Sewing Gage

Photo by Captured by Corinne Photo by  Captured by Corinne Photo by  Captured by Corinne Just a few pics of the Marilyn dress finally completed. I really enjoyed making this, it was time consuming but I love the result. It's the first time I made a toile to get the fitting spot on before making the final garment, and it fitted perfectly.  The boyfriend made the headpieces, which were stunning! We even made the gay press. (c) QX Magazine (c) Boyz Magazine

Just a quick update on the red dress. The bodice is almost done, just the zip to put in at the back. I'm covered in sequins, but am so happy in how's it's progressing! And this arrived yesterday, my new overlocker! It just makes life so much easier! I'm going to try and send my old one back to the British Sewing Centre and demand a refund, which may be a challenge, going on reviews from other people trying to do the same thing. Wish me luck!

Me and the boyfriend have decided to make this iconic dress from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (he's Jane Russell, and i'm Marilyn) for our Christmas outing at Cybil's House . I know it's not Christmasey (apart from being red maybe), but it's a good excuse to try and make it. Yeah, this really is a challenge! It was a challenge just sourcing the material. I searched everywhere online and only found one place that stocked it, but they were out of stock. When I contacted them, they told me that the material had been discontinued. I had tried all my usual shops, but one day I decided to visit Shepherds Bush, in West London. There's a whole street full of fabric shops there. After visiting six or seven shops, I finally found it at Toni Textiles . There was only five meters left on the roll, so I took the lot! We began by creating a toile, a test version of the bodice, so that adjustments could be made. I have never done this before, but for th...

It's been a while since my last post. I've been super busy so hopefully i'll get round to doing a few more updates. In the meantime here's a few pics of the Barberella outfit and the silver trousers with  organza top. Photo by Dan Govan www.purenift.com www.instagram.com/princesssleya Photo by Dan Govan www.purenift.com

My friend Phill approached me to ask if I could recreate the headpiece worn by Verka Serduchka in the 2007 Eurovision song contest, and of course I said yes! (I do anything for a Chinese takeaway and some wine). I started by making the start out of mirrored cardboard. There are loads of templates online to use, so I chose one and scaled it to the size I needed. I then got Phill over and made a plaster cast of his head. Once that was done, I hot glue gunned strips of thin foam to the inside, so it sat a little more comfortable. I then stuck on mirror tiles (available from ebay) with a hot glue gun. And then finished the edges with some silver trimming with more mirror tiles stuck on top of that; It then made its way to Germany all in one piece for the Kölner Karneval in Cologne.

On October 7th I was hosting an end of summer party at my flat and I didn't have a thing to wear! I had bought some gold fabric from Minerva Crafts  in the sale and I didn't have any projects to do so I decided on the following vintage pattern, which I got from the vintage pattern shop . My mum has told me since that she attempted to make this dress, but eventually gave up on it. It was tricky, but I persevered. The pattern pieces were huge, luckily I was on night shift at work so I took everything to work, laid everything out on the floor and cut out all the pieces. So from that, to this. My mannequin, doesn't do it justice!. I hope I do though!

Continuing with the geometric origami design I went about researching a headpiece, and settled on re-creating this one; It took me a while to find the correct shape, but I got there and started by making it from paper; Once I was happy with the shape I then made it out of black and white card and made the final piece;

Club kids was the next theme at Cybil's House and at first I didn't have a clue what to do. But after a bit of research online I decided to go with some kind of geometric origami design. I don't know if this fitted into the theme but thought it would be interesting to do. Some of these designs were pretty complex so I settled on creating one like this; I had to take the piece apart mentally and created a miniature version of the pattern pieces so that I could get the correct shape. I then scaled it up to my measurements.  Miniature pattern piece The fabric I used was a thick white canvas type material Ultimate Craft in Camden. The material was stiff so that it would stand up (hopefully). It was also easy to cut out and sew together. I used my overlocker which makes things a bit easier going through layers of heavy material. However, it was at this point the overlocker broke. See more about this story in this post . It wasn't quite stiff enou...