Time for a change.

So I have been thinking about this for a long time now but I think I'm almost ready to start with the next stage for my business. A new name! Whilst 'Sally Anne Costumes' has served me well I think it's time to get serious and smarten myself up! This name and image was something that I brought with me from university when we were asked to create our own business cards etc as part of the course. Stuck for inspiration Sally Anne Costumes was born. I feel I need a name and look that is more mature and eye catching as well as serving a purpose. As I dabble in a few areas, ie millinery, costume and corsetry I also want something doesn't put me in just one box but something that I am free to explore other avenues under. 

Anyway I have been working hard for a few months now and hopefully soon will be able to unveil my brand new look, so keep your eyes peeled!

Love Sally x

Autumn/Winter Collection

After enjoying every last bit of sunshine we've had over the last few months I'm now well aware that Autumn is fast approaching and it's probably time to get my self organised and plan my designs for my Autumn/ Winter hat range. As my Etsy shop is becoming more established I decided I wanted to create a range of full sized hats each season as well my fun little hatties and fascinators. 

So I set about designing my first range. I thought about the styles I wanted to concentrate on and the colours I wanted to work with. I love all the rich autumn colours and decided tweed fabric would be a great fabric to use to create some decorations for the hats. As I like to have the fabrics in front of me to play with and come up with ideas I scoured eBay to find some pieces of fabric to practise on. Tweed is very expensive to buy by the metre but luck was obviously on my side and I came across a seller who had a few bags of genuine Harris Tweed remnants in all sorts of colours and patterns. Perfect! I was so excited to receive my package in the mail and immediately tipped all the pieces onto the table in front of me and waited for inspiration to hit. After playing around for a while I made some little two layered bows from the tweed in complementing colours and thought these would look sweet perching on a beret or on the side of a fedora. 

I adore the rich orange and red tones of this bow and the pretty tartan pattern really makes me think of winter. 

I also created a cute flower which I finished in the middle with a button I covered in contrasting tweed. I used the decorations on a few of the hats I had made up and I really loved the finished look. I want to get a range fedoras and berets on my Etsy shop soon using these pretty tweed decorations. Below are a few sneak previews of the range so far.

Love and Hattiness

Sally x

Ribbon Cockades

A ribbon cockade is a knot of ribbon in a circle or oval shape often used to adorn hats or lapels. They were very popular in the 18th century and were made in distinctive colours used to show the allegiance of the wearer to a particular political group, their rank or as part of a servant's livery.

I love decorating my hats with historically inspired things so I really wanted to learn how to make ribbon cockades. I found some really good instructions in old millinery books and also online tutorials such as this brilliant one by Claudine de Montigny on her blog http://claudinedemontigny.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/yet-another-cockade-tutorial-part-1.html. It took a bit of practise as they are quite fiddly, but eventually I made my first cockade! Yey! I like using petersham or velvet ribbon. Both of these are good for making cockades as being quite firm they hold the shape well while folding. There are so many lovely ribbons to use though and they all give different effects. Stripy ribbons in particular, make really interesting patterns. Also layering up cockades of different sizes create lovely decorations perfect for hats.



A couple of the ribbon cockades I have made so far.



Now I have made a few different cockades I'm hooked! They are so much fun to make. It's something I can do in the evenings in front of a good film, with the obligatory gin and tonic on hand of course! Once you get into the swing of it you can make them up pretty quickly. They look great and are giving me some great ideas for some new hats which I can't wait to try out. I am making one in black velvet at the moment which would look great on a little black felt bowler hat I'm working on. I will post some pictures when it's finished!

Love and Hattiness

Sally x

A Little Hello!

I'm sitting in my workroom staring at the rain lashing against the window. It's another typical British day outside. This depresses me for like a second because then I remember I am surrounded by beautiful feathers, luxurious ribbons, felt and straw. Heaven! Who needs sunshine when i can be tucked up in my workroom creating things! Creating hats to be exact, as that is what I do. I am a milliner and have been hand-making hats to sell for a few years now and I adore it! I wish i could spend all day doing this and one day soon I hope to give up my office job and do this full time but it's a slow process. I need to earn money to help build my business so for now I am juggling the two. I don't care though, because even after a long, frustrating day at work I can come home and spend the evening being creative. When I get such lovely emails from my customers thanking me for the hats they have received, it makes it worth it.
I have always loved making things and spent most of my childhood covered in PVA glue and glitter. I studied art and textiles and school and went on to do Fashion at college. My mum taught me to sew and I really enjoyed it. I was obsessed with costume and history and so I went to study Costume design at university. It was the best 3 years of my life and I learned so much. It was here that I first started learning about millinery. Creating a fabulous hat to match the costumes I had made really finished them off. When I finished I set up Sally Anne Costumes. I created a website to show of my work and started doing custom work for people which is so much fun. I decided I wanted to learn more millinery skills so started taking a class. The very first lesson we blocked a felt hat. I was hooked. I was so proud of the little navy hat I had made, all with my own hands! All the work I put in, steaming the felt, stretching over the hat block and then hand stitching the wire and ribbon to finish the brim was so satisfying. Then of course I had to decorate it. Oh my, the possibilities! I rushed home with my handmade treasure and showed it off. I got a great response, which made me want to make more. Not long after i decided to take the plunge and purchase my first wooden hat block. I love top hats and when I found the range of midi sized hat blocks from the company Guy Morse Brown I was smitten and ordered the top hat version immediately. I was so excited when they arrived it was like Christmas morning! Taking them from their box, all shiny and new I spent the next few hours cooing over them adoringly. When I was brave enough to actually start sticking pins in i starting blocking. My very first top hat was red and feathery and I was so thrilled with the finished creation. Everyone loved it and I started thinking perhaps I could sell these. Etsy is a handmade marketplace full of handmade and vintage items and i decided this would be the perfect place to try and sell my little hatties. That is when sallyannecostumes Etsy shop was born. It took a while to sell my first hat but orders steadily grew and the response I was getting from all my customers was really positive. I have now expanded my range of hat styles and I am improving my shop all the time.
In my blog I will be sharing new ideas, designs, and all the exciting happenings while my business grows. I hope you enjoy reading it and keep checking back. Please check out my website www.sallyannecostumes.co.uk and my Etsy shop www.sallyannecostumes.etsy.com

Anyway, that's enough of my ramblings. With a glass of red wine on hand and Lola, my Bassett Hound puppy snoozing in her bed, it's time for me to get back to my hats!

Love and Hattiness

Sally