Another blast of colour!

Hello-ha! How are you? As you can see, I'm still holding on to my summer colours and my only concession to autumn is that I'm wearing tights. You'll have seen everything before, apart from my rather fabulous new handbag...

My hand knitted velour handbag is a recent find from Vinted, costing a mere £15! Being orange meant pretty much love at first sight. It's always exciting when parcels arrive and this was part of a rather large influx last week. At this stage I feel it might be fitting for me to say "Hi, my name's Anna and I'm an insomniac shopper!" 

Honestly, I have these spells when I fall into an online retail vortex and can't escape until I feel replete. Currently, I'm over the latest episode, until the next time of course... 

Anyway on to the handbag. When it arrived I discovered that it really would have benefitted from two handles as it didn't hang straight. Customising was the only answer and so started my endeavours to fix it as best I could. The result is that it now hangs fine and looks even more quirky. I threaded a gold chain through the handle and clipped it off to one side to stabilise the balance. The resulting gape in the stitches was covered by my Carmen Miranda brooch.

The tweed shorts co-ord is from Primark, bought last year and the boots are old too, from the MOMA shop, but found on Vinted. Sunglasses are from Radley London. The ruffle front blouse was also a Vinted buy and the orange tights are from Snag.

As you can tell, as long as the sun keeps shining I'll be wheeling out another burst of colour for you. The end of the season is fast approaching so I'll be snapping away at my outfits of the day to store up for the dark autumn days in the hope of spreading some joy via the blog.

I'll add another shot of this from a previous week, taken in the Gallery this time - I think it shows up the vibrancy of the outfit much better. Different accessories and top, but that's only what you'd expect of me isn't it?

Somehow I feel much more in context within the workplace. I may be a bit flamboyant, but against this colourful backdrop it all seems pretty normal eh? My wearable art ties in my surroundings as I'm often told.

                                                            Anna x

My new River Island summer duster coat

Hello! As promised, here's another of my sewing successes, this time a fabulous River Island lightweight summer coat that I bought on Vinted for £15. It arrived and despite saying a size 12 it was much too big generally and badly fitting most of all around the shoulders. I was so thrilled with the colour and fabric that I decided to set about fixing it. Well, I must admit that I had to enlist help of a local guy who, on retiring, took up sewing and now makes his own jeans and most of his clothes. Dave Inch has lived on Tresco since the 70's, working first of all in the New Inn and then moving on to become Propagator at the Abbey Garden, retiring some five years ago.

Over the course of four sessions, Dave and I worked away at solving the fitting issues of the coat. He pinned and advised and then left me to sew, regrouping the following Saturday morning when we'd review what I'd achieved and then puzzle over the next step. I took fabric out of the centre back seam to reduce the overall size of the coat, then we pinned the shoulders first to amend the outline and finally adjusted the sleeve seams where they joined the body. This took a month of gentle adjustments as each bit of sewing impacted on the overall shape. Without his guidance I couldn't have worked this out.

The final flourish was for me to create button holes where there weren't any before and then make fabric buttons to match. I'm delighted with the completed item. I'd just returned from the hairdressers when I took these photos (with Fiona's help) and was a bit like the cat who got the cream.

The rest of the outfit is a chiffon blouse (charity shopped), orange tights from Snag and the shorts are a recent purchase from Vinted.

 

Jewellery comprises of new rubber necklace (from Vinted) and rings, both pre-loved and sunglasses from Radley London.

The overall styling is one of exhuberance and excitement and on reflection, maybe not the best footwear as the coat would maybe benefit from higher heels to balance things out a bit better. The boots are from MOMA New York, created from recycled sari fabric and are an absolute joy to wear as they not only look fab but are super stylish and comfortable too. And hey, I'm delighted to have this coat as part of my summer wardrobe and you'll defintely see it again!

                                                                        Anna x