Dear Suse, I'm so happy to be making your frock...

I think one of the many reasons I love making wedding dresses so much is that my own wedding day was super spectacularly fun and wonderful. I know how great a wedding can be! So I always feel honoured to be able to participate in and contribute to other peoples' weddings in such a special way.

Pearl's and my wedding day was a gloriously handmade affair, with all our loved ones pitching in to provide food, decorations, music and blessings. And, because we're not technically allowed to get married because of the havoc we will inevitably wreak upon the nice ol' convention of the nuclear family's precious values, we didn't have to get a stuffy celebrant to be in charge of our special day. Instead, we had our dear friend Sarah as our MC, while the lovely and extremely talented Ms Genna played us a love song on her fiddle. Couldn't have been more perfect.

My mum and I made our dresses, Pearl's wedding ring was handmade, and mine was a gift from my nana, which she gave to Pearl as a part of the ceremony. Not a dry eye in the house!!

I was reminded of all this recently when I received the fabric selection provided by my latest wedding dress client, Suse. The colouring, as you can see, is so similar to my own dress I couldn't help but laugh. How lovely!

When Suse sent me some pics of the dresses she's into, I was pretty excited because they were mostly all from 'my' era, the 20s and 30s. Somewhat ironically, I actually met Susan when I taught her at Uni... a course on modernist literature from the 20s and 30s. Freaky dude! So it is especially fitting that the vintage component, including the AMAZING beaded collar you see before you, has an appropriately and authentically 'between the wars' story behind it. When I was a child, you see, my mum volunteered for Animal Welfare, and met tons of crazy cat ladies. I thought they were all pretty cool, but one in particular was a standout. When she died, she left her whole house to Animal Welfare, including her collection of costumes and accessories from her time on the stage in the 30s and 40s. Hello suitcases full of amazing, beautiful, glittery, feathered velvet stuff. This collar belonged to that lady. It's showing its age, and, if we decide to use it, will need some extensive repair work along the lines of those falling down barns on Grand Designs that need about a million tonnes of concrete poured under them because they're slipping down a hill. But I reckon it'll be worth it, because the thing is beautiful and totally unlike anything I've ever seen.

But back to the dress. I'm thinking we use the collar, we have a nicely-falling gathered boob bit, which is I suppose a bit 'Ancient Roman meets 20s Paris", we use the spectacular piece of dusky pink and gold rose lace trim (also from suitcase of cat lady) across the front of the dress, and then we have a flowy, very long skirt with even a bit of a train, if you're up for it.

The back of the dress is totally open to the waist, but there's a huge flowy cape coming down from the back of the collar, which goes to the floor (can cover a bra strap if you want to keep the ladies contained). In all, it goes a little somethin' like this...

I'm not 100% attached to any particular colour combo, and I'm not sure what you had in mind when you bought the fabric in terms of layering or whatnot, but I think you'll agree that the collar looks totally ace next to the dusky satin, and I reckon the graduated pink would look fantastic on the cape, with the darkest bit at the bottom. There's also some blue lace, also from the suitcase, which is amazingly fine, and very unusually wide, but I couldn't quite see where it would fit, so it's not in my drawings. I reckon it could do something awesome in your hair, but not sure what you're thinking for your 'do.

The drawings, but the way, are pretty indicative of the main reasons I never did design or art at school, though Olive thought they were "very neat" which I suppose for a 5 year old, they are.

Finders Keepers + wren-flavoured wedding frock = a P&E takeover of the dining room

Sometimes the output required of the trusty P&E sewing machine is a little too much for my cozy nook, so I move on out to the airy dining room. I watch the trees, hang out with the kids, eat (adjacent to kitchen - yeah!) and generally sprawl all over our big old dining table making a mess more colossal than my cosy bedroom nook would ever allow. It's comfy, all right.

Right now, in the lead-up to Georgie Love's debut at the Melbourne Finders Keepers markets I'm frantically churning out skirts, boleros and tops, fuelled by a six-pack of Little Creatures and a packet of Mint Slice biscuits (I swear, this combo is more delicious than it sounds). And I'm almost done! I'm pretty much in love with Sturt's Desert Peas (spectacular, no?) so this skirt is a bit of a fave.

One of the drawbacks to working with vintage fabrics - especially those of the tea-towel and tablecloth variety, of which I am particularly fond - is that they will often come with delightfully stubborn

tea/coffee/red wine stains. Sometimes, the good old Napisan works a treat, other times, not so much. Enter the saviours of this situation: patch pockets, applique and, as in the case of the Desert Pea polka dot skirt, The Random Button Spray. Problem solved! I have also used all of these 'techniques' on my own clothes - spaghetti-stained and moth-eaten garments alike.

Reborn! Ah, the joys of a cover-up.

Also making a mess of the dining table is the pretty-much

SPECTACULAR wedding frock I'm making for Ally, permaculture and sustainability goddess and all round happy lady. Our weekend meeting finalised some details about the design, and she delivered her fabric selections, which were all inspired by a little vintage tablecloth covered in native birds.

The wren is going to make a little feature on an obi-style belt which is going to cap off the vintage-inspired frock. The top of the dress is going to be based on the green one pictured here (previously Pearl's, now mine, all mine!

Muaahhhaaaahahaha!),

and the bottom is going to be a little bit glam-o, following the hot 50's dress in the pattern.

AND it's going to have electric blue netted petticoat to make it stick out in a super-sassy kind of way. I'm... so... frikkin... excited! Unfortunately the delivery date of the wedding frock coincides quite dramatically with the Finders Keepers market so, as usual, I am one busy chickadee.

Lucky I love it so much.

And lucky I have such a nice dining room.

Sunshiny wedding frocks ahoy

It was a dark and dreary morning, and I was tired and didn't feel like working on a sunday, but I still made the effort to drag myself to Wollongong council chambers to run a natural baby care workshop. And boy am I glad I made the effort! My lovely friend Ally came along, and we got talking about her wedding plans, and she asked me to make her wedding dress. What a precious honour! I have made a couple of wedding frocks in my time, and it is seriously one of the most fun and rewarding things a crafty lady can do.
Ally is a gorgeous, sunshiny, inspiring and smart woman who, with her equally gorgeous and inspiring partner, Richard, takes care of a startlingly spectacular permaculture garden in Unanderra. Check out their extra-special work at www.happyearth.com.au
It is lovely!
SOOOOO when she said that she and Richard were planning on getting married in said gorgeous garden, in sunny November, I thought of this bright yellow dress that I'd made about a year ago. I LOVED it. So golden and bright, made from a linen tablecloth and a tea-towel, it was a gorgeous weight, and fitted really well because the top is cut on the bias. I modelled the design based on a 1950s vintage dress pattern, and I've made a few dresses from the same pattern because it's so darn great.
So we're having a brainstorming luncheon, to look through my fabrics, draw some pictures, and hopefully get started on something beautiful for her to wear on her extra-special day of love!