Tuesday 13 December 2011

Rubyy Jones and the Assless Dress

So this post is long over due, the most exciting and, quite frankly, strange commission I've had in some time was finally finished and went on stage at the 2011 Burlesque Idol at Madam JoJo's. It was made for the beautiful and suitably crazy Rubyyy Jones.
This has been a fantastic ride with Rubyyy to transform an unused and unloved prom dress from this.....



Into this....





Or rather, this.....



Thank you to Tigz Rice for the fab shot of her fab butt.

Soon to come, a photo diary of this dresses odd journey.

Baby Grow Blankets

OK so this is a little off my normal road but it was too cute not to share.

Little Jamie's first years worth of baby grows, loving re-cut into a baby blanket for his birthday.



Complete with paws from his bear sleep suit.




Happy Birthday Jamie xxx

Baby-grow Blankets if you are interested in having your child's own baby-grow's transformed please email me via my web site for more details.

Friday 11 November 2011

New Life In Old Dresses

I've done a collection of alterations for Lubna, here's just a couple. She is clearly a woman who loves her clothes but several of her dresses needed a little tweak to transform them from just clothes she bought into her dresses.

Before...


















This is a beautiful red vintage dress. The upper chiffon layer was a little worse for wear as well as the dress being too big. Also as it is an original, there was a lot of shaping over the hip, typical for the period, but unfortunately was not especially flattering to the more slender figure.

After....


I also had the pleasure of working on a fab dress with the most amazing print, it looks like a TYPEWRITER!!! It doesn't get better than that.

Before...



















Again, a fab dress but quite shapeless, but we took it in and added some darts to give a more flattering shape. We also took up the hem and cuffs to Lubna's preferred length.

After...

Wednesday 2 November 2011

Silk Flower Bouquets


I've been experimenting with creating silk flowers as an alternative for fresh flower bouquets. These are some of my first tries, what do you think?

They can be perfectly tailored to suit the theme of any wedding as well as serve as a beautifully crafted keep sake after the big day.

Black edged golden poppy


Black silk chrysanthemum with purple leaf

Gold organza rose

Purple silk gathered rose

I was largely experimenting with the the ribbons and silk I had to had but have been inspired by the results of the black and purple flowers as they would be such a strong contrast to an ivory wedding gown.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Tartan Waistcoat

This is a simple waistcoat made for a family wedding, from County Cavan tartan. Alley specifically wanted a relaxed fit and for the points at the front to drop low on over her hip.

Though drafting and making the waistcoat was straight forward working with the tartan was a learning curve. Pattern matching the front so the tartan lined up on both the horizontal and vertical was tricky as it required very precise cutting but the result is fantastic.

The tartan it self came from Albionhighland.com. They are a great company with a huge range of family tartans (a bit of an eye opener to see just how many).
My only caution is their search facility, you can search by family or region but it seems to be a little temprimental. So I recommend keeping your search term simple and use the universal search option.

Monday 13 June 2011

Charlie's Dress

Charlie and Tim were married on 4th June 2011. Charlie, oddly, first came to me after having a similar experiences to myself when looking for wedding dresses. She wanted something a little bit quirky and she liked the idea of having an accent colour, possibly in the form of embroidery or established fabric. The one thing she was definite about was a corseted top with a lace back. This was the final design decided on, embellished fabric on the bodice and a ballet like skirt to retain a soft and delicate look. I suggested a shorter skirt rather than a full length dress as it is more flattering on a shorter woman. Full length can look good but tends to make the wearer look shorter. In the case of this dress most of the final decisions regarding the accent colour and fabric choices were made when we went fabric shopping. Thanks to the lovely people at The Cloth House and The Silk Society we were able to get an extremely interesting mix of fabrics to create the right balance between bridal and quirky. Two fittings later this was the final result. She took additional fabric swatches from me to create a matching fascinator. The dress was partly designed to show off her truly excellent tattoos. I would finally like to take this opportunity to wish Charlie and Tim love and luck in their new lives together

Sunday 17 April 2011

My Wedding Dress Rant

I recently got engaged, pause for big cheer, and of course overly excited about the prospect of my very own wedding dress. However a dark cloud lay on the horizon as I was instantly overwhelmed with ideas and visions of what my wedding would look like.

Unfortunately after several years of researching for other people's weddings I was painfully aware of how much choice there is out there. My own tendency towards the strange and unusual was suddenly in conflict with the niggling idea that perhaps on this one special day I may be overcome with the desire to look like an overly layered cup cake. The chances were slim, but stranger things have happened.

