Work continues apace at my little haute couture establishment. I have made very good progress with the second celebration dress and in between that have been hand sewing some more Barbie clothes.

I am so pleased that I bought a mannequin, Millie is brilliant! I can’t think why I haven’t bought one before, it has been so useful to be able to hang garments to check necklines and pin seams and it is going to be great to have her when I do my Steampunk outfits.

I can reveal to you the first of my secret sewing projects, my lovely friend Emily from our knitting group got married yesterday and she had asked me for help with her wedding dress.

She had bought a beautiful 3/4 length dress with lace on the bodice but thought the skirt looked a little plain so had bought some lace for the hem. Her Mum was having trouble sewing it so she asked me to do it.

There were 5 metres of lace to hand sew on with very tiny stitches so 19 hours of stitching over 3 days a while ago and it was done.

I found the best way to do this was to hang the dress up from one of my kitchen cupboards and sit beside it so that I could work using gravity to help me.I then laid each section over my hand as I stitched it.

The lace was very ornate and heavily beaded so it was quite heavy. Emily’s Mum had already tacked all the lace on which was a great help. It was a bit of a nerve wracking experience as I had to be so careful stitching on to the net of the dress but I really enjoyed doing it one I got used to it.

It worked really well and Emily looked fantastic, here she is with Jared her new husband, wearing the most gorgeous sparkly shoes. The venue was the local canal side centre, a gorgeous historic building that is now used for weddings and lots of events.

The lovely thing was that everyone from our knitting group had helped with decorating the venue, there was handmade bunting and flowers on each table.It looked so beautiful.

I forgot to get close ups but there were beautiful felt, knitted, crocheted and paper flowers at each table. Much better than table centres that would just have died later. All of the guests had origami paper flowers as well instead of button holes.

I am going to be hand sewing a lot over the next week, I have just discovered invisible thread (it would have been useful to have that for Emily’s dress actually), which is good as the sleeves of the other celebration dress are of a very fine fabric so am going to be enjoying doing those and the hem of the dress while I watch TV.

I have been spending a lot of time listening to and watching sewing related podcasts and vlogs in the last few weeks so will do a post about all of those soon. There is some wonderful inspiration out there, particularly when it comes to historical costuming.

I hope you have a lovely week ahead, the sun is shining today and all the Spring flowers are out so it is very inspiring, we have still had a bit of sleet but we are going in the right direction away from cold, wet winter. Take care and thanks for visiting.