Customer Fabulousness!

September was super busy, gearing up for fall and winter weddings so the blog was on hiatus for a month. But heading into fall also means that knitwear season is also starting so everyone has been after wooden buttons and during the past month I have been receiving some great pictures of customers work using the buttons on their work.
Gina, from Delaware, who knits these fabulous lightweight lacework swing sweaters used the Turquoise Flower Bead Wooden Buttons to fasten it.

She also later knitted the same sweater but in red as a gift and used the Queen of Heart Silk Buttons in her own custom sizing.

And after providing me with her honest opinion of the wooden buttons, she now has a tagline in the wooden button listings so other buyers can see what she thought of how they were to use:
"They are SO lightweight! This is a real joy when using them on a hand-knitted item! They don't weigh down the garment or stretch out the knitting." - Gina, Delaware USA.

Anne, from Massachusetts, used the Spinning Butterflies Wooden Buttons and Hawaiian Flower Dome Buttons on her very first knitting project, and it turned out fabulously!

And Victoria, from California, placed her own specially sized request for some Prince of Wales Check Buttons to use on a new skirt pattern she was trying out. The original sizing of the buttons were WAY too big so we worked on getting the pattern placement of the fabric right on the small size that she needed.

She wrote all about how she made the skirt and where she got her supplies on her blog here. Check it out!

Thanks for the pictures everyone! It’s always great to see what people do with the buttons after they have bought them. So fee free to send over pics of your work!

Customer Fabulousness!

Photo Credit:  L. Scabrat 2011

So I have been super busy all week with some big intense custom orders, literally working til 10pm each night, not even time to consider a blog post, but I was taking pictures to post this week.
So it was a nice break to receive an email from one of my clients at the button shop earlier on this week with pictures of the dress she had designed and made herself and finished with a ‘necklace’ of buttons.
She had seen some buttons in my store, but she wanted them to be bigger and asked my opinion on what fabric to use after she explained she was using satin with a chiffon overlay, so I suggested the black silk charmuese, a satin effect but with a warm gauzy glow rather than a harsh sheen like poly satin, with would replicate the gauziness of the chiffon.
And here’s then end result, it looks rather fabulous! I hope she has a great time wearing it to her sons wedding.

Sketchbook

Just doodling with a glass of (red) wine, practicing sketching on the drawing tablet.

Sketchbook

“The” Orange mini base which has been sitting there for months waiting the thing that’s going to finish it, well its going to be finished with stripped bright turquoise coque feathers. Complimentary colours and all that.

New Daphne Guinness Book

Today I pre-ordered my copy of the brand new Daphne Guinness book by Valerie Steele.
It isn’t available til the beginning of November 2011, duno if I can wait that long!

Considering Valerie Steele is the director and Chief Curator of the Museum at FIT I’m hoping its going to be filled with a bazillion pictures, narrating her life, rather than words narrating a few pictures.

I knew of her, always photographed front row at fashion week, muse to many a designer, wearer of Alexander McQueen Armadillo shoes (not even in her size but worn last minute with toilet paper stuffed in the toes, go on I dare you to even get up on those in your size!)
But the first time I learned about her in depth was the March 2008 issue of British Vogue (how I miss my monthly fix of British Vogue) in a cover story entitled The Incredible World Of Daphne Guinness, where she talked about her life post divorce from the Greek shipping billionaire Stavros Niarchos, her position in the Guinness family, and how she was planning a massive auction of her couture collection for charity later that year, but how she was finding it hard to decide what to part with and what to keep.

Known for her striking platinum blonde and black striped hair, creating a headpiece effect in itself, when she wears a hat, she really wears a hat!
And now she’s the proud owner of the entire collection of the late Isabella Blow’s wardrobe including 50 Philip Treacy hats, many of which were designed just for Blow, to wear as well now too.

Daphne Guinness by Valerie Steele, Yale University Press $45, available now on pre-order from Yale Press and Amazon

Eeeeee I REALLY cant wait til November!