So despite the fact that we haven't even set a time frame for the wedding, let alone a date or budget, I've been giving my dress more then a little thought. Should I drop the stress and make my mother happy all in one go and just buy off the rack? Should I buckle to my old goth roots, do what is expected of me by so many and get married in some black vampy number layered with lace and victoriana beading? Perhaps I should find another version of me somewhere to create and make this once in a life time dress for me while I simply lie back and enjoy the ride? Or maybe this is just too big to be allowed out of my control (not to mention it would be a hell of a lot cheaper to just make the thing myself).

All of this to consider and it isn't even lunch time yet.

Setting aside where the dress is to come from, I realised that I needed to start narrowing my options. So with a slight sense of trepidation I started trawling wedding dress shops. I've never had much cause to try on any sort of full length dress or ballgown before, so while I could make an educated guess at what shape or style would suit me I knew the only way to make any sort of decision was to try some on and find out.

This is when thing go wrong, this is when I realised that everything about this glamorous world of bridal gowns is about dictating to the bride what she should do, being as patronising and pretentious as possible, expecting someone to buy a dress without trying it and hiding it all behind a soft sofa and a complimentary glass of wine.

It started with women on the phone telling me whether I should be looking at dresses yet. To begin with I said I wasn't sure when I was going to get married; it was at least a year away and we hadn't set the date. But this seemed outrageous to the sales assistants at the boutiques I was calling. Nobody believed that I didn't know the date, so eventually I just started saying it was the summer of 2013. But that just raised a new problem. On the one hand, one sales assistant was telling me I'm just in time for a summer '13 wedding, while another simply laughed and said it was too early to be trying on. I have to admit this got on my nerves, not just because I feel it's not their business if I need 6 months or 6 years to decided on that dress, but because of their inability to accept my answers to their questions.

Apparently being unsure about what you want in a wedding dress is blasphemy and the bride is therefore clearly lying or an idiot. They made me feel ridiculous for saying i was just trying to get an idea of what I might want.

"But your vision, my darling, your vision!" exclaimed Pearls. "You're not buying a dress, you're buying a vision!" To her a single dress was clearly a way of life. I was half way between irritated and amused.

This was the second shop I had been into. I was there with a friend to try on, and as soon as we entered Pearls swept up to us and cried "I'm looking for my bride. Which of you is my Rosie?" I tentatively identified myself, and she screamed with joy. "Aha! You are Rosie! All this is so exciting!"

She hardly stopped talking. Certainly not long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. It was a twenty minute tirade about my "vision" in which any answers I did manage to give to her questions where deemed unacceptable, and despite being my vision I clearly wasn’t allowed to comment on it. Meanwhile my friend loyally sat by and tried not to laugh, especially when Pearls accused her of being too sullen. "Smile my girl! Why aren't you smiling!?" she cried.


To her credit she walked me through their collection well, although I really hope she is on first name terms with the designer, otherwise the way she was talking about her makes Pearls sound like she's verging on stalker territory. As she described the designer being a master of understated chic as she presented me with ruffles, lace and bling.

That's all window dressing though.

My biggest problem, my all time grievance is with the sample collection itself. Despite the fact that I'm a size 16 Pearls was constantly trying to squeeze me into her sample size 10 or 12. She wasn't alone in this; everybody does it. Not that it isn't fun to feel like I'm getting shrink wrapped in satin, but it fails to promote that positive dress experience. So when it proved completely pointless to try the dresses on, I was left, stood in my underwear, with the sales assistant holding the dress against me. She would either hold the dress up in front of me or, a special treat, try to wrap it around me and hold it in place at the back.
Though, Pearls did not disappointing through out this process, asking me what i though of each vision, heaven forbid she admit they are just dresses.

Now forgive me if I've been going about this very wrong all these years, but when I go to buy myself a dress, I'll try it on knowing full well that what looks good on a hanger can look awful on me. I've also found that what looks drab or shapeless on a hanger can sometimes look good on me. Besides, I'm curious to know how I was supposed to get an idea what it would be like having a train on a full length dress, or layers and layers of skirts, if I can't even get the dress on.

Aside from being deeply undignified, especially when calling in my friend to ask her opinion on a dress, the entire experience at the boutiques was pretty uncomfortable, which was a shame because there were a couple of dresses I really liked.

Given the state I was left in, I was grateful for the wine.

Nearly all the sample collections I came across contained only smaller sizes. While I see the logic (a size ten is cheaper to make than a size eighteen), this is a fundamental problem for wedding boutiques across the board.

For some corseted and A-line style dresses the smaller sizes can be ok, as a larger figure can usually get into them to see what they are like. However, for anything fitted or fish tailed, a smaller size for a larger figure is completely pointless. Sure, I could guess that the fitted shape would take advantage of my hour glass figure, but maybe it would just make me look like I have freakishly large hips. I guess I'll never know.

I felt cheated. Because I wasn't a small girl I wasn't allowed to have the experience of finding the perfect dress for me. I wasn't going to step out of some overly gilded dressing room in a gorgeous white gown so my friend could oooh and aaahh and I could feel like a bride. Out of the six dresses Pearls presented to me, I only got into one.

This wasn't always the case, in one boutique they had a sample collection of basic shapes in all sizes so I could get a feel for what it was like to wear their dresses. This meant that the appointment was a total joy from start to finish. The service was pretty good too.

My final gripe is with the general rule in all shops that doesn't allow photography. Again I can see the logic behind this, (though if someone was trying to outright copy a design, aside from being more expensive, they could just get an image off the web site) but the fact is I just wanted an aid to memory, to remind myself what I liked and be able to compare dresses from different places. Still, whatever their reasons, photo's aren't allowed. That's one thing, but the be served the total tripe as a explanation that I was given at one shop was an insult to my intelligence.

"My dear," she began, "If you need a photo to remember that dress, then it isn't your dress. You should remember every detail, you should dream about it."

No one in their right might would believe that at no point, during the whole complicated process of choosing a wedding dress, would the bride be torn between two dresses. Unaided, my memory may not do a dress justice, and after the inevitable trek around shops and trying on dozens of dresses there was no way I could manage to keep a crystal clear memory of one single dress....no matter how perfect it might be.

All in all from a day's excursion, only one shop delivered on the promised experience of choosing a wedding dress. I find myself dreading the next time I'll have to venture out in my search.

I don't know, maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion. If you've had a good experience somewhere while out shopping for a wedding dress, then let me know :)

Becky's Big Day

This is the fifth post in a series. Parts one, two, three and four are avaliable on my old blog.

As me and Becky have always been so close this was the first dress I was truly nervous about handing over, as well as it being the first of my dresses I was able to see actually go down the aisle. So on the morning of April 18th 2010 I was pretty nervous... although probably not as much as Becky and her fiancé Sam.

But after months of work and a extremely involved design process this was the finished result

As a final feature I added a loop to the train so it could be hooked out of the way during the reception.

So after nearly 170 hours, 2 fittings, 2 shopping trips and 220 cover buttons this is one of the best dresses I have made and certainly the one I am most proud of. It was an honor for me to be able to give this gift to a friend who has been a sister to me for years.

I'd like to finish by saying I wish the shiny new Mr and Mrs all the luck and love in the world, congratulations guys :) x x

Saskia's Wedding


Just under a year ago I was thrilled to undertake my first civil partnership commission. Saskia and Pauline were married on the 13th June 2010.

Saskia's dress is in a 50's style. She chose pink and red shot silk, which is accompanied by a black petticoat. The cut is a simple one, but I drafted the dress specifically to show off the tattoos on her shoulders.

Kafi's Dress

Kafi and Bill were married in the summer of 2009



When Kafi came to me she already had a good idea of the colour she wanted, and after we looked at several styles I designed a low backed, wide shouldered dress with a full bell skirt.


It took some searching to find the right fabric. We knew we were after gold but this caramel cotton satin was a bit of a find and we knew it was exactly what we were looking for. I also made the groom's and groomsmen's ties from this fabric, adding a little more unity to the wedding party.


I also made the bridesmaid's dress, a darker gold dress which echoed the brides in its basic style without over shadowing it.



Wednesday 2 March 2011

From the ashes of the fire, we have woven a feather

I may have a new name but don’t be fooled, I’ll be offering the same unusual and quirky designs of Whitefire Weddings to create unique bespoke dresses for that extra special occasion.

Welcome to Night Feather Design, soon to include Night Feather Bridal and Night Feather Ballroom.

Still, if you’re a fresh visitor to my odd little world please go back and visit the home of my first dresses at Whitefire Weddings.


http://whitefireweddings.blogspot.com/