A Perfect Wedding

The perfect wedding is one where the couple feel truly like their love is expressed in their own unique way. Whether it's a picnic or a banquet; if that's who they are then that's perfect.
On Saturday evening Clever Hansel and I had the incredible honour of entertaining guests at a beautiful, unique wedding. A couple who had been together for 23 years.
The venue was the Wellesley Hotel -the closest thing Wellington has to a proper old style hotel.

 This is the foyer, photo found in a Google search that doesn't do it justice. My job was to come down those stairs at the back sing Diamonds Are Forever, segueing into Diamonds are a Boy's Best Friend dressed to the nines!

These are the Nines to which I was dressed! I dropped the amazing organza coat on the landing to much whooping. Thanks to Amanduh La for the lend of coat and much blingy jewellery!

This is the reception room photo from the Hotel's website. 

An actual photo in the reception room of Clever Hansel, using the auto setting on his phone as I was wearing gloves and no glasses, so no photo taking for me! So suave. Clever sang Putting on the Ritz straight after my number. It was fun!

Later, we entertained during the reception (after I changed into something more comfortable, also covered in sequins!) with a rewrite of our song about food intolerances, renamed the Catering Song, and then a song we wrote especially for the happy couple.
It was a beautiful wedding and the couple were over the moon about the whole thing. Tons of floral arrangements, candles, handmade chocolate favours, black tie and sequins on the guests and the couple themselves looking immaculate in tuxedos. Magical.

After, I was hyped and decided to go to the Southern Cross to catch High Society's late night spot. I love this jazz band and I love Nicole their singer forever.

 Here we are being silly! Naturally I didn't change as there's nothing quite like arriving at someone else's gig in head to toe sequins ;-)

I do so love my night job!

What am I doing

I am sitting on the couch with "Live at the Apollo" blaring in the background with this gunk in my hair. Thus shall Nature's Free Frosting (TM)  aka my grey hairs, be turned a strange pink.
This has nothing to do with denying my age - I LOVE going grey. It's just a bit of fun! And at $6 why not!
I have a wedding gig on Saturday and it's taken a fair bit of preparation. My outfits are 1. Black and nude and blingy and 2. red and blingy. The pink hair won't go with either. YAY!!!!
I dislike coordinating. I blame growing up in Laura Ashley's heyday.

nuff said

I Ate'nt Dead

Hello! I have been so busy "lifing" I haven't had a chance to talk about it! Typical!

 Three huge shows, day job and other stuff have just sucked my time away. But now I am an "unemployed bum" as the business is being run very well by the husband and staff, I have three weeks before my next stage appearance and just some free lance work and job hunting to take up my time. Oooh!
So, I'm a sharing about this show which is very dear to my heart We took Time Travel Cabaret to an air raid shelter in 1944. In the (obviously) fictitious Time Travel Cabaret tube station. Moi played the self appointed entertainment officer complete with made up uniform, the real husband played stage husband ARP warden and a group of wonderful performers cam together to play regulars and mystery visitors when the siren sounded, to entertain the audience.

 SO carry on! This publicity shot was done last year and I am not wearing me jacket because I forgot it had daisy buttons on it, so I improvised.

 On the night, SO LITTLE MAKEUP. Goodness me!

 The grim reality - tube stations made ideal air raid shelters but what a miserable way to spend each night! It was interesting though how few people in the audience realised that people slept in these place EVERY NIGHT not just when a siren went off because by then it could be too late. And if you didn't have a ticket you'd be out on your ear. But Constance wasn't having any of that and found room for the newcomers.

 Sorry the light is a bit dusky! Here we are in our underground bar warming up the audience with a singalong.

Where there's smoke there's fire - Andrew and Debbie are the other two corners of the producing triangle!

