Catching up after Christmas...

Blimey December was a busy month! I barely had time to catch my breath between sewing sessions to get all the orders done and keep my area in Fabrication in Leeds fully stocked. Rather than bore you with a post per cape/cloak, here's a round up of some of the beautiful custom pieces which left my workroom in December...

Black crushed velvet cape with a pointed hood:

Semi-circular boiled wool cloak a red lining, with 3 frog-clasps as closure:

Semi-circular pure wool cloak with a midnight blue satin lining and a beautiful celtic clasp - a surprise Christmas present for a very lucky lady!! The hood on this one is detachable, revealing a mandarin collar underneath:

Full-length boiled wool cloak with a jacquard weave lining. This was designed to go over a silk-velvet wedding dress in the same colour as the lining, which I also made but don't have any decent photographs of:

Child's red melton cloak with a white fur trim, after the cloak worn by the main character in the Goth Girl books. Also a Christmas present! 

This month already has a couple of cloaks and a wedding dress lined up, so I'm sure I'll be doing another round-up at some point!

Bauble, anyone?

Time to show off some of my personal knitting this time. I'm not one for colourwork really, but the pattern for these knitted tree decorations really took my fancy so I decided to do 3 as part of my mum's Christmas present. After all, she still has one of the first tree decorations I ever made, so why not add my first ever colourwork to that?!

The pattern is originally from a book called 55 Christmas Balls to Knit, but I saw it in the December edition of a magazine called The Knitter. My first two balls were the pattern included in the magazine:

For the third, however, I decided that rather than duplicate one of the two above I would have a go at designing a snowflake:

Fortunately they came out ok, and I have to say I'm quite pleased at my first attempt at colourwork. You never know, I might do some more at some point...

Celtic cufflinks

Phew, that's the December rush over with! I can't complain too much about being busy as that means I've got business coming in, but it has been a mad month with only 2 days off between working on pieces and manning my stand at a few craft fairs. The next few posts will be showing off what I've been working on as Christmas presents (both for others to gift and one for me to gift too) starting with one I know has already been given so there's no chance of spoiling the surprise for the recipient!

A customer came to me at the beginning of October looking to commission something as a gift for 'her beloved'. All she had was a sketch of a celtic motif that he liked, and a rough idea that either a ring or cufflinks would be worn and appreciated. As the motif was square I suggested cufflinks as a ring would have to be very wide to accommodate the full motif, and of the sketches I presented to her she chose to have the motifs split across 2 rectangles per cufflink (joined by a chain to go through the cuff).

After much experimentation the design was rolled on to a strip of silver, which was then cut, filed and emery-ed to make the individual rectangles and given a light polish.

Once two of the rectangles had been hallmarked by the Assay Office (one mark per cufflink in case the pair get separated at any point in the future) it was a 'simple' case of polishing each rectangle to a higher shine, soldering the chains in place then giving the whole cufflinks their final polish.

Fortunately the customer loved them, and I got a text from her a few days later to let me know that the recipient had too, which is always good to know!