A lovely fabric choice on the part of a customer.

Just a quick post this week to show you a customer's lovely fabric choice. Upon hearing that I was off on maternity leave in the not too distant future one of my regulars went on a little shopping spree at one of the local fabric shops and brought me material to make her a number of dresses to tide her over until I return to work. The dresses themselves are all variations on a style I've made for her before, which we know suits her and she feels good in, but normally she chooses a plain fabric. Not this time though! She fell in love with this fabulous Rose & Hubble stamp print cotton, so I was set the challenge of turning it in to a dress.

I have to admit that lining up the pattern repeat of the stamps so that there was no visible break at the waist was a little bit of a challenge, but what a result...

 

The great reveal - beaded lace wedding dress!

I know I've been quiet for a little bit, but I've been squirreled away in my workroom completing this dress, and then I took a well deserved week's holiday! I'm back going full-steam ahead on various other projects now, but not before I share a few pictures of the finished dress with you (it's ok, the wedding was on Saturday, I'm not spoiling any surprises!)

This was a full-length wedding dress custom designed and made for this bride. Fully structured, it's made from a satin underlay covered with beautiful beaded lace. All the lace edging and the button detailing was applied by hand.

From the front...

 

 The back...

And close ups of some of the edging / the train...

The bride was delighted with it (phew!) and I have to agree, it's a lovely dress and the style she chose suited her to a T!

Bodycon dress

From loose and floaty to skin-tight now, with pictures of a custom made bodycon dress that I finished last week for a customer. Made from a lovely thick weight light charcoal jersey, this really a dress which hugs every curve and shows off the figure inside!

(you can see where my mannequin's 'hips' finish by when the ruching on the seam starts - if I'd time I'd have worked out something to add more structure to the lower half to show of the curves better, but c'est la vie, you'll just have to imagine it not doing that on the real person!)

The neckline is finished with a gathered flower made from the same material, with a few discreet black beads in the centre.

 

Sequins!

A post today to show you a few pictures of one of the prom dresses that I've finished in the last week. It's a lovely dress, elegant in the simplicity of the shape (which works so well with her willowey figure) but also modern in the fact that the material is small matt sequins.

From the front the dress looks like a very modest number, with long sleeves and a reasonably high neckline.

But from the back? A diamond cut-out adds an extra bit of wow without revealing too much.

And as is inevitable with sequins I'm still finding them on the floor despite having vacuumed since the dress left my workshop, it seems like they hide and creep out when I'm not looking!

Photos from a happy customer

Following on from my previous post, I'm delighted to be able to share a few photos with you of a beautiful bride and her lovely bridesmaids on her wedding day.

Congratulations to Juliet and Alan, I hope you have a long and happy marriage. And thankyou to Juliet for choosing me to make your dresses and cloak, I think it was a fab combination and I'm so glad you were pleased with them!

Replacing an old favourite.

We've all got them, somewhere in our wardrobe - that favourite that we've had for years, that we turn to regularly, that never fails us but which is coming to the end of its life and starting to look a little worn.

This dress came about from one such garment that had been a faithful friend for 20-odd years, that a customer brought in to me with the challenge of creating a replacement that fitted in the same way and made her feel as good wearing it. It's not an identical copy but keeps the overall style and fit.

Made from jade double-knit jersey, it has moulded cups, spaghetti straps and a thigh-high split on her left-hand side.

Have you got an old favourite that you wish could go on forever but just isn't going to do so? If so, why not consider getting a replacement made, it might be a more practical idea than you think!

And another happy bride...

The previous post made me realise that I'd completely forgotten to share a photo of from another of my brides. A slightly different project this time - this was the lovely lady I made this dress and these accessories for last year...

Doesn't she look amazing? They had a beautiful day, with fantastic weather (sunny but not too hot, we were slightly worried about that when we had a heatwave the day before the wedding).

I wished them congratulations, happiness and a long life together at the time but I guess it doesn't hurt to do so again!

Catching up - some pictures of my dresses on real people (not on my mannequin for once!)

I realised today that I didn't share with you some of the photos I received from a customer of two of my custom made bridesmaids dresses being worn on 'The Big Day', so this a blog post to rectify that immediately!

You may not remember the dresses appearing on my blog when they were made, but they were bridesmaids dresses 'with a difference' in that they featured the same material but were designed to match each girls style and personality. The original blog posts are here and here.

And the pictures from on the day...

There's not much I can say really, other than that I think they looked beautiful (beautiful models and a glorious day must take some credit too!) and looking back at these pictures is making me happy and proud of my past work!
 

Mother of the Bride

The brief for this dress was for a Mother of the Bride's dress with a difference, something that she felt comfortable in and felt was her while still being more special than something she'd chose for any other wedding she was going to (after all, your daughter's wedding is pretty special).

The colour scheme was already decided as she had a jacket she really liked and wanted to wear, and she was quite keen to browse fabrics herself so she took herself off to Fletchers Fabrics to see what they had in stock before I started ordering in samples. Luckily she found something that she fell in love with so we went with that (the staff in Fletcher's are great so between my list of fabric type suggestions and their knowledge she found something that was perfect).

The final dress was an embroidered georgette over matching crepe, with an under-bust band in contrasting crepe. The 'hankerchief' hem was something she particularly wanted and I think it adds a little something to the dress.

We added purple and silver beads to the bottom section of the skirt to add colour and interest to the dress (the silver was to match her shoes)...

And the outfit was topped off with some little flower hair-grips made from the contrast crepe, to which she'll be adding some cream bought ones.

All in all, a lovely outfit that I think suits her perfectly!

Beautiful satin wedding gown!

