A post that is bursting at the seams! (no pun intended :P)

Hi everyone,

I hope you have all had a brilliant week :) There is quite a lot in the post so I recommend grabbing tasty treat before you start!

First up I would like to apologise for posting about finishing my Kameez (my friend told me this is its actual name :) twice- I got so wrapped up in all the work I have got going on at the moment that I forgot I actually had already posted about it.

 

Now I actually have some NEW photos/news for you :P

 

First up here are the pictures of my finished early 16th century foundation wear (wheel farthingale, bum roll and petticoat) and corset, being worn by my lovely (and very patient may I say!) model:

 

 

This is effectively early 16th century underwear so wandering around like above in those times would have been pretty obscene, lol! But my model looks beautiful and I loved working with her on the project so thank you to her! XXX

I enjoyed my time of being a model too, I got to put on my pretty corset, bum roll and petticoat and prance about outside among the trees on campus in the sun- so fun!

 

Next point on this whistle stop tour of all my weeks news is my finished Mens period shirt:

 

 

 

This was the project we have been doing this week and are meant to do next week. I finished my shirt this week (like some of the other girls) so next week we will be making a period womens chemise. Hehe hopefully I will finish that too  :P

 

Now onto my last bit of news- The wedding fair catwalk show I got to help out at as a dresser!!!! I had such an amazing day- chilling backstage with the models (hehehe, I love saying that as it makes me sound really cool! lol :P), then helping them to change into each wedding dress really quickly before they had to head back onto the catwalk again :)

 

Here are the beautiful ladies in their finale dresses:

 

 

These were all the hardest ones to get them in as most of them were lace up and not zip ups!

 

Here was backstage all the space we had for the dresses, the 5 girls, me, and the bridal boutique owner and her daughter. It got pretty hectic :P:

 

 

We had to lay the dresses next to go on the girls on the floor like big meringues so they could just step out of their other ones and step straight into the new ones and we could them pull them up and zip them up quickly, before finding a veil or fascinator to match: 

 

 

Here are all the models in their 2nd wedding dress each (they had 3 wedding dressed and one bridesmaid dress each- times this by 5 and there were 20 dresses overall!):

 

And here they are coming off the catwalk:

 

 

We did two shows, one at 12.30 and one at 2.30. I think we did really well as there was only 3 of us dressing 5 models and we managed to keep a constant flow of dresses- the catwalk was never empty. Without a rehearsal this was really good. The models were so good and all really nice which helped as they got their walking routine and order of going down the catwalk sorted pretty much by themselves which meant we could focus on getting all the ensembles and order of dresses ready in time. I have been invited to help out at the fashion catwalk the lady who owns the bridal boutique is going to host when she opens her new shop- yay! I am sooo excited :D I can't wait to do it all again with all new dresses!!!!

 

Wooo, after that long post I think you deserve a rest. Thanks for sticking with it and reading all my news, I better let you go now and I better get in bed as I have quite a bit of work to type up this weekend for college, and also tomorrow me and my mum are going on a cupcake an macaroon walking tour of London and I would hate to be too tired for that :0)

 

Speak again soon,

 

Bye my lovely friends XxXxXxXxX

 

I finished my salwar (quite a while ago now :P)

Hilloo,

 

Just a quick post today as I didn't want to neglect all of my lovely blog friends but I just finished my corset and foundation wear project at college Pictures coming soon :P) and have been hard at work getting all of my written work ready for Tuesday when I hand it in and my presentation on Monday, but anyway enough of my business and cue the pretty pictures!.....

 

I remembered the other day that I had forgot to post up any pictures of my Kameez that I actually finished a couple of weeks ago now, silly me :P

 

I thought better late than never though so here it is:

 

 

I am really pleased with it and it fits me really well. I started scratch from looking at pictures in the magazines I picked up at the Asian wedding fair all the way through making the pattern and toiling to finally making it up in the final fabric so it was nice that it came out exactly as I had imagined it in my head :o)

 

A tiny bit of quite exciting news... If you remember the wedding fashion show I was invited to help at was cancelled before, well, this Sunday I have been invited to do another one- an even bigger one with a full dress rehearsal and two catwalk showings! I am supppeerr excited as it will be such great experience for me. I will post pictures and tell you all about it after. I can't wait :-D

 

I'm off to bed now to get a good nights sleep ready for the weekend- The Eurovision song contest (Yay!) Saturday and the wedding show Sunday.