Winifred Atwell and Me

I was in Facebook minding my own business when a second hand bookshop that I follow posted a photo of this sheet music from Winifred Atwell.
Called, "Let's Have a Gay and Hearty! Let's have a Ding-Dong"
I mean, how could I resist! I messaged them, they couriered it to me, it arrived today.
Naturally, I had PLANS for it. Ahem.

I can play Chopsticks...is that ding dong enough?

So much for Plan A!

Hello lovelies, my plan to blog about sewing has resulted in tumbleweed hehe. It does reflect the amount of sewing I have done to be honest, which is zip.
The lovely Emma from Emma's Atelier has told me that I need to put more details into my posts about makes, with close up photos and things. Well that makes a lot of sense! So, I will go back over a few posts like the Kimono one and do just that.
In the meantime here is a teaser about my latest make, which admittedly is a costume but it is very "sewisty" and uses lots of fun techniques.

Tomorrow I am off to the New Zealand Burlesque Festival for a long weekend, which means hanging out on the pretty village of Devonport on Auckland's  North Shore. I will be teaching at Cushla's Village Fabrics too, a Lampshade making class on Saturday morning! Might as well combine favourite pastimes to up the interest of the weekend eh!

V1493 The World's Most Delicious Kimono pattern!

I am a big fan of Plus Size pattern sections! I am so tired of seeing a pattern, wondering if it will fit me, looking up the size range and playing Size Range Roulette. But every now and then I hit the jackpot, and when I saw that this gorgeous beauty came in up to 26, I Squealed with delight!

For the record, I seriously love the treatment shown in the sample, and the instructions cover how to recreate this applique. Me, I just wanted a devore velvet kimono robe that would pass as 1920s, and in this pattern, I saw my chance.
The two fabrics are an odd polyester knit (?!) faux devore velvet, figured in burgundy and purple paisleys, and a plum rayon velvet for the trim. Not seen is a plum velvet ribbon and lace trim and burgundy satin bias binding.

Apologies for the revealing photo, but as it just appeared in the national press I figure what the heck! I had a photo shoot for this article and cheekily took the robe along to ask them to get some pics of it for my blog. I wasn't expecting one to make it to the article!
So as you can see, I cut it longer than the pattern, and also made it fuller by slashing all the pieces long ways and spreading them a little bit at the bottom without changing the shoulder. It was only a little bit as with three backs and four fronts, it adds up. I left the pockets off as they would show and this is not a practical garment!
Look this is a hack job. No seam finishing inside as the weird not really devore velvet doesn't fray. I sewed the cuffs on without any pinning and they fitted perfectly, even given the fabrics are different! The front band is sewn right sides together, then I sewed the ribbon and lace trim to the free edge of the band, and hand stitched it to the seam allowance on the inside. This saved trying to fold bulky velvet under, making MANY LAYERS of velvet seam allowance. It does droop a little but that's mostly down to the velvet being a lot heavier than the main fabric.
Lastly, the hem I machine sewed but I did use a satin bias binding to finish it as there is no nice way to finish such a hem. I messed up the ends a bit where they joined the band, all harmless for this costume piece and learning for the real thing.
I LOVE this robe. I wear it pretty much with this outfit in a back stage scene where my stage hubby and I sing a bittersweet duet about the shifting nature of love and relationships.
I am looking forward to making a couple more in cotton and silk - I think I have one of the world's largest collections of embroidered silks and cottons that are THE MOST DIFFICULT fabric types to find an actual use for! And this robe with its gorgeous cross over cuff will look amazing.
But you know, don't hold your breath!

Tidying up my blogging

Hello lovelies!
I used Blogger to set up a website for Constance a few years ago. It's just been an online reference really, but as of yesterday I have started to write blog posts on it. About being CC.
I realise that this blog is like me - an eclectic jumble of topics that appeal to some people some of the time. I'd like to return to the daily happenings of my off stage life however, and the show stuff will go on the other blog.
So, if you want to read about being and Emcee, pop over to Constance's Blog.
Cheers!