Dyeing for the weekend

Yes as you should be able to see in the above post I am now a darker brunette than I was before! The urge to reach for the dye bottle was brought on by the fact that I feel I've become a bit too sensible lately so what better way to shake it up than some festival hair? This weekend Jam an I went to Truck festival, just down the road in next but one village along Steveton (seasoned readers may remeber a previous excursion there with Dave which can be found here). We had a great time (this wasn't guarenteed as Jam had only been to one music festival before, what if he didn't like it???), there was sun, local beer and lots of lots of bands. The fantastic Bellowhead headlined the Friday night, and were as always brilliant, Roddy Wooble (who I later semi stalked as he was watching another band) and Rhosyn were on the Sat and on Sunday we danced like crazy people to the Go team! The truck monster was also about (mostly during the afternoon & evening because of the warmth) and the kids were really making a beeline for him, it was like the santa effect only times about a million! Every year I have the same arguement with myself about whether to go to Truck or to head down to the secret garden party (website here doesn't it look cool?) but I know I always have a great time at truck and it's really nice that it's a local festival and I see most of the people I know there. What about you readers? Heading off to any festivals this year?

a seamstressing interview

I got interviewed by in house magazine Parklife for their interesting hobbies feature. Unfortunately since we redesigned Parklife to look prettier we have less room for photos so although I've reproduced the text here, I've also added quite a few more piccys (as well as the one of Lisa and myself on the morning of the wedding that accompanies the original). Enjoy!

I've been making clothes since I opted to take a textiles GCSE at school. My school specialised in the arts and our textiles teacher gave us quite a lot of freedom in what we chose to make and we also had the luxury of having state-of-the-art technology to hand (a sewing machine that can do embroidery from your doodles anyone?).
After leaving school I was quite tempted to take a creative arts course but my parents insisted on A-levels, so dressmaking became more of a a hobby with me spending quite a lot of time hunting out materials from our local fabric store and online and matching them with patterns to create items of clothing I wanted but couldn't find in the shops. This is probably the most exciting bit of the process - getting inspiration from various different garments and combining ideas.
The focus of my sewing efforts changed direction slightly a couple of years ago when I got my first 'serious' sewing machine and found myself getting more into formal dresses. I set myself the challenge of doing on a year and instead of just copying the patterns I also wanted to start altering them. The first dress I tried this on was a purple evening dress. This dress is actually made with upholstery fabric - I live in terror that one day what I'm wearing will match a chaise lounge or sofa, but the material was a reduced remnant and I just fell in love with it.
Friends started to notice my wardrobe expanding and the masses of material lying about my house and I got approached to do commissions, first mostly alterations (scary because you are messing with other people's work) and then later the most exciting commission of my life, making a wedding dress. I'd never done anything like it before. Design and construction of the actual dress was more like architecture/construction as there were many layers and you had to build the overall 'shape', and probably wasn't helped by the fact the corset top had to be hand-boned. I also didn't realise how much emotion would be involved in making the dress match the brides expectations -fortunate this was for one of my best friends, so she was really clear about what she did and didn't want.
I did survive the wedding dress and have recently done another wedding commission (this time making cravats and hankies for the groom and male members of the wedding party so they matched the bridesmaids) and have just taken on another commission for a Jane Austin dress to be completed this autumn. After that I suppose i should really address the large pile of remnants in my fabric stash...

a weekend of rest

The last couple of

weekends have seen us lending some serious brawn to help with housebuilding and quite a bit of time travelling first to go and see some old friends from work, then we drove to visit Jam's grandparents in Cardiff (on what was possibly the hottest day of the year so far). Added to that fact that I've been receiving rather a lot of attention on the commissioning front of late (first with a new dress commission and now a possible wedding assignment) added to general life things have meant that life has been pretty hectic. So this weekend we decided to take some time out, I cancelled band practice and Jam and I abandoned all clocks and concentrated on having a nice time instead.

