. This obviously would not work for an actual garment, and so the next set of experiments uses a more standard method of gathering, running stitch with a sturdy thread.

A pretty standard ratio for gathering is 3 to 1, 3 inches of fabric gathered to 1 inch, in this case 54” gathered to 18”. In tulle however, this does not make for a very full gather; usually a higher ratio is used to achieve a fuller effect. I have used the same two sets, Sunset 6 and Sunset 7, on a white background as before, to show how the color effect changes with the density of the gathers.

 

18 inches, 3 to 1 ratio

Sunset 6

Sunset 7

 

13.5 inches, 4 to 1 ratio

Sunset 6

Sunset 7

 

9 inches, 6 to 1 ratio

Sunset 6

Sunset 7

 

4.5 inches, 12 to 1 ratio

Sunset 6

Sunset 7

 

The same sets of tulle, knife pleated at a ratio of 3 to 1.

Sunset 6

Sunset 7

 

 

In Conclusion

I hope that these fun experiments with colored tulle have inspired you to move beyond boring layers of solid colors and to explore the fun delights of layering colors of tulle to create new and unique color effects in your own designs. Don't be scared to play with color in front of the camera until you get a blend that makes your heart sing with joy at the color. Be bold!

Happy blending!

 

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