Textiles R Us: LONDON BABY!

Yeah I'm genuinely excited about a 5 hour trip to London with my Mum. I had such a nice time! We first went to Peter Jones (another John Lewis brand) OH MY GOD it's amazing in there, I want like everything but there's like 18p in my bank account so that's not gonna happen!! But we got some patterns to cut from for some of my garments...

I was expecting there to be rows and rows of millions of fabrics to choose from, with every color of the rainbow and any material under the sun.... But no. It was shit. And ugly. So my Mum was like 'oh lets go to Berwick Street, where I got the materials for my wedding dress!' (Georgia - if you want her to answer some questions you have she says she'd be happy to do so!) & anyway, so we paid, and got back onto the tube - which I'm actually getting pretty good at now, getting to know my London a lot better! So we got to Oxford Circus and walked in the same direction that you go to get to Lucy in Disguise (I have made that trip soooo many times!) and finally got to Berwick street.

So this is practically HEAVEN if you're okay with spending a fair bit on your material, depending on what you're making. I'm very thankful I had my Mum and her card today haha! But I got some amazing stuff. Really beautiful, fine quality materials which are going to look amazing. I managed to get the right colours for my designs and a good amount for each, so as long as it all goes well this is going to look great!

Pretty amazingly beautiful shop right here. So pretty! Amazing materials and lovely staff. I'll show you the materials now... I'd show you the designs but I have to perfect them first, which will be done tomorrow (when I have a new sketchbook!!)

Maddie's outfit (one of my gorgeous models) is going to be a corset and a pencil skirt. This was designed in the theme of locking away the body. As a corset and a pencil skirt hug the body and hold it in, it does quite help to visualise the message I'm trying to represent. I wanted quite interesting colours. As dark and mysterious as all black would be, I don't want it to look borderline dominatrix LOL I want there to be diversity. I liked the idea of having black lace over a more plain fabric for the corset, sort of like how it's locking away an element to the design. Also the pattern of the lace reminded me of the really amazing gates and patterns I photographed in the V&A on my last trip to London (man I love this city!) I found a really pretty lace that was quite metallic as well, which could easily represent the shine texture you get from the metals of keys and locks. The skirt I chose to be a deep magenta colour, because in my profile for Maddie, she wrote that this colour goes well with her complexion. I'm planning on screen printing upright keys around the hem, maybe a vintage style key to link with the pattern of the lace? This would probably be done in the same sort of colour (opaque of course) as the base material of my corset.

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This is for the outfit I'm designing and modelling myself (lol that sounds so vain). I'm making black short shorts (don't worry, I found a good pattern to work from because it's all quite difficult apparently). This is going to be matched with a jacket (again, I found a good pattern to work from) with the cream material and my plan is to screen print instructions on how to get in and out of the garment. I want to maybe have some prints on the shorts as well, of both keys and locks, I need to design something to go on them.

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Ooh this is so gorgeous, I haven't even made it yet and I already love it because of the vivid color! This is Sally's garment. It's going to be a maxi dress with a slit up the side of the leg, so it's like she can escape the garment. I'm going to screen print onto it some really nice patterns, which I'm thinking will come from the photos I took at the V&A, as they would make quite expressive prints, as this piece is meant to really represent freedom, and how keys can unlock something to liberate it. I want the pattern to be quite like this... Maybe around the waist, and then have a line of something similar going up the right side of the slit.

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So that's where I've got to on the making front, but I'm so excited to get making! Really enthusiastic which is more like ME, not how I've previously felt about projects, but I've admittedly let myself go a little bit. But I'm feeling much more like myself now, which is so refreshing aha!

Hope all of your projects are going well! OH and by the way, Holly, I was in the cutest little fabric shop and they had these interesting wooden shoe things which I think they use to actually make them? I don't even know, but I took a photo for you!