On the person it was made for...

Just a brief post this time! Our local paper, The Press, send a photographer to most of the local school proms so I was thrilled to receive an excited phone call from a customer yesterday to say that not only had her daughter been photographed in the dress I'd made for her but they'd put her right at the front of one of the photos. I knew she was going to look gorgeous in it on the night as she had in all the fittings, but it's lovely to be able to see that other people thought so too!

I don't have a copy of the actual photo as it's (quite rightly) copyrighted to The Press - they make them available for parents to buy as a momento so they're not going to give me a free copy, but it's available to view at the link below:

http://thepress.newsprints.co.uk/view/21031999/050520127219_jpg 

Prom dress season...the first one done

I know I've not blogged for a while, but April's been a bit of a strange month. I've been mad busy, with lots of things on the go at once, but I've not actually got to the end of any projects and had a finished object to show off (and the one I have, I haven't photographed yet).

But today that changed as I finished the first of two prom dresses that I've been working on. This one is made in red cotton jersey, which is a fabric which gives a lovely drape and fit to a dress (jersey seems to be a trend in prom / evening style dresses this year):

The asymmetrical strap is positioned so as to serve the purpose of holding the dress up properly as well as looking good. The 4 flowers each have 3 Swarovski crsytal beads in the centre, and are all detachable so that they can be repositioned to suit the wearer's fancy on the day.

This has been a lovely dress to work on, and it was really satisfying this afternoon to sit down to make the flowers and be able to take the final pictures!

Making triangle from straight pieces...

Ok, a change from the dressmaking now to show you progress and final pics from a pendant commission I've been working on.

The brief? A 'simple' inverted triangle with a hanging loop at the top. Sounds easy, and in a way it is, but there are a lot of stages involved nonetheless.

I started with a flat strip of silver and filed a v-shape in the centre (unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of this so you'll have to use your imagination) then folded the resulting piece up to create the bottom half of the triangle:

Once this was soldered to secure it, I then filed the tops of the two prongs so that they lay flush with the piece going across the top and soldered the top bar in place:

The protuding ends were filed back flush to form a perfect triangle before all the faces were emeried smooth:

I then attached a small ring to the top of the triangle for the jump ring to go through, and polished the whole pendant up. The result is indeed a simple but beautiful pendant:

(although try as I might I couldn't get it to lie flat and not look wonky while photographing it in the box!)