Friday we headed out for an indian with Jam's friends from work, it was delicious and even better was the fact I didn't have to cook :-) Saturday was mostly sleeping, before doing some much needed shopping and having a nice wander round one of the local garden centres (this one also has an antiques section where I managed to get some books for my dad's birthday, result). After Jam mowed the lawn (I hate doing it, so I weeded) and watching a couple of films it was an early night. Yesterday we had yet another lie in (yey) before heading off to a local 2nd hand furniture place to check out some bookcases I'd seen made out of old pews, sadly they had gone meaning that yes I should have bought them when I saw them. We had a lazy lunch on the (freshly mown, looking very smart) lawn and then went strawberry and raspberry picking at our local farm peachcroft. Jam turned out to be born to pick raspberries (I thought I would have to drag him away) and we got a fair few nice strawbs as well (although the strawberry patch at home seems to be going great guns at the moment) returning home with our hoard we left them on the side for any 'wildlife' to escape (and used to opportunity to go see our friends Fi, Nick and little Alex before returning home and yes you guessed it making more Jam (we did the raspberry the strawberries have been frozen to process at a later date). Today at work I feel great totally rested and with a happy glowy feeling inside. Result!

And then we helped build a house

One of the guys that Jam works with and his partner are building their own house (and have been living in a caravan in the grounds for 5 years while the house gets finished). Usually the only people working 'on site' are Greg and Jo, so once a month a team of people go over to help them get stuff done and this weekend I was one of those people! Some of you may remeber my previous house building exploits here, but I wasn't the only one James used to work as a construction chap so between us we hoped we'd be some serious use. The house stands on a largish plot of land in the village of Yatt. Originally there was a stone cottage there which Greg and Jo had intended to refurbish, intended that is until the chartered surveyor and morgage company came round & it was decided that a rebuild would be needed. Plans were drawn up & finally approved and work started taking down the old cottage. The new 5 bedroom house was built using mostly environmentally friendly or neutral materials (Jo works as an eco project manager so knows about this stuff) and the outside skelton of the house was then clad in the old weathered stones (each of which had to be repointed before being put on). Our job was to help with some of the more difficult areas of insulation in the loft (which was being insulated with sheeps wool which had to be fluffed to 10% before being used) and then putting more plasterboard up and helping with the damproof course in the bathroom (because that is not at all important in a room which has water in it all the time...). Greg and Jo were really great with showing us what needed to be done and answering our questions and we were well fed and watered on their sweetcorn chowder and selection of cakes (all washed down with builders tea naturally). It was really great to see the progress we made in just one day and although we were both pretty exhausted at the end of the day it was great to know that the jobs we did have helped the house to get a little nearer to completion. Despite the piles of dust we were both covered in we had lots of fun, so much in fact we are already making plans to go back in a couple of months. If you want to find out more about the build you can visit Greg and Jo's blog here.

Meeting up with old friends

So this weekend I hopped on a train and headed to Cheltenham spa to meet up with my friends Michelle and Ziggy. Ziggy left work a couple of years ago to get married and move to Bristol with her new husband (so she got married, moved and got a new job as well as gaining a husband, major change) and Michelle (whose house we visited) is just about to come back off maternity leave after giving birth to the beautiful Holly (her second child after the equally fabulous Jacob). I haven't seen both of them for ages and a meet up was overdue especially as I had been unable to get to Ziggy's wedding after my train was cancelled (train company, you know what I'm thinking!). I'd love to say it all went to plan but I was delayed by an hour on the way there and then further on the way back. but upon reaching cheltenham we all met up with the bonus of having Michelle's husband Jez to chat to and Holly and Jacob to coo over. We all had a great time, lots of tea and a good deal of catching up was enjoyed by all (it was that nice thing that despite the fact we hadn't seen each other for ages it felt like no time had passed). The next meet up is being planned at the moment and hopefully we won't have to wait as long for this one!