DIY I Do : Decor, Quotes and Fun for our Guests

Here's a fun Wedding detail that Robin and I put together for our guests. We all know that the wait between ceremony and dinner can be quite long for the guests so I thought it would be sweet to frame love, marriage, friendship quotes and scatter them around the venue. The guests could then come upon them (or hunt them out if they wished!) and try and guess who said each quote. Answers were written on the backs. 

We had great fun searching for appropriate quotes and gathered up a collection of both romantic and funny (about 20 in total I think). I knew Robin wouldn't be too keen on the overly soppy quotes so I had to keep it balanced…I even managed to include a quote from Star Wars! The frames were all sourced from car boot sales and then painted white, which made this a very frugal Wedding decoration/game (always a bonus!).

Audrey Hepburn

Winnie The Pooh

Bob Marley - read the full quote here

I also thought it would be fun to create a hashtag for our Wedding so that friends and family could share their photos of the day on Instagram. So I made a couple of little signs for it: 

However…my top tip is to check that your venue either has WIFI or is within signal range. Our lovely country Manor House was in the middle of nowhere so no one could get the internet!! Whoops!!

Would you? Could you?

I wasn’t going to post today (3 posts in 3 days from me…what’s going on?!), but I have just seen this on Design Sponge and I HAD to share it would you guys!

Grace has shared the most fabulous makeover by Cori Kindred who has covered a retro typewriter in fabric (click the photo for more). As soon as I saw it my heart skipped a beat (come on, we all love fabric don’t we?!) and I thought… could I do that to my sewing machine??!!!

It sounds like quite a tricky, fiddly task, but just imagine swathing your sewing machine in your most favourite fabric…my only problem would be having to choose which fabric to use!

So what about you, could you be tempted?

Trend Spotting : The Dropped Waist

I think we would all agree that at some point along the journey of sewing your own clothes you start to experience a sense of freedom and power against the RTW world – you realise that you don’t have to be tied down by current trends and fashion. You can choose whatever style, fabric and colour you like (if you can find it in the fabric shop that is, that’s another story!)! Although that is true, I still see current trends and fashions creeping into the sewing world. To be honest it would be hard for it not to, fashion tends to recycle itself. I can remember countless outfits when I was growing up that my Mum would pass comment on to say she wore it when it was first in fashion!

Anyway, all this is to say that over the last few years I have seen the twinkle of a trend and thought to myself, “oh I recon that’s going to be big” (either in the RTW world or the sewing blog world) – but I’ve never bothered to blog about it. Some examples of this are scalloped edges, peplums, coloured lace dresses, peter-pan collars…the list goes on. So  instead of just letting them pass by, I thought I would share my thoughts on the blog.

Todays trend may not necessarily be my favourite trend ever, but I’ve been seeing it pop up a lot and I have a feeling we may be seeing a fair bit more of it next year, both in the shops and perhaps on sewing blogs: The Dropped Waist. My guess is this trend is probably being inspired by the recent Downton Abbey Flapper style (it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Downton has influenced fashion), or maybe it’s a development from the peplum, which evolved into the hem flounce and is now a dropped waist? Perhaps a little bit of both.

It can be a hard look to carry off but can be done beautifully. Simple and chic it can be dressed up or dressed down:

Or horrendously:

Sorry VB, that’s just wrong.

But asides from the Fashion World, I’ve spotted the dropped waist on a number of commercial sewing patterns as well:

And more excitingly (because we all know we love and want to support them), the independent designers have been giving their own spin on this trend too:

So what to you think? Do you like this style? Are you tempted to whip up a drop waisted dress?

Personally, although I think it would actually fit in quite well with my search for forgiving patterns, I don’t know if I’m ready to jump on this wagon just yet…

 

*Click images for links

A Very Seasonal Cape

Well this post is long overdue. I actually made this cape last year but never managed to get any decent shots of it at the time, and it seemed wrong to blog about it in Summer, so I've been keeping it for more Wintery weather.

