Monthly Archives: April 2015

Welcome Serge and Dorothy

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Well it’s been quite an exciting week on the retail therapy front.  Of course I can argue I needed some new toys tools but I’ve managed so far.

But some things just go quicker and look better if you have the right equipment.  Enter a brand new Overlocker and a new Dressmaking Dummy.  So this is Serge:

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He’s very clever and just a bit scary.  I am a terrible collector of geeky facts (inherited trait I think, thanks pops) so I was strangely happy to find that an alternative name for overlocking is Serging. Enter my other inherited trait, dreadful puns (again thanks pops) and a sewing machine named Serge.  I have spent a happy couple of hours learning to use him.  And here’s what he can do…..

The other new member of the family is Dorothy, Dot for short (see if you can guess why).

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She’s just gorgeous and has 13 adjustments making her extremely flexible something I am sure will come in very handy.  Unfortunately this means Jenny is entering retirement.  Bless her she’s got a dislocated shoulder and just doesn’t move properly anymore. But she’s been with me for over 25 years (yup I know she’s aged better than me) and I am a little sad.  It’s not too bad though Emma has offered to rehome her and who wouldn’t want to wear a wedding dress every day.  I know Emma would!  Yeah OK me too just prove I still fit in it 🙂

I look forward to showing you what I can create with these fantastic investments, stay tuned.

Steven & Emma’s Wedding

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It doesn’t seem a year ago that Emma first asked me if I could make the bridesmaid and flower girl dresses for her and Steven’s wedding. I was so honoured because it’s such a special day, I have also never been so scared of messing up! In the eight months to wedding we went from five dresses to seven and a “could you do the cake too”. What a roller coaster but so worth it the ladies and babies looked amazing.

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So from the beginning…. the quote of the dress designing process “we don’t want no slutty dresses”, well no obviously 🙂
So we looked through some patterns and nothing was quite right. The best we could do was “like this but not that top, it needs more top”. So here are the patterns we started with for Bridesmaids and the Flower Girls. And this pile of cloth!

We had a few consultations, lots of shopping and we agreed on design, phew! Now there’s just lots of work but that’s OK you just need a plan to deal with that (and a project box of course). So a few measurement later we were ready to go.


And there was lots of work but we livened it up with fittings (alcohol fuelled), more shopping and cake tasting. My old dress-making dummy was brought out of retirement and Anne-Marie was quite jealous when she was told “Jenny” was wearing her dress.

I think at this stage it was still five dresses but not for long. It seems when you have cute nieces they just have to have dresses too! So I downsized the patterns and got creative for my tiny Pixie (she’ll grow soon I’m sure). No idea how you make a 2 year old stand still for fittings but we tried.

And so we moved onto finishing touches. We all loved the clean lines but it’s a wedding so surely we need some bling, don’t we? It’s fair to say this discussion lasted a few weeks, OK months. And in the end, No we didn’t need bling (I saved it for the cake which had it’s own diamanté ribbon). The only non blue things allowed were some pearl buttons and a string of pearls on silver wire for the throws.

And in the end seven beautiful dresses fit for a very special day.

I am so proud and I had so much fun I don’t want to stop. So I’m not! Professional shots courtesy of Karl and Kenny photography

Bespoke Clothes

Summer’s on it’s way

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Or more importantly our holiday!  Today I started making summer dresses for the girls for our trip in May.  Saturdays with small children are a bit hectic so quite pleased to have finished this today after swimming (Crazy Ginger) and while juggling laundry and meal times.

The dress itself is a pretty cotton floral print, it’s a pull on design with a two tier gathered skirt.  Lots of room for active children and nice and cool for hot days.

Cute summer dress for Crazy Ginger
Laying out ready to cut
Cut and ready to sew
Getting there

Mand Made People

Featured

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20130730 (008)Hi my name is Amanda and I am Mand Made Sewing.  I am an ex-IT professional, mum of two who loves creating bespoke designs be it craft items or clothes.  I enjoy the challenge of taking someone’s idea, picture, dream and making it real.  So whether you want a bag that says “this is me” or the perfect outfit for a special occasion then I’m your woman.

I have been making clothes for myself and other people for over 25 years.  It all started simply with a pencil skirt at school and quite quickly grew to designing and making my own clothes for parties and those eighties discos.  My first really big challenge was my sisters bridesmaids dresses which you can see in my blog posts here

More recently I have begun making craft items for gifts and for fun.  My current speciality is themed shopper bags and fabric boxes, but this changes as ideas occur to me or someone asks for something different.  Take a look in my shop gallery to see recent commissions here