Spring sewing

Has it really been over a month since the last post? Oh dear, I'm slipping! My excuse is, as it is for all bloggers, that there's not enough time in the day. The nice weather has brought shoppers to the Bentley Heath Country Market and I'm having a job keeping up with demand. This is, of course, A Good Thing.

In between orders and sales, I've been working on a posh frock line. More specifically, a line of communion dresses. It's been great fun sourcing and using beautiful silks and cottons and trying to come up with dresses that will set them off. And then of course I had to find a right-sized model to set off the dresses. My friend volunteered her daughter and we had a lovely modelling session. My two are at the "fixed smile & funny face" for camera stage, so it was so nice photographing a child who looked completely natural. And it doesn't hurt that she is also an extremely pretty girl, so even I can take good photos!

First up was the crochet dress because this was the one I was most anxious about. I kid you not, I made this dress twice - I don't think there's a stitch in it that hasn't been done and re-done at least once. But I finally got it done and made a little viscose slip for under it. To finish it, I made 5 little crochet flowers and put them on hairslides. They looked like little daisies growing in her hair and gave such a pretty organic look to the outfit. I had many a crisis of confidence about this dress while I was making it, but like all good fairytales, it had a happy ending.

Next up: the traditional dress. Well, traditional with a modern vibe, I hope!

This one has a pleated sash over a paperbag waist. I love paperbag waists but no matter how much weight I lose, I'm never going to be able to wear one (there is no diet that can turn a middle-aged apple into a young beanpole) so I'm living vicariously here. The skirt is a self-embroidered lawn, which I hand-beaded to embellish the flowers. You can't see it in the photograph and I did wonder if it was worth doing, but in real life, the little beads make all the difference. There is also a semi-detachable bow at the back. Very traditional, very charming. And since it's getting harder and harder to find all-cotton communion dresses, I'm hopeful it will find a market.

And finally, everyone's favourite: the silk and tulle dress. I found the pattern for this in a Japanese pattern book. I made up a smaller two-colour version for my daughter to test the pattern (photos to follow in another post) but found that the sizing wasn't quite right and so the dress has gone into the shop. She's gutted! I also found that I didn't like the bodice so I played around with another couple of patterns and this is the changeling that emerged.

I knocked up a tiara to match and my model loved both dress and tiara so much she didn't really want to take them off. The dress is lined with habotai silk and it feels so cool and smooth - there is nothing like a silk lining for making a dress feel just sumptuous!

All that remained was for me to actually stock the shop. I've now added an Etsy shop to my stable so I had two lots of stocking up to do, but four episodes of ER got me through the tedium of uploading photos. I'm about to start on some Farbenmix baby clothes using some gorgeous fabrics from Dots & Stripes - it will make a change to use colours again!

Two new ventures and the new collection

First new venture: I'm taking Les Petits Anglais out into the real world, aka Bentley Heath Country Market.

This is both exciting and scary. While it's great spending Friday mornings with people who don't expect me to discus the finer points of Dora the Explorer or follow me into the loo, the responsiblity of producing garments that people can feel and touch and criticise in front of me is weighing pretty heavy on me. Every time I see someone taking one of my garments off the rail I'm sure they're examining it for flaws and will denounce me to the market manager.
I have to keep reminding myself that I can sew, my stuff is nice and people have bought it before and seemed to like it.



And finally I remember that all this agonising is entirely moot since people rarely go to Country Markets to squander £28 on a dress for a child.

For what it's worth, the feedback I had today was entirely complimentary and I might actually convert compliments into sales soon.

Though I say it as shouldn't, I really do love this new collection and I'm only sorry I don't have the time to let Laura have one of everything. I'm letting her choose just one and she went straight for this 'mingoes dress'. Its a bamboo/cotton velour Olivia dress with Juule hood. The mingoes are of course flamingoes with sequin eyes.

All of the new collection is now in my Folksy shop and I only wish I could take better photographs! The denim garments are so cute in real life and look so terrible in these pictures.

The denim pinafore is especially sweet but can I get a good picture of that round yoke? Nope, not so much!

Even the peacock doesn't come out well. I think it's probably time I started looking out for a photography course.

Speaking of courses, this brings me onto my second venture: teaching two people how to sew. My first pupil is a complete novice but she has now made a skirt for her daughter and sewn a button on her husband's shirt. She's hugely enthusiastic (well, not so much about sewing on buttons, and who could blame her?) and is doing well. My other pupil has some sewing experience but her foot-wide perfectionist streak prevents her from setting a stitch in case she does it wrong. Our target is to get her to complete one of her 4 UFOs, and she is very nearly there. I'm proud of them both!

A sneak peek at the summer line

It's been a busy few weeks. I've been putting together the samples for the Summer Holiday Fun collection, which is just about ready to go in the shop. It feels very odd to be sewing summer clothes when there's snow on the ground - generally, I do my holiday sewing the day before the holiday packing! I understand it's called JIT (Just in Time) Management.

As you can see, ruffles will be coming on holiday with us. On spiral skirts...

On carnival dresses...On skorts...The peasant top has so far escaped the attentions of the ruffler foot... Not sure it'll last though... But the prairie dress will remain unruffled...Though I can't say the same for the shorts... The boys' collection is, however, forever ruffle-free...

Just a few more garments to make for Pour Les Chaps and some better photographs to take (by the way, if you're reading this, God, please can you make it warm up a bit? The goose pimples are getting in the way of the shop pics) before doing some serious listing. And then I can finally turn my mind to a dress for the May Ball. Which is probably where my JIT time management philosophy will come screeching to the fore again.