This is a fun little wool cape, made from New Look pattern 6916, which unfortunately seems to be out of print now, but the envelope looks like this:

It's a very easy make which requires very little fitting (obviously), but it took my some time to complete due to my inability to choose a suitable lining. When I initially bought the red wool (which once I had laid eyes on I couldn't let go off - I just love the shade of this red!) I decided I wanted to have a fun, playful lining and ended up buying a bright turquoise Chinese brocade. The woman in the shop was giving me a bit of an odd look while cutting it for me, but I just thought her 'old' and not quirky enough to appreciate just how fabulous this was going to end up. It wasn't until I had the the red and blue pinned and ready to sew together did I realise that I was making myself a Superman cape!!! Um….no. There is quirky, and then there is just wrong.

So the beautiful red wool languished at the bottom of my unfinished pile while I searched and searched for the right lining. After much thought and deliberation I decided that a tartan would be the perfect lining and ended up buying some online. Unfortunately once it arrived, it was rather heavy and, to be honest, a bit too much like a picnic rug. So again the red wool waited. (By the way - said picnic rug should hopefully be appear on the blog soon in another post!).

Finally I found the PERFECT lining, and on sale in my local fabric shop too! A lovely black, white and grey tartan with a little line of the perfect shade of red running through it. It was destiny! I didn't have enough fabric to even attempt to match the tartan, and to be honest even if I did I think it would have been near impossible anyway. I had hopped that the cape would be reversible and I would get a nice tartan cape out of this, but the tartan fabric has a bit of strange wrinkle to it due to a metallic thread that runs through it, so it doesn't really work for the outer layer. Never mind!

The cape is actually designed with a mandarin collar (see picture on left above), but I had a detachable faux fur collar in my wardrobe and when I put the two together it was a match made in Christmas heaven!!  For the closure, I sewed on two twine frogs  & wooden toggles.

The cape, as most capes go, probably isn't the most convenient piece out outwear I own (where do you put your arms and how do you carry your handbag???), but with the collar on it's good fun and perfect for getting into the spirit of the season with a trip to the Christmas Market:

DIY I Do : A Sign for the Ceremony

 

Oh dear, I realise that we are now coming up to 5 months after the wedding, but things have been a bit hectic around here (and I lost the use of the letter 't' on my keyboard - don't ask! lol), but I still have a few more DIY I Do posts that I really want to document before I move on. The biggies are out of the way though, so most of these posts will be short and sweet - feel free to pass if it's not your thing, I realise they won't be very 'sewing' orientated.

So, for this post I just wanted to share a sign that I made for the ceremony. Since I have a very small family and Robin has a very large family I was a bit concerned that the ceremony would be a bit one-sided…literary! Then I happened to see a sign on Pinterest that would pretty much solve the problem. It read: "As two families are becoming one, we asked that you choose a seat and not a side". I thought it was perfect. We really wanted to have a relaxed and informal day, and this sign would also get us out of the issue of not wanting any ushers.

I scoured car boots sales and eventually came upon a large framed 'painting' in a gaudy gold frame. It looks pretty rubbish, and was missing it's glass so I managed to get it for 50p! At home I took out the print, which was on a wooden board and spray painted the frame white and gave it a rubdown to get that 'shabby chic' effect. Next I painted over the painting (don't worry, it wasn't an old master, it was a print reproduction) with navy blue paint from a sample pot (bargain!).

The next part was the tricky part. How to get the writing looking less shabby and more chic! I used the font (which is called Sail by the way) that we had used in all of our wedding stationery and printed out the words across several sheets of A4. I then roughly cut around each word/line and decided on their positions. Then you use a soft pencil and shade the back of the letters, put them carefully into position and use a sharp pencil to go over every line. This leaves a very slight imprint onto the blue and allows you to follow it when painting. I used a medium thickness white paint pen to do the job. It was really relaxing and I loved doing it.

I have to say, we were both really happy with how the sign turned out! And since the frame turned out so nice we have plans to reuse it in our home, perhaps painting inside with chalkboard paint?

 (oh yes - mustn't forget obligatory cat pic!)