Laura Ashley: The Romantic Heroine

The Royal Crescent

I have just moved to Bath and having come from the middle of nowhere, I am keen to get out and experience as much of the city as humanly possible. So I was happily browsing the web for exciting things to get up to, when I came across this Laura Ashley Exhibition at the Bath Fashion Museum. As a lover of all this garishly floral and hyper-feminine, I had to hot foot it down there!

It was everything I had imagined, lots of colour, lots of flowers, but I think the think I most enjoyed was the company. As, although I went on my own, the exhibition (set in the gorgeous Assembly Rooms) was full of woman in their 50's saying "I had one just like that!" and "Oh do you remember those leg of mutton sleeves?". This created a hugely nostalgic atmosphere.

Another thing that I had never considered was the notion that Laura Ashley's designs harp back to the romantic period of literature. Many of the dresses where inspired by heroines Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowed or Jane Austin's Pride a Prejudice.

 

These designs came at a period of severe economic gloom (1970's) where programs such as Upstairs Downstairs were hugely popular and women were keen to emulate their literary heroines as a form of escapism. This reminds me of 2013, where we have our own economic struggles and millions of people are waiting on the edge of their seats to see how Lady Mary reacts to the tragic death of Mathew Crawley in Downton Abbey, next weekend! Could this mean that we are in for another wave of 'Victorian demurs'? I hope so, I quite fancy swanning around in a big floral dress!

 

Breton Pencil Skirt

Having had major hip surgery in January this year, I found I had a lot of time on my hands but not much energy or brain power to embark on complicated dressmaking adventures! I also found myself online A LOT....happily I stumbled upon this brilliant DIY Striped Skirt Tutorial by Life is Beautiful on Pinterest.

I think the trickiest part of this project was sourcing the right weight of jersey knit as it needed to be fairly stable with only 20% stretch. In the end I brought this simple striped Breton fabric for £2 per metre on Amazon. I only needed one metre making it a pretty economical project!

It's such a simple skirt to make, so my post-op brain could handle it and as I was still on crutches, there wasn't too much need for moving about (another big plus!).

Check my bow out!

I finished it in a morning but I felt I wanted to add something else, so I just made a quick bow for the back, using contrasting vertical stripes to create a 1950's pinup feel!

I love this skirt!!

Seedy Granola

I will never be one of those people who eats the same thing for breakfast everyday...No! When it comes to breakfast (and lunch, and supper!!) variety is the spice of life!

 

We had porridge oats left over from the colder months that I wanted to use up. So mixing it with some lovely seeds seemed the way to go!

 

Here's how I made it...

Ingredients:

450g Jumbo Porridge Oats
2tbs Poppy seeds
2tbs Linseeds
2tbs Pumpkinseeds

2tbs Whole Hazelnuts

2tbs Sunflower Oil

4tbs Maple Syrup

 Pop the oven on at 150 degrees before covering a tray in porridge oats scattering the poppy seeds, linseeds, hazelnuts on top. Pour the sunflower oil and maple syrup all over and give it all a good mix!

Place it in the oven for about 20 minutes....but keep checking and mixing it! It can burn really easily (I sadly speak from experience).

 

It’s ready when it looks light golden brown and has a crunchy texture.

 

 

Enjoy for breakfast with lovely summer fruits and natural yogurt...Yum!

It also makes a lovely present if you pop it into a cellophane bag and tie it up with pretty stripy string!



A Pretty Present!



My Liberty Print Dress

Floral Fanatic!

OK, I'll admit it.... I have an addiction to floral fabric!
My favourite is Liberty lawn, and I can easily spend hours traipsing up and down the floral explosion that are the fabric shelves of Liberty's beautiful haberdashery. As a country bumpkin, who doesn't visit London that often, I always make a bee-line for the world's most beautiful department store!

.....This all sounds lovely, however sadly Liberty Lawn is about £22 per meter and my sensible gene kicks in so I struggle to actually buy the fabric (one day!!).
Though last January, I visited Liberty during the sale and there was an awesome selection of beautiful remnants for £10 per metre.

I brought 1 meter of the classic peacock print fabric as well as 3 metres of the beautiful fabric I used to make this dress- lucky me!!

Classic Hera Print

I wanted to use this fabric to make a dress for an upcoming wedding and I decided on the New Look Workroom 6070.

 

I loved the fact it's quite fitted with and the pleats are super flattering!

This was actually the first dress that I ever made and the first time I put an invisable zip in. Needless to say, it took a long time, as when you're just starting out, learning all the new processes takes an aweful lot of concentration! It took me about two months to finish, with hundreds of cups of tea and a couple of panic calls to Granny ("what on earth is stay stitching??!).

Particularly tricky bits included the gathered sleeves and the pleating. But I always find that  if you leave it alone for half an hour before attacking it again always makes much more sense!

Here we are...

View from the front

View from the back.

... with those tricky gathered sleeves

 Rouching and pleats!

