More hattery :)

Hello everyone,

 

I hope your first few weeks of 2015 have been as fun and amazing as you wish the year to continue :)

 

I am now back at college, so back to more a bit more (mostly enjoyable :P) hecticness. Which Is why I was glad I made some more progress on my blue Hat I started on new years- before I had to hit the books again :P

 

I managed to get the lace pieces sewn on that I chose as my decoration:

 

 

You may recognise the lace motifs... they are from one of the dresses I picked up from the costume store sale a while ago :P I really like the pattern of the lace and have found so many things so far that it compliments, including the blue velvety fabric of this hat (which is actually from a spare curtain :P).

 

I also managed to squeeze in the time to make this little fascinator of my own design:

 

 

The main fabric coating this fascinator was another of my costume store bargains- they have all come in so useful! The leopard print fabric was from a shirt I didn't really need any more and I got the little metal charms when I was in the IOW one time. It was fun designing my first fascinator- From materials and a shape which seemed quite crazy it came out with the sophisticated but quirky factor I was aiming for I think :P I am happy... now I just need an event to wear it to! Haha :-)

 

Speak to you all again soon,

 

Bye XxXxX

Vintage/antique style GIVEAWAY :D

Hi, 

As promised  I bring you the latest giveaway! :) This one kind of has an antique/vintage style to it:

So you could win:

-A set of little house shaped buttons

-A length of dotty ribbon

-A pretty set of note cards and envelopes

-6 flat back gold and silver, metal, butterflies and flower charms

-And last but not least 3 lace motifs for you to sew on whatever you want :-)

Now for the details:

To enter all you have to do is leave a comment below. Make sure I have some way to contact you e.g a blog address or ravelry name- in case you win!

If you want a whole 2!!!! extra entries though just post a link to my Etsy shop or my blog on your blog or Facebook or Twitter (etc...) page (make sure to link to your post below :)

Anyone, any age, anywhere can enter and the giveaway will close, and winner will be announced on Friday the 19th of September. 

Good luck!!!!!

I hope you like the giveaway and I will speak to you all again soon to tell you about my wedding dress course :D

Byeee xxx

Corsets and chocolate :)

 Hi,

Last Friday I managed to finish my corset!!! I was so happy as I though I would just fall short because I had a lot of hand sewing over the eyelets to do but I managed to really get into the flow of it and got it all done :D Here is my finished corset, the mannequin is not quite the right size so you will have to some imagining to think what it would look like on my actual model who it is made to measure for:

 

 

It is fully boned a the front and laces up at the centre back and the straps are off the shoulder.

 

I am so happy my 17th century corset is done :-) It was a lot of work but I am very proud of it and enjoyed making it. Next is onto the wheel farthingale (period skirt supporter) to go with it!

 

I am off on my Easter break now though and my Brothers Birthday is coming up really soon. I wanted to make him something for his birthday but something different to the kind of things I normally make. I also wanted it to be really fun so I came up with the idea for a Domo Pinata!:

 

 

I made it from a cereal box, 4 toilet roll tubes, some red and white card and painted it all.

 

I have filled it with lots of tasty sweets:

 

 

Hehehe :)

I hope my brother likes it and I hope it holds up to a little bit of whacking before it breaks open :P

 

In my final bit of news for this post I finished the first of  the different bridal headbands I have begun designing and making recently. I am really pleased with the finished result:

 

 

I made the little ribbon roses and I put together the middle piece using the lace applique technique onto a fine net/gauze type material. There are little diamante in the centre of the flowers which sparkle in the light (you can just about see them in the photo :). I thought the peacock feather looked pretty and added a bit of interest. It is quite bohemian and vintage in style. I am still working on the others so it will be interesting to see what style/vibe they give off when they are finished.

