I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

Having already looked behind the scenes of my latest photoshoot I would like to showcase the official photos by Guy Wood of Sirius Art (https://www.facebook.com/PhotoArt.By.Sirius?fref=ts).   Guy is backed by the Princes Trust like me and it was a pleasure to work with him.  He understood my thinking and worked along with my storyline adding his own twists as we went along.

Story so far –

Once upon a holiday time ………….

Arriving at your destination is always magical, the anticipation of a holiday, and the much needed rest and recupuration from the daily stress of life is looked forward to.

                             

Sitting in reception waiting for a room.

Exploring the hotel is always fun and revolving doors especially so.

Quick peep in the mirror

Wistfully looking through the window, hopeful that the weather will cheer up.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

Finally outside enjoying the beautiful view despite the rain.

Spa treatments are always good on holiday.

And what about a paddle in the inside pool.

A break in the clouds and the outside beckons, Sandbanks is so beautiful.

The sea looks inviting.

 

Typical English weather but still having fun, an evening walking on the promenade despite the rain.

Finally the rain proves too much and it is back into the hotel.

Enchanted

A spectacular event in any Kawai lover’s calendar is happening on April 5th in London – Enchanted Event and Tea Party. Unfortunately I was both unable to get a ticket to the event or be a vendor as it is such a popular event but I am pleased that I can participate in a small way by offering a prize for the raffle. We at Shinkurose like to make to order so that each dress is totally individual and fits its owner well  so we have offered a made to order JSK in colour and size of choice for the lucky winner. The JSK is a dress made to wear over a blouse and this one is made in a cotton drill which is great to wear and stays looking good even after washing.  We used the same embellishing techniques as we did for our returning customer, Holly, pin tucks and lace but this time used a contrasting lace.  The back of the JSK is elasticated for both comfort and good fit. Suzanne the lovely owner of Elsie Harrhy in Westbourne allowed us to take our photos in her beautifully decorated vintage style coffee shop. You can see in the above photo the great little leather crowns we make, these can be in any colour and decorated to order, they are light, easy to wear and stay in hair well. I love this fireplace and the comfy chairs are great to sit in and enjoy coffee and cake (look at that derp face though, not my best photo!).  We did have some great Victoria Sandwich cake but it seems to have all gone here! You can also see my gorgeous red shoes, they are by Irregular Choice one of my favourite brands, I have over 25 pairs and am hoping to add to that collection this year. Tilly came to supervise, Elsie Harrhy’s is her favourite coffee shop she told us and you can see she is right at home.  At the back of the cafe is a reading area where there are great books and here you can see Tilly’s favourite selection.  Now she is at school she misses her outings with her mum. As an independent coffee shop Elsie Harrhy specialises in wonderful homemade food.  The soups are made ‘like mother used to make’ full of vegetables and served with doorstop sandwiches or chunky bread.  Breakfast paninis are filled with freshly made scrambled eggs, bacon etc and the cakes are delicious.  Above is the menu for Mothers day and you can see the different types of cake that are available in this superb cafe. A Lolita teaparty would be great here and I would love to organise one, watch this space.

Heirloom Sewing

We were commissioned to make a dress for a returning customer, it was to be in black and feature pin tucks and lace which reminded us of old fashioned heirloom sewing.

Heirloom sewing nowadays is mostly worked by machine but it used to be fine hand sewing usually on white cotton which was trimmed with lace, insertion, pin tucks, narrow ribbon and smocking.  The dress we designed would just feature tiny pin tucks, wider pin tucks and lace trim.

This is a quick sketch and you can see that it is really a basic JSK in a plain colour with the interest coming from the texture of the trimming.

Practise the pin tucks before adding to a garment.  They need to be as straight as you can  make them, evenly spaced and the same size.

When you are confident try them out on a piece of the scrap fabric you are using for your garment and below you can see the tiny pin tucks we used on the bodice.

We tried first of all to sew the small pintucks with a twin needle but found that it just looked like two rows of stitching next to each other and not like a tiny tuck.  Therefore it was easiest to mark the actual fold on  bodice  with a tiny cut in the seamline and then press this and then carefully sew.

On large pin tucks you can mark the first one and then use the width of the presser foot to space the pin tucks which is what was done on the skirt.

It is often suggested that you make your pintucks on the fabric and then cut out for example your bodice.  We chose though to pattern draft my pin tucks on the bodice, cut out the shape and then sew the pin tucks.

