Recently I’d seen rings made out of fabric covered buttons, and feel in love with the idea but wasn’t totally sold on the execution. When my grandmother died a few years back I inherited her sewing collection, including a quality street tin worth of buttons. My OH’s grandmother died this year and again I was presented with a tin of buttons! beautiful buttons that I had no idea what to use for. The fabric covered buttons set me into motion turning my grandmother’s buttons into rings.

The weekend before the jubilee I was in Paris for a long weekend and while there we went down to a little flea market near where we were staying. Most of it was either over priced and ridiculous or literally trash (just one shoe for sale anyone?), but we did stumble across a great little shop that specialised in old bits of watch and clock. It was literally like when you see pictures from the Holocaust with the huge piles of eye glasses. Very disconcerting, however I came across a few gems that I am really please with. I picked up 6 watch hands (2 pairs and 2 individual ones) and 6 watch faces.

Roll on the 24th June!

Here is what Toyah originally asked me to work from:

Click through to see what this became..After briefly flirting with the idea of a high neckline and a scoop back, Toyah settled on this design:

People are always surprised by the slightly different skills required for fashion as opposed to costume, and this has been such a learning curve but totally worth the effort and the stress!

I hope to get some of the professional shots soon

I have been absent for some time now. Costume will be a part of my life again I promise.

This week I finally found some trim I think will be appropriate for the Elizabeth I dress so keep eyes open for that. Also I am currently working on 3 bridesmaid dresses which is quite exciting.

All the photos are on the portfolio page (copyright Paul Green) but here are a few of my favourites…

So for this one I sourced the tee and make the sexy skirt

I had to make 5 of these jackets in the end, hessian sure gets in your throat

That super shiny jacket makes everyone looks beautiful and I made 3 of these wrap/shawls to dress the lords

This cute like black cape was one of mine too

and a bit of man love to finish this post

But I did work on something a couple of weeks back, The Madness of King George for the Icarus Theatre Company

I only made the underwear for the Countess of Pembroke (that’s her being manhandled on the left there):

still pretty exciting to know something I’ve made is on tour.

Speaking of which, Angel Exit are touring Moonfleet, which is also pretty cool and if you’re in the area I urge you to check it out

I worked on a show called ‘Arden of Faversham’ which is a 1592 anonymous domestic comedy in which a multitude of people are paid to kill the titular Arden so his wife can be with her lover. The show is playing at the Rose Theatre, which is an excavation site and the play is staged with the site as a backdrop…and it looks amazing!

On to the pics