It’s uncomfortably literal.
For me, at least. The dancer who wears it, the choreographer, and all of my students thought it was pretty. *shrug* If you’re in the greater Chicago area and find yourself really curious as to why a clock-a-tu is even a thing, stop by Wheaton Drama and check out The Last Five Years. <shameless plug> It opens this weekend. There’s singin’ and dancin’ and stuff. The clock-a-tu and the “magic” flying dress are my two builds, and the both go into a relatively comic sequence.
And if a clock-a-tu ever has to happen in your own life, here’s the sitch: it’s a standard 8 layer poofball tutu, with a circular topper. The topper is two layers of organza. The numbers and clock doo-das are all cut from a black glitter organza that was block-fused to black interfacing. (Block-fuse is when you blinding fuse yardages of fabric to interfacing and work out the details later. It’ less maddening than trying to fuse individual numbers.)
The numbers were printed in a 175pt font, then cut (paper and cloth at the same time for stability), glue-basted in place, and stitched. That was plenty annoying, so the doo-das went on with the miracle of Fabri-Tac. Because, seriously, gluing them down was annoying enough. Sewing was not going to happen. ;)