I've been quite shamefully lapse in blogging about my creations for a little while now but I have been rather busy of late! One of my main projects that was occupying a lot of my attention up until a month ago was a wedding gown commission that came with matching cravats, flower-girl's dress and tiara. It was lovely making something so special and it's been quite hard keeping it all under wraps but she got married yesterday so I can finally share some pics of my work with you! As it's likely to be quite picture heavy I'll put the gown itself in this post and then all the other bits in one to follow tomorrow.

The gown: an a-line dress with a structured, boned bodice and chapel train in a beautiful red duchess satin, covered in over 2000 beads and Swarovski crystals (all individually applied) with tiny covered buttons running down the back. While the front was beautiful it was the back where the real 'Wow' was, with over 1500 of the beads/crystals on the train itself and a diamond cut-out detail from the nape of her neck to the waist.

From the front:

Detail of the skirt beading:

More skirt beading:

The back cut-out and chiffon section (unfortunately the dress was slightly to small for my mannequin to I had to photograph this part on the hanger): 

The train:

The bride was absolutely thrilled with it, which is the most important thing, hopefully everyone else on the day loved it too!

A wedding dress with a difference

Back in September I was given the opportunity, thanks to a recommendation from an existing customer, to make a dress for a lovely lady to wear on her wedding day. Not your traditional bridal gown but a dress that she could wear many times again in the future and that suited her down to a T.

After much deliberation over fabrics she settled on a dark teal satin with a light stretch to it, and we tailored the style of the dress accordingly. She didn't want anything too complicated but wanted to focus on what she saw as her 'good points' so we decided on a crossover top with a wide waistband and slightly more than a-line skirt:

The 'V' at the front was mirrored on the back, and both the top of the zip and the little 'keyholes' details on the sleeve were finished with the most fabulous buttons (which I can't take credit for, she spend some time in Duttons for Buttons picking out what she wanted, but I did love them).

It was a joy to work with someone who was so excited by the garment as it took shape, and I had a text from her after the wedding saying she'd had many compliments on her dress, which was good to know (and gives you a warm feeling inside when you know you've got it right). I know she was planning to wear it again for a family event the week after so hopefully she got more then too!

 

Another dress for a wedding...

...this time for me to wear!

Thanks are due to my step-dad Ray for the pics of me in this post, as he kindly took proper pics of me wearing the dress before we headed out to the wedding rather than me taking them later on my dressmaker's dummy (I've not yet mastered taking photos of myself, although Ray has given me some tips to try out!)

The dress is made from 'Stoff' cotton, which is a lovely weight and drapes well. The bodice is boned and lined with black poplin, the skirt is a full circle (great fun in the wind, both me and my decency are grateful to my friends for their interventions on a couple of occasions!!) I also made a net petticoat to wear underneath in order to get the proper shape on the skirt.

This is a really fun dress to wear, but what was even more fun was getting to watch two good school-friends get married - they both looked so happy and it was an amazing day!

The evolution of an existing pattern...

I have a regular customer who has had two dresses made from the same pattern previously (the last one featured in my blog a couple of weeks ago). For a wedding a week or so ago she asked if I could find a suitable fabric for a summer wedding and make her a dress using the same bodice but with a fuller skirt to give it a softer look.

Fortunately we managed to find the perfect fabric (so perfect in fact that I bought myself some to make a summer skirt) and after drafting a new skirt pattern the resulting dress was exactly what she had in mind:

I think she's had more traumas finding the matching accessories than she did the dress - she's got the bag and belt (white of course) but the right shoes weren't easy to find at all!

From sari to dress

Another prom dress to share with you this week, this time made from a length of Sari silk that had been brought back from a trip to India.

The dress itself is fairly simple, the hardest part was deciding how best to cut it to use the most dramatic parts of the sari. In the end we went for a 'princess line' bodice (with sweetheart neckline) cut so that what used to be the border of the sari now sits along the waistline of the dress. 

The skirt was then cut as two rectangles to allow us to use the border around the hemline, with pleats at the waist gave the skirt some shape. 

The lining in this dress is serving a joint purpose of reducing the sheerness of the dress and supporting the silk along the zip and waist seams (yes, the silk is that fine!)

This is definitely one of those dresses that doesn't show it's full glory on a dressmaker's dummy (not helped by the weird light most days at the moment, even the morning's aren't really good enough for photography!). The girl it's for looks absolutely stunning in it, filling it out in a way an inanimate dummy just can't imitate so you'll have to take my word for it. It's still a really cute dress even on a dummy though...

Repeating oneself...in a good way!

I suppose the best way to be sure that you're doing something right is to be asked to do exactly the same thing again. Back in January I made a smart red cotton dress for a customer who does quite a bit of public speaking. I knew she loved it and was getting quite a bit of wear out of it, but I was delighted when she came back to me earlier in the month and asked me to make her another one, this time in navy.

It's almost exactly the same as her previous one: a 'klona' cotton dress with a net underskirt to give the skirt structure...

The only difference is that this time the lining is navy with white spots (the previous was white with red spots that matched the outer layer)

And another delight - when she came for her final fitting and tried it on she ordered another dress. I'm clearly doing something right, must make sure I keep it up!!

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!

What my customers get up to...

...or rather, one customer in particular. You see, I happen to have a customer who's a Shirley Bassey Tribute, and a rather good one at that. 

Anyone who's been on my Facebook page may have seen the photos of a stunning gold sequin dress and matching gold lame cape, which were commissioned by Jacqui to take with her on a trip to the states this Feb/March. I was quite pleased with the result, and the dress especially managed to look stunning both on the mannequin and on Jacqui during fittings.

By all accounts her trip seems to have gone really very well, she had a wonderful time and some of the comments on her Facebook page give testimony to how well her show was received everywhere she went. The gold dress seemed to make an appearance at most shows she did, and she said there were often little gasps of amazement when she walked out in it - based on this photo she gave me, I'm not surprised!