To make this more like heirloom sewing after sewing the pintucks some lace was added to frame the tucks.

Here you can see that the pintucks are bigger, approx 1 cm wide, on the skirt.

The finished garment looked like this: –

These are  only snapshots, taken during construction as we always like to keep clients up to date with how their garments are progressing, but  you can see that the finished look is a good one.

I am going to make myself one in burgundy and we are offering one of these in colour and size of choice as a raffle price in an upcoming international Lolita meet.

  

MILK TEA DAY

We were invited to Milk Tea Day on Sunday 8th December, a Lolita meet up featuring Die Milche (http://diemilch.com/) playing at The Nave in Islington.

The day started early with a drive from Bournemouth to Richmond and breakfast at Starbucks.

I wore one of the leather crowns I have recently designed and make, they are light, comfortable to wear and I think really pretty,   I also wore a new dress from the collection which I launched at Milk Tea Day UK.

We loved hearing Die Milche working with the sound crew testing the microphones etc as we were setting up.

They also played midway through the day.

The Nave is a beautiful building, formerly a church but now used as a Steiner School.

I chose a slightly different set up for my stall and was very happy with the finished look.

The Maid Cosplay cafe was very popular and busy throughout the day and made lots of money for the Cystic Fibrosis Charity.

The day was organised by Keren Oliphant who worked tirelessly with her band of helpers to make sure everything ran smoothly.  They all did an amazing job and we all had a great time.

‘Victorian’ Weekend House Party

My recent photoshoot at The Cottonwood Boutique Hotel (http://www.thecottonwoodboutique.co.uk/) in Bournemouth (photos by Andy Smith of Poole Portraits, http://www.pooleportraits.co.uk/) told a story of a weekend house party which were popular among the upper classes in Victorian times and here is the story told in photos.

ARRIVAL

WAITING TO BE SHOWN TO ROOM

AFTERNOON WALK IN THE GARDEN

AFTERNOON TEA

SUNDAY BEST

ENTERTAINMENT

COCKTAILS

TIME TO GO HOME

Thank you again to The Cottonwood Boutique Hotel, Poole Portraits and the lovely Anna.

All garments and fascinators are from  ShinkuRose’s winter collection available from Etsy, https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ShinkuRose or direct from https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shinkurose/593986427294641.

Behind the Scenes – Photoshoot at The Cottonwood Boutique Hotel

I had been planning a new collection for the winter but although the designs were on paper I hadn’t got together with my partner to start making either the patterns or the outfits.

I needed a bit of a push to get started and this came from a meeting with Suzy Wheeler, a lovely lady and senior publicist of Strawberry Fields,  http://www.strawberryfieldsrepresents.com/.  Strawberry Fields RePresents supports creative talent in business and provides services in PR, marketing, event management and business guidance.  It was founded in 2005 and began as a music festival for 200 people and now is a thriving business working with individuals and organisations in music, fashion, film, art, dance, design and media. We met Suzy first when my partner represented us at a vintage market at the Russell Cotes Museum in Bournemouth where she sold a hat to Suzy to wear to a wedding.

Suzy invited us to meet her at the lovely Cottonwood Boutique Hotel in Bournemouth, http://www.thecottonwoodboutique.co.uk/, and we were amazed it was so lovely and the rooms were just perfect for a photoshoot. It was also great sitting in the bar area, drinking a cup of tea looking out onto the gardens with the sea just a stone’s throw away.

Suzy helped us think about where we were going, who our market is etc and this gave us the kick start we needed,  the outfits were made and the photographer booked.  Our photographer was Andy Smith of Poole Portraits, http://www.pooleportraits.co.uk/ . Andy has done amazing photos for us in the past and we knew he could deliver exactly what we wanted.

We knew we had to be incredibly organised for the photoshoot and the weekend before we visited the hotel, had a delicious bar lunch and worked out which rooms would be best for each outfit.

 

We had six outfits to take in two hours which included the time needed to change each outfit so we needed to be organised.  We wrote a schedule which looked like this:-

Itinerary

Coat at 3.00 pm outside the main building on the steps

Blue and pink dress at 3.15 in the main foyer

Black skirt and capelet at 3.35 in the garden

Purple skirt 3.55 by window in pink room and or bar area

Lilac dress at 4.15 in the library/staircase

Statement piece at 4.35 by the fireplace

With the help of everyone including Andy’s lovely wife Karole we kept to this time schedule using not only the above areas to photograph but also some that Andy and Karole knew would work well.

