Half scale progress :)

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all well- time has really been flying and it's been quite while since I last posted. I have been working in my half scale :p which is now almost done (which Is a very good thing as my next show I am working on started today at uni so now I've got to get in with that!)

Here are the latest pictures:

It's just the buttons and buttonholes down the front of the jacket left really :)

I'm quite proud of it though at times when you are hand sewing a hem for hours it can get a bit tedious :p

I will return soon with a post about my upcoming uni show work and also about a wedding fair catwalk I am working on on Sunday :D I'm very excited!

Speak to you all soon, 

Bye xoxoxo

Half scale update

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned I am not on show anymore so that means I am back on my half scale project :) I mentioned this before but just in case you don't remember this is the project where we choose a historical dress from Janet Arnolds Patterns of fashion and make it up in half scale.

I chose this victorian day dress- which I was lucky enough to go and view at the v and a archive yesterday!! (Clothworkers centre- you have to book an appointment :):

(Image from v and a website)

Here is what I have of my half scale so far:

It is taking a long time due to all the hand sewing and how much decoration there is involved but I am proud of how it's coming along :) I working on the overskirt now before I finish off the bodice so I should have some of that to show you soon! 

Hope you are all well :)

Bye, ill be back soon! xxx

Victorian Dress half scale

Hello everyone,

It has been too long since my last post- time has been flying now I'm back at college! Especially since I have been so focused on making progress in our latest on going project making one of the dresses from Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion Books. I chose to make a Victorian promenade ensemble (from book 2). I scaled up my patterns from the tiny ones in the book and then went fabric shopping to try and find materials close to the original materials used. After that I did a bit of toiling and have now begun making up. I have finished my sleeves completely- they took 3 days by themselves- so much hand sewing due to pieces being so small you cant really do them under the machine practically.

Here is the original Victorian dress, the image is from the V and A website where the garment is held in the archives:

 

And here are my kind of replica half scale sleeves:

 

I am quite proud of them :) Now I just need to get on and make the rest of the ensemble... in between starting on my first make for a show production which starts next week! :D Ahhh, Yayaya I'm very excited about that!!! (can you tell!? haha)

 

Also soon I will be bringing you all a mini fascinator tutorial upon suggestion by one of my lovely readers Mel makes! So look out for that :)

 

Speak to you all again soon and I hope you are all super well,

 

Bye XxXxXxX

 

Millinery meanderings

Hi everyone,

At college at the moment we are on our carousel of different costume techniques that don't feature as part of the day to day of our course :) We get to do one week of millinery, dance ear , dying and breaking down and also a week of wig dressing. 

The week of millinery has just gone and it was such an interesting and enjoyable week. As some of you may remember I did a millinery course at the London college of fashion last summer. That course mainly focused on blocking techniques, whereas the week just gone at college we looked at cutting and shaping buckram to make hats- something much more achieve able at home without too much special equipment. I was so pleased with the result. We had to focus on the period of the 19th century to base out hat designs on. Here is the reference image I chose as a starting point for my hat, I found it in a book in the library: 

I didn't make my hat from straw however as I wanted to try fabric covering it so I went with a kind of golden straw coloured velvet instead.

Here is my final hat, I was really proud of it. Everyone else's was amazing too- it was amazing to see all thst had been produced in just a week!:

It is pretty big- you would need a lot if hairpins through the loops I sewed in to hold it down!

As this post was millinery themed, I thought it would be a good time to show you the fascinator I was making outside college that I just finished :-) It was from a kit from Hats on Heads (a millinery company- I bought two more of their kits from create and craft as well). It was pretty fun to make and not too much of it was given to you pre - done so I did actually lean quite a few skills.  Here it is:

Now I just need an occasion to wear it to! :p

Hehe,  I better be off to bed now, I hope you enjoyed my millinery meanderings.  Please do leave any comments below or ask any questions if you have them xxxx

Also don't forget tommorow the advent calendar giveaway ends do if you have entered already go do so now before it is too late! Good luck :-)

Speak to you all soon, 

Bye xoxoxo

Cupcakes and a chemise :)

Hi,

I hope you all have had a good week :0) I managed to finish my 15th century ladies chemise yesterday so that made me happy, wooo! My pattern is based on THIS pattern, though I changed it up a bit for my final garment. Here it is, in all its historical linen-iness :P :

Here you can see the gussets under the arms and the gores at the bottom:

It was very voluminous, before I gathered it up I felt a bit like I was drowning in all the linen :P

Now onto lots and lots of cupcakes...... where I was drowning in frosting and sprinkles, lol!

As I mentioned on my last post my mum booked for me and her to go on a cupcake and walking tour of London last Saturday. It was absolutely fabulous!!!!!!!! I got so much more cake and macarons than I had expected and in a greater array of flavours than I could have imagined (I thought I would just get a quarter of a vanilla cake at some different places and that still would have been good!).

First we went to Lorraine Pascal's bakery- cupcake bakehouse where I had chose a mini red velvet cake which was yummy. Lorraine has tried to make her icing fluffier by changing the sugar content and it sure was nice and light :)

Then after a macaron or two at Laudree it was onto Sweet couture where I chose this oreo cupcake as my sample- sooo yummy!:

 Mm mm. .. It is making me want another one just looking at it :0P

From the Hummingbird bakery we all got a red velvet cupcake, again nice and yummy!

On the tour we also stopped off at a cool Japanese resturant and bakery called Yauatcha where they had a range of over 20 macarons yo choose from. Me and my mum tried some crazy flavours including: apple crumble, banana and cinnamon and apple crumble which were all very tasty. I wasn't keen on the lemon tea one we also tried but 3 out of 4  isn't bad!:

 After a couple more stops at fortnum and masons and patisserie Valerie the tour was sadly over :/ but that didn't stop me and my mum, we headed back to Sweet Couture and picked up 4 more cupcakes to take home and try with my dad and brother:

 Another oreo (because that was so nice), a chocolate one, a red velvet one from there and the one with the bunny on is gluten free cherry bakewell. I liked them all! Though I probably did eat a bit too much cake that evening as I had about 7 quarters worth :p

In other news I have finished the first half of my dad's Paddington bear biscornu that I am making him for fathers day:

I am pleased so far. I kind of winged the back stitching by looking at the picture on the front of the kit because it was taking forever to keep looking backwards and forwards at the chart.

I'm off to the theatre now to see 1984 with my mum and brother. I have never read the story so am quite excited as I have heard it is very good. Then it is my friends birthday party tonight, yay!

I hope you all have a great bank holiday weekend,

BYE XXX

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

 

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