Cute as a Garter Button

Frippery du jour over here at quaintrelle towers (ok duplex) is garter buttons! You probably know the things I mean... Little silk covered buttons printed or painted with sultry eyed flapper faces from  the 1920's.

New styles and new hosiery had lead to girls rolling their stockings and holding them tightly in place with either rubber like bands or adventurous garters. Above the knee if you wanted to play it safe or bellow the knee if you were feeling sexy and wanted to let your knees do the taking! Fashionable girls could display their modern and irreverent attitudes with these flirty faces peeking out from under
rising hemlines.

Created by the ribbon companies at the time, they seem to have been printed on long ribbons, then cut and shaped into various whimsical buttons. Some were left simply as printed faces, some adorned with further ribbons and frills, and others went further with cheeky sayings like "You'd be surprised" or my personal favorite, a police man proclaiming "Stop go no further!"

Not wholly found on garters, they could also be seen on other flirty items such as powder puffs, and mirrors, all the various ribbon covered items in a true coquette's  arsenal!

You can often find them for sale on places like easy or ebay, but as a girl who likes ribbons it seemed like a fun thing to make from scratch. 

Currently still just buttons here are a few of the faces to come off my work bench this week....

Their destinies will be another post later on, but for now, anyone else wanting to say it with buttons might want to check out the quick tutorial over on the Quaintrelle Life website and make some too! 

What do you think your knees might want to say?

Dream Deco Teacup

Ok, my teacup Embargo hasn't been going well. I had said "I just need one Paragon teacup" but now I've also got a 2nd one. But hear me out!...

Wedgwood Deco Bloom

When I first started collecting teacups I was just looking to pick up the cup and saucer from each design. Since then however I've been trying