I spent time in the days before researching hairstyles and make up and on the day my sister, Jessica, did the hair and I did the make up.  We are very fortunate to have Jessica who always rises to the challenge and always does a beautiful job.    A friend Anna was our beautiful and very good model for the day.

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The photoshoot told a story, a weekend away in Bournemouth, I had in mind the house parties that the Victorian aristocrats always seemed to have and I think you can see this unfold by the snapshots below:- (Poole Portraits photos to follow in the next blog).

 

These snapshots are a bit fuzzy but I think they give the overall impression of a fun but yet well organised photoshoot. We finished the photos at 5pm exactly and ended the day with a cocktail each in the bar which was just great.

These I have to emphasise are  just snapshots and the next blog will showcase Andy’s photos.

We would like to thank everyone involved starting with Suzy, the staff in the Cottonwood Boutique Hotel who were extremely helpful, Andy and Karole of Poole Portraits, Jessica for giving up her afternoon, never complaining about what I ask her to do and always executing the hairstyles brilliantly and not forgetting Anna for acting the part so well.

Embellishing with Appliqué

I have been designing a new collection for ShinkuRose https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shinkurose/593986427294641) comprising of an OP, a JSK, blouse, cutsew, coat and two skirts.  I have found it very difficult to get border prints in England which are suitable so I decided to decorate the bottom of the JSK with applique. 

The applique needed to be large so I drew it on a large piece of paper and made a pattern.  I cut this pattern out and then copied it on to Bondaweb. Bondaweb is a strong, heat reactive, sheet of glue which permanently bonds one fabric to another when ironed, it is paper backed and is ironed to the applique, the paper removed and then the applique is ironed onto the garment. 

 

 

 

Before attaching I made sure that the applique was in exactly the right place on the JSK. 

 

 

Because of the glue I used my silk organza to cover the applique whilst pressing it on.  I used a pressing movement, up and down with the iron, rather than an ironing movement so as to completely stick and not move the applique whilst attaching.

I had one or two problems with adding the bondaweb to the bow as I had cut both pieces out separately so when I repeated the process for one of my skirts I found an easier solution. I cut the applique out in bondaweb and pressed these onto one piece of fabric and then cut out the appliques out, this proved to be much easier and quicker.

Once cut out place them on the garment in the correct positions.

Press the appiques on and before sewing them to the garment practice stitching.  You will use a small close together zig zag and I did a few different combinations on a scrap of fabric bondaweb to the main to see which I preferred.

I like to loosen my top tension a bit to give a lovely rounded stitch on the right side therefore the wrong side will look like the sample below.

And here is the finished skirt.

It started with Pistachio Icecream

My brother has just got married in Lima, Peru which was and still is very exciting. I needed a new outfit and inspiration came from icecream.

I had already decided to wear Lolita fashion and because of the occasion and the fact that most people would be wearing evening dress, my outfit  needed to be extra dressy.  The above picture gave me my starting point for colours and I visited Goldhawk Road, Shepherds Bush fabric shops to find the materials I needed.  I bought a super green and a lovely pink in a good quality satin cotton.

Simple details were added, vintage lace at the neck, lace on the sleeves and lace on the attached underskirt in white –

A pink sash and a pink bow finished the embellishment.

I always wear a hair accessory and made one to match. My mother in law gave me a lovely bunch of flowers when she came to visit and decorating it was the pink heart you see below –

I used this heart together with flowers made from my green satin and some lovely lace fabric to make my hair accessory.

 

This is how it all went together on the day –

My little clutch bag came from TK Maxx and I mustn’t forget my shoes which are one of my favourite brands ‘Irregular Choice’.

We had a wonderful day one of the highlights being this amazing sweet table

MCM in OTT Sweet Lolita

I decided to go to MCM  Expo this year both to have a fun day out after a difficult week and to scout out the possibility of having a stall there next May stocking Lolita dresses and accessories so I made myself a JSK.

First Step fabric shopping – I have found it very difficult to find border print fabric in this country so I was very excited when on a visit to Bath I found this one: –

Next step was to make a toile

Once I was happy with the fit I cut it out

Once sewn together I put it on my dummy ready for embellishing

and here am I wearing it

I made a pretty blouse to go under it and a strawberry bag for all my bits and pieces.   The best bit of all though was donning the wig and decorating it with all my hair accessories.

I had a lovely day, bought lots of things and on a serious note I can see that it would be a good place for me to have a stall there selling garments like my JSK and other Lolita styles.