Exploring Bath

As I mentioned in my previous post, we took travelling to Somerset for our friend's wedding as an excuse to make a weekend trip out of it and explore Bath and Bristol.

After curing our slight hangover with a huge full English breakfast on Saturday morning, we headed for what is now in my opinion the most beautiful town in the UK. Oh what a stunning place with all it's Georgian architecture, Abbey and Roman Baths.

I will leave you with a few images to see for yourself. Of course there wasn't enough time for us to see everything, especially since we had started the day with a lie in. We'll have to go back.

River Avon

The Roman Baths

The Circus (The Circus and the Royal Crescent are amazing Georgian terraced houses set up in a circle and a crescent. Very iconic Bath landmarks)

We also went to the Assembly Rooms where the Bath Fashion Museum is situated. I need to do a separate post on that.

Amazing ceiling in the Bath Abbey.

The wedding outfit

I was working on this outfit all through last week. If you follow me on Twitter (@Beatrice_Winter) or Instagram (@beatricewinter) you will have seen a few pictures of the work in progress already.

My husband and I were invited to go to a wedding in Frome in Sommerset on Friday night and decided to make a weekend of it. I will blog about the whole trip throughout the week. We decided to include day trips to Bath and Bristol on Saturday and Sunday as both places were close by and we had never been.

First of all the main reason we went down to Sommerset for though. The wedding of my husband's colleague Dale and his beautiful wife Anna. The lovely couple got married at Orchardleigh House in Frome. One of the most amazing places I have ever been to. We were wondering why they had chosen to get married here, when it is quite a track from either of their homes. This is why:

source: http://www.weddingvenues.com/venue3262.html

Of course I needed a new dress to wear to the wedding. I love jewel colours and opted for a teal satin.

The fabric was a dream to work with. I didn't use a pattern really, I used 2 to complete the whole look. I used the bodice of New look 6557 view E

For the skirt I chose New look 6917 view D without the waistband and attached it straight on to the bodice.

The Frankenstein project resulted in this

I decided to add a belt with a heavily beaded detail to the otherwise rather plain dress. I enjoyed beading the headband a few posts back so much, I wanted another beading project.

Work in progress, unfortunately once I encrusted the whole piece in beads it didn't go with the dress. At least not as a belt. I had attached it on some ribbon to tie around my waist but then decided to chop it off again, attach it to a comb and wear it as a head piece instead. It worked a treat.

I also wanted a little jacket to go with the dress. It's January after all.

I used another New Look pattern 6675 and made the little bolero from it.

I didn't add the bows or any other detail and kept it rather plain.

It looks more midnight blue in the picture here. It is however the same colour as the dress. This is what you get when you play around with photo apps to much.

In the end I wanted a little beading on the dress and just added a few rows of slate coloured seed beads around the neckline and et voila, the finished outfit.

 Dress, jacket (all lined in midnight blue as you can see in this picture), head piece and way to high shoes....

And one of the handsome guest couple for good measure...

The bish bash bosh New Years dress

First of all, happy new year my dear readers. I hope you all had wonderful New Years celebrations and have recovered by now. We didn't go crazy this year as we just wanted to enjoy each others company after we spent last New Years Eve apart from each other. We had a couple of friends around and took it easy. Therefore I haven't got any amazing party pictures to share.

Instead I decided to share a new dress I made.

I made this dress in December using some printed crepe fabric I had in my stash for ages. I always wanted to use the fabric but didn't really have a clue what to make from it.

When I was beading the headband I watched some Ginger Rogers movies as I had just finished reading her autobiography (I very much enjoyed it and recommend reading it) and hence got into the 1930s styles.

As most of the dresses from that time are bias cut and not an easy thing to sew, I came up with this idea for a dress with minimal sewing efforts. It's basically just straight seams and rectangular shapes. The waist is elasticated and it buttons up at the back.

I sewed on some sequin-y bead-y things for detail and bish bash bosh a new dress was made.

Add some pin curls hair and dramatic make up and off you go. I hope you enjoy!!

 

A little bling to sparkle in cold winter nights

As the nights are long right now there is nothing better than cuddling up on the sofa with the kitty and a hot chocolate. I had many of those evenings lately but at the same time I felt like doing something productive. evenings

I have never been into beading much or anything else that is very time consuming. I like it when I start a project and several hours later -boom- I have a new piece of clothing or a new accessory.

However when many evenings are spend on the sofa, a long lasting, fiddly project is just the right thing.fiddly

So I decided to spark up a headband just in time for the holiday season.

I have a ton of beads I got from my mother in law, cut offs and samples from the bridal shop I used to work at and all kinds of bits and bobs. It all went on there and et voila:

There is a tutorial on Kazz the Spazz for a similar project. She made a gorgeous necklace covered with buttons. In case you have a few too many hours to spare, have a go yourself. The results are amazing.

Winter walk along the coast

Merry Christmas

I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas, eat lots and be merry.

Hopefully you have all been good this year and Santa brought you everything you wished for.

I am finally back to normal and connected to the virtual world.

Can't wait to share my creations and other bits and bobs worth with you again on a regular basis.

Again, many thanks for you patience.

Merry Christmas to all of you.

1960s crepe de chine dress with vintage lace applique

It’s been nearly 3 weeks since we’ve moved house and we are STILL waiting for our telephone and broadband to be set up. I don’t know how we managed  to live before all these means of communication were common in most households? It’s awful not being able to check emails, facebook, write blog posts and keep in touch with everyone?

Hopefully this situation will be sorted within the next few days. For now WiFi in local coffee shops and libraries will have to do.

Our new house is great. Too bad we won’t be here for long as we are going to move again in Jan/Feb time. That’s life being a soldier’s wife… I will miss the generous spare bedroom I am using as my work room. It’s about twice the size of my old work room, very bright and tons of storage space. I have about 3 build in wardrobes.  Anyways enough showing off for now. I will show pictures some time.

I have already “broken it in” and made myself a little 1960s crepe number with a little lace applique. I haven’t had much time sewing for myself so far but this little dress fit in easily and came together in just an afternoon. The pattern is one I made several times last year. It is Simplicity 9059.

I used some paisley print crepe de chine I had in my stash for ages and some vintage lace bits I appliqued around the sleeve openings and the bust seam. I think it turned out quite nicely and is a perfect little daytime/ casual going out addition for my wardrobe.