Make your own: Aztec Pelmet Skirt

I am loving pelmet skirts at the moment as I think they are the perfect length for summer and are super flattering. I brought one from Topshop earlier in the year for £34.00 and I was looking at the shape and thought it would be ridiculously easy to recreate. With the added bonus of picking your own fabric, therefore making it for a fraction of the price, I was really excited to give it a go!

Topshop Pelmet Skirt £34.00

I used the McCalls 3830 pattern, shape E, to create the basic pelmet shape (which I brought last summer...bonus!). It's a really simple pattern to follow and great for your first dress making adventure as it only has five pieces to construct.

McCalls 3830

I did meet a couple of challenges along the way...

Challenge 1: Sourcing heavy weight fabric

Does anyone else have this problem? Fabric shops are full of lightweight cottons, which are great for tops and dresses but I definitely needed something thicker for my pelmet skirt. I would really love some suggestions of where to find heavy weight fabric!?

Saying that I am lucky to live within 30 minutes of this amazing fabric warehouse in Sturminster Newton, Dorset. Hansons (http://www.hansonsfabrics.co.uk/), is packed to the rafters with every fabric under the sun!! I found this really bright Peruvian striped fabric that was £8.99 per meter and a chunky metal zip (£2.99).

Armed with my meter of fabric, I cut my pattern out, making sure that the stripes would match when put together, leading nicely onto my second challenge.

Challenge 2: Matching the stripes perfectly

This sounds really easy... but took me a couple of attempts as you had to get the tension right as you sewed otherwise it just looked a bit wonky.

All done and for only £11.98, beat that Topshop!

My Dotty Peter Pan Dress!

I have been experimenting with dress making for a while now and I have got to the point where I want to start challening myself by adapting patterns to suit my figure or put an original spin on current trends!

I have quite a love affair with Peter Pan collars so my pattern adapting 'To Do List' (is there such a thing!?) has included this for a while.
I chose a simple dress pattern; the New Look Workroom 6049 (available here http://www.simplicitynewlook.com/new-look-patterns/dresses/6049/ ) as I felt it had quite a sixties feel and would suit the addition of a collar!

Before stitching, I got some simple tips from Lisa Comfort at Sew Over It (http://sewoverit.co.uk/blog/ ...scroll down a bit for the collar tips). I would definitely recommend you having a look before starting this, she is fab!

Tracing the neckline facings

How I did it:
I used the neckline facings of the dress to trace the basic shape of a collar onto pattern paper before drawing on the classic Peter Pan shape.

Cutting out the collar

Using this template I cut out two collar shapes in white cotton and one in some heavy duty collar interfacing (seriously starchy...you could use something slightly more light weight!). Iron the interfacing onto one of the cotton pieces before sewing. Right sides together, stitch around the collar edge, leaving the top open. Turn the collar the right way round and Hey Presto, a super cool collar! Simply Stitch into the dress whilst you sewing your facing on and press with a super hot iron for a crisp look.




Front

Back

Next to try...Scallop Edging....I'm excited!!

Summer Skater Skirt

This skirt is a really simple way to start making your own patterns, as you don't need to worry about zips and it consists of just 2 pieces; 1 main panel and a waist band.

You Need: 1 metre of jersey fabric (I used a lightweight striped jersey, being ever the optimist that we might have a summer!?), measuring tape and pattern paper.

How To:

Drawing the main panel

Measure your waist and hips, take those measurements and add 4cm (for seam allowances) before dividing them by 4. Use these measurements to create you skater panel. To get the rough shape, I used one of my skater dresses to trace the basic shape onto the pattern paper before making my exact measurements fitted well.
The most important thing is that the bottom of the panel is substantially larger than the tops so that the skirt will fit you waist snugly and 'flit' out at the bottom!

Once you are happy with your paper panel, cut out four of them in your beautiful jersey.

Create the waistband using your waist measurement, this time add 2cm (for seam allowances). This will form the length of the waistband, draw this out as rectangle onto pattern paper with a width of 10cm.



Ooh matching nails!

Now over-locked the raw edges, I always find this bit slighty dull...I just want to start creating the skirt ASAP, but it is quite important for a smart finish!

Onto construction!

Cool chevron effect!

Join the four panels together using a stretch stitch on the machine, though a straight stitch will do if you dont have one! This is when you really start to see the skirts basic shape...oooh exciting!!
Fold the waist band in half, width ways, and sew the ends together to make a circle. Attach the waistband to the main skirt, right side together.

Finally hem.
I actually hemmed by hand this time because it can be hard to create a straight line when the jersey is fold over twice.

Perfect for a Sunday afternoon!

Burda Young 7051

My new favourite colour seems to be orange; I can't get enough of it and am wearing it pretty much every day! So when I was browsing the fabrics in John Lewis last week, this gorgeous orange, floral lawn (what a combination!!) just popped out at me. I wanted a quick and easy project to get stuck into, so turning it into a simple summer top seemed like a plan!

I have already had a go the making the burda young 7051- style C, but I wasn't completely happy with the shape on my figure so this time I adapted the pattern slightly by lowering the neckline, creating slightly narrower straps and a racer style back. I was a little nervous about hacking a pattern, as I tend to go for something, quickly ruin it and then regret attempting it...but as I get to understand the basic shapes I'm finding my accuracy is growing!