 

I hope you are all very well and that you are having a good week so far :o) I am very excited for tomorrow as my brother is off school so we are going to the local park to play tennis then he is treating me to a Costa Coffee (my favourite!!!) lunch- sandwich, cake and everything! So generous! I treated him to a cadbury's creme egg mcflurry today- very tasty, I do recommend :P

 

Speak to you all again very soon,

 

Bye XxXxXxX

Wackiness and weddings

Hi everyone :)

Sadly I can't bring you any pictures of the wedding fashion show as it had to be cancelled due to the organiser having a family emergency so my thoughts go out to her. The wedding fair did go ahead though so the lady I applied for work experience with said I could still come for an hour or so to look around etc. The building it was held in was really lovely and historic/period and when I got home I was in a bridal mood! I decided to finally start making some of the bridal headbands I designed ages ago. Here is a work in progress picture:

 

It will be interesting to see them fully done, they are coming along as planned so far :P

 

Hehe, talking about bridal wear and bringing me on to the 'wackiness' section of this post.... me and my brother went to Ripley's believe it or not in London this weekend and they had this exhibition of wedding dresses made from toilet paper!:

 

Hehe they are soo good! My dad said they are alright as long as it doesn't rain, which is very true! :P

 

In ripleys they also had these tiny shoes called lily shoes- they do really weird stuff to your feet but I just thought they looked like cute little pixie shoes:

 

They even seemed to have a pattern for them:

 

I may try it one day but a modified version as I don't want to squeeze up my feet to be all tiny!

 

In other news it is my friends birthday coming up this weekend and we are all going to Wahaca the Mexican restaurant to celebrate. I wanted to make her a little something to go along with the rest of her gifts.

 

(P.S if you are my friend whose birthday it is you should stop reading now to prevent ruining any surprises!!!!)

 

I wasn't sure exactly what but I knew I wanted it to be cute. In the end I decided to go for a panda and then just started making and Little Tall Panda was born:

 

 

He is a brooch. I called him little tall panda as he is small but his body ended up quite long :-)

One of her favourite colours is purple so I added the purple bow and buttons to make him look all snazzy and such-like. I hope she likes him :0)

 

And my last bit of this post is just an update on my corset! This week Wednesday to Thursday is the last 3 days we have to finish our corsets (though we may get a little bit of time later on if we finish our 2nd part of this project early). I am getting there with mine, it does resemble a corset properly now and all the bones are in it:

 

Just some more bias binding, putting the eyelets in and then all the tabs which will be the fiddly and potentially time consuming bits but I hope I will get it all done :-)

 

I am off to bed now to get my beauty sleep, lol :)

 

See you all soon and thanks for reading my lovely friends!

 

Byeeeeeeeeee XxXxXxXxX

Vintage couture sewing techniques- day 3, 4 and 5

Hi,

 

Today I bring you some pictures of what I learnt on the rest of my Vintage couture sewing techniques course :) I can't believe that today was the last day, it went so quickly, probably because I was having so much fun!

 

On day 3 (Wednesday) we spent the whole day- over 4 hours (!!!!!) just making this special curved seam pocket. There were so many stages involving different types of hand sewing due to it being couture. The outcome was worth it though, it is the most lovely pocket I have yet seen :P

 

Here is a work in progress picture:

 

And here is the finished project- the pattern lines up all over once constructed, that is another reason it takes so much care and time:

 

 

Day 4 we did this decorative technique sampler including trapunto quilting (the very padded one- padding is inserted after sewing), normal quilting, roleau, different types of applique, openwork and encrusting (the dark blue one- inserting and patch/shape of fabric into the background fabric):

 

And today- the last day, we did some scalloping:

You can use it around hems or cuffs or down the front of fancy garment :)

 

 

And we did some lace applique, hand tucks, machine tucks, a French seam and hand rolled and pin tuck hems:

 

Hehee, yes all of those things are on the piece of fabric above. It is surprising how many techniques you can try on one piece of fabric :0)

 

And finally we tried some different couture finishings/fastenings:

 

It will be so weird not getting up and going to learn more tomorrow, though I only have to wait a couple of weeks and then I am going on my millinery course :D And next week I am going to practice some more techniques at home.

 

I made this pincushion for the course tutor as he was really nice to us all :)

 

I put a T on it for his name, he really liked it so I was pleased, he even started using it today! :o)

 

Just in case any one is interested he runs quite a few courses in different places here is his website- http://www.vonnordheim.co.uk/

 

I hope you all had a good week too,

 

See you soon,

 

Byeeee XXX

Holiday (and Olympic!) snaps :)

Hi guys!

I am back now and as promised I bring you pictures, lol :P Hehehe, I will try not to bore you all! (I have only chosen my best snaps :)

Here is the view from the back of the glass bottom boat, the water was very blue in Malta and it was ALWAYS hot and sunny:

Interestingly there is no tide in Malta... I don't know why, there just isn't! :-P

This is the best picture I could get of the fish through the windows at the bottom of the boat:

It was cool to the see the 'underwater world' though I did feel a little bit sea sick!

Hehehe, here is the infamous 'Maxibon cookie', soooooo tasty :0)

It got a bit battered on the way home from the shop but It was still very yummy!

If only it was possible I would have got one for a giveaway, lol!

Another thing that was super tasty was the ice cream filled croissants me and my family had by the sea front, I very much recommend giving it a try at home:

I had cookie and banana ice cream......mmmmmm.... I wish I had one now :)

In the main set of shops near our parade they had lots of handmade Maltese lace and my mum and dad treated me to this beautiful umbrella, I absolutely love it. I can't wait too use it in the park on a sunny day or at  the next family barbecue!

Last of my holiday snaps are the pictures of some of my makes :-):

Hehehe, I hope you all had a nice couple of weeks while I was away too (and I hope my pics didn't bore you too much :P) xxx

In other news as I'm sure all of you will already know London is hosting the 2012 Olympics! Me and my family luckily managed to get some tickets, we got to go and watch the handball today. I had watched quite a few events on TV whilst on holiday so I was quite excited to go and see the Olympic park in real life. (I'm also lucky I only live 10 mins from Stratford so we didn't have a long journey to get there either!)

Here is the main Olympic stadium, what you  see as you walk in:

It is a very pretty stadium. As you can see from the picture the park was relatively crowded but not jam-packed which was good as it was quite hot today. The queue for the mega store was huge but it did move quickly and only took about 10 mins to get into the shop for a look.

I also saw the velodrome quite clearly too:

I got to go into the basketball stadium though as that was where the handball was

The basketball stadium:

Here are some pictures inside I took from my seat:

It was the mens quarter final, Spain V France. It was quite exciting at the end as it was 22, 22 with two seconds to go and then France scored to win the match. They told you all the rules at the start so that was good as then I knew what was going on :-P

I promise there will be less pictures in the next post, I will give all your eyes a rest! I just wanted to share with you all my adventures :)

See you all soon my lovely lovely friends!

Bye XxXxX

P.S. In the next couple of days I will be celebrating my Second Blogaversairy (well belated one as it was a few days ago now) as I mentioned before I went away so make sure to check back soon :D

Byyyyyyyyeeeee

Holiday Update 2

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all still well and having a nice time :)

It is still very hot here in Malta (like it is all year round I think! :P). The other day me and my family went on an underwater safari boat trip, the boat drove out to a nearby rocky island and drove around it while all of the people on the boat got to go down to the glass bottom bit and look at the fishes. It made me a tiny bit sea sick :S But I did enjoy seeing the jellyfish/fish alot :0) (I'm still struggling with pictures but I will post them all up when I get home :)

Then yesterday we went and had an ice cream by the sea. Me and my dad tried ice cream served in a croissant, it was very yummy. I will definitely recreate it when I get home! (I will also try to recreate this ice cream I bought in a shop. It was called a 'Maxibon Cookie', it was like a half choc dipped cookie ice cream sandwich - DELICIOUS!)

After my croissant ice cream my day got even better as in one shop my mum treated me to a traditional Malta lace sun umbrella, it is beautiful and I can't wait to use it in the park at home!

Along with the chocolate brooches I previously mentioned I have now made candy floss, french fries and corn on the cob ones. I have been fitting in extra crafting as we have been staying in a bit longer watching bits of the Olympics which has been fun.

Which reminds me, the synchronised swimming is coming on very soon and I really want to see it (it looks so fun!) so I will speak to you all soon (probably when I get home now :)

Bye for now my lovely friends :) XxXxX <3 p="p">