 

I hope you all have a good weekend planned too,

 

Speak soon,

 

Byeee XxXxXx

 

 

Brothers birthday + creative stitches show

Hello,

I mentioned a few posts ago that my Brothers birthday was coming up- it was this Tuesday (He loved his Domo pinata so I was pleased. It took a while to brake into so I didn't do too badly at making it! :) As usual my dad pulled an amazing cake(s!) out of the hat, this time I got to help though as I was at home and my dad said he couldn't achieve it all in the time without me :0) It was sooo fun and here are the results....

... A whole pizza dinner with drinks, sides and desserts- all made from cake!!!!

here is the mushroom (chopped dried banana  pieces) and olive (black royal icing) pizza:

The spaghetti (royal icing) and meatball (cake, chocolate and biscuit balls- I made these :P) cake:

Margherita pizza. We made the cheese look cooked by pinching the icing circles and putting little blobs of brown caramel biscuit spread on it to look liked the browned bubbles of cheese:

Onion rings (dried apple rings dipped in chocolate and biscuit crumbs), garlic bread (brioche with white chocolate on it sprinkled with grated dessicated coconut dyed green for herbs :P) and dough balls (brioche again!):

Garlic pizza bread cake:

the coke glasses were done by melting chocolate to coat the inside of the glass then filling with crumbled cake before topping with chocolate spread and inserting a stripy straw:

 

Chocolate cake chocolate gateau 1:

Chocolate cake chocolate gateau 2 (I made this one :-):

Safe to say we are still eating it all now, despite giving lots away to people! It is sooo tasty though and so cool to help make- we spent a long time thinking if what sweet items we could use to create the most realistic savoury look :P

Hahaha, In between cake eating I did manage to get to the Creative stitches and Hobbycrafts show at the Excel centre London on Thursday. It was really good and I got onto 4 workshops! (Tomorrow is the last day so get yourself down there if you can :0)

This was one of the workshops I did, ruffled ribbon petunias, so pretty :):

I got to practise my french knots for the centre which was good as now I can do them perfectly, I also learnt the little tufty  (turkey work) in the second flower which was cool as I had never done that before. Lorna Bateman was the lady who ran the workshop and she has an esty/folksy shop where she sells the kits if you like what you see above :P

This was the second workshop- making a creative textiles book cover from this material called spunbound made by Vilene. It was so cool- you put on this 3D paint through a stencil then heated it all with a heat gun and the £D paint bubbled a grew while the unpainted spunbound shrivelled and disappeared leaving holes. Then you paint it to make it look all colourful:

Then finally, I also did two embroidery workshops run by the Royal School of needlework, they were only £5 each which I think was pretty good value even though the other workshops were free (which is even more amazing value :P).

Here is my first finished piece from the Jacobean Crewelwork workshop:

Again, I learnt some new stitches and got to practice my french knots so that was all good. I will show you my silk shading sampler I started in the other workshop when I have finished it :)

Haha, after all that learning I got round to doing some shopping, well quite a bit of shopping actually.

I got these two Paddington Bear cross stitch kits, only £2.00 each! 

I am going to make something for my dad with them as he loves football, Paddington bear and he teaches maths so I thought they were perfect :P

Then I got all this:

All of the items cost me £1 or less each- what bargains :D

I better go now, got to get to bed to get my beauty sleep before my cake filled breakfast :P

See you all soon- when I may have another giveaway up my sleeve for you all.... so keep your eyes peeled :0)

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

My trip to the UK wedding fair :)

Hellooo,

 

Last Saturday my mum took me to the UK wedding fair at the excel centre in London (To study all the pretty dresses with my costume making eye! :P). I was very excited as many of you will remember me blogging about how amazing the Asian wedding fair I went to was.

 

Hehe, Instead of waffling on I will let the pictures I took do the talking- this time I managed to get clearer photos as me and my mum got really good seats right at the front for the catwalk show:

Who said a wedding dress had to be white? This is one of the vintage dresses they showed, here is another one:

 

I love going to bridal shows as it is an area I may go into in the future, after uni. You Learn a lot from them and often pick up tons of contact info and brochures (with tons of pictures!!!) I want to got to an African wedding fair next so I work my way around the globe-wedding fair style! :P

 

I hope you all are having a good week so far :) This week is my last week in college working on my half scale kimono- it is going to be a challenge but fingers crossed I get it all done (it doesn't have to be finished, the project is more looking at good technique but I realllly want to finish mine!).

 

I am thinking of doing a giveaway soon, so keep you eyes peeled :D

 

See you again soon,

 

Byeeeeee XxXXxXxXxXx