Having been sewing with my with my Granny recently, she drilled into me the importance of pressing. So set up, next to  my sewing machine was a towel on the table and my iron ready to go (don't say I'm not high tec!) so that I could press as I sewed.

Actually the pressing has made such as difference, the top looks so much better than the one I made previously, where I didn't press at all! I'm a pressing convert...pass me the iron!

I finished hemming my lovely top half an hour before work on Tuesday as I was so desperate to wear it (does anyone else get this excited!?). Here I am ready for work...

Ready for Work

Wild Garlic Tzatziki

Wild Garlic with bluebells

Wild garlic is a green and leafy plant with white flowers and a pungent garlic smell (you can definitely smell it before you can see it!). At the moment, there is a so much of it in the woods around me, so I was trying to think of new ways to use this lovely free ingredient!
With all this summery weather, I am making Tzatziki all the time as it's wonderful on grilled meat or just to dip crisps in when you have friends round. So I thought I'd try the slightly more subtle tasting wild garlic as a replacement for the raw, bulb garlic you usually put in.
Heres how I did it...
 

Ingredients:
A small handful of wild garlic leaves
A third of a cucumber
Four large table spoons of Greek yogurt
A squeeze of lemon.

Chopping!

• Finely chop your wild garlic.
• Cut your cucumber in half, lengthways and scoop out the seeds. I leave the skin on because I think it adds vibrancy. Then grate the cucumber into a sieve and squeeze out the excess water.

Mixing

• Pop the cucumber, wild garlic, Greek yogurt, squeeze your lemon and mix!
• Season with lots of salt and pepper.

Goes fantastically with grilled lamb and pita on the bbq (we just brought one and are using it at every opportunity!) and a simple Greek salad to make fab kebabs!

P.S. The garlic flowers look lovely scattered on salads.

Tutorial- Crystallising Flowers

Spring is one of my favorite times of the year because the woods, hedgrow and my garden are full beautiful and colourful flowers, many of which are edible! When chrystallised they make fantastic decorations for cakes or puddings and I am going to show you how to do this!

The Kit

Its rediculously simple and can be done in a relaxed half an hour.

 The Kit: Egg White, Caster Sugar and a Paintbush (the paintbrush is important as if the flower is just 'dunked' the egg can be to thick and wont look so pretty!)

1.  Start off by washing and drying your flowers, checking for no stray bugs!

 

 2.  Then get together a bowl of egg white, another of caster sugar and a plate to pop your finished creations on.

3.  With a paint brush, cover the flowers throroughly with the egg white.

4. Sprinkle with lightly with caster sugar before giving your flowers a gentle shake before leaving to dry for a few hours!

The finished flowers!!

 I made my sugared primroses to decorate a simple Victoria Sponge (Mary Berry of course!). Its looks spring like and natural- perfect for the bank holiday weekend!

 

Other Edible Flowers suitable for Crystallising: Lavender, Roses (whole or  just petals), Violets, Pansies, Cowslips, Mint and Sweet Geraniums.

If your struggling for time, you can buy them here http://eatmyflowers.co.uk/

Garlic and Sage Pork Fillet wrapped in Prosciutto

Yey- we've had sunshine today! It’s beautiful days like this that make me want to cook lovely summery food.

.....So let me tell you how I made my pork fillet and manchago salad!

      1. I picked a handful of sage from the garden (well next doors!) and chopped it finely with 4 small garlic cloves to make a paste. Added wholegrain mustard, salt and pepper and spread this over a plate.

2. I then heated a pan to sear the pork fillet (also called tenderloin) before transferring to the plate with the sage mix and rolled the fillet in the paste to coat evenly.

3. Wrapping the fillet with prosciutto was fun! I laid out a stretch of cling film, the length of the fillet, on the board and covered with a layer prosciutto. I then placed the fillet in the middle and rolled it up in the cling, so that every part of the pork was covered. I left it in the fridge for a while and came back for it later! I also wrapped some asparagus with some left over strips of prosciutto and saved them for later too.

4. I then chopped up some new potatoes, drizzled with a bit of olive oil and popped in the oven at 180 degrees for 10 minute before placing the fillet on top and cooking for a further 15 minutes. After that I added the prosciutto wrapped asparagus and baked for a further 5 minutes.

5. Whilst the pork was in the oven, I assembled my salad! I placed a handful of spinach, followed by a handful of rocket and chopped some yellow, orange and red tomatoes (the different colours look so pretty!) in half. I then shaved some manchago cheese  (a sheeps milk cheese from spain) on top- yum!

6. Finally I just made a classic vinaigrette by glugging some olive oil, white wine vinegar, a pinch of salt, sugar, grind of pepper and half a tea spoon of wholegrain mustard into a jam jar. Popped the lid on and shaked it aggressively before pouring over the salad and serveing with a lovely glass of chilled white wine.

I really hope you give it a go and let me know what you think!