Things and Ink

New women's tattoo magazine lunches on the 1st November featuring night feather design!

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.

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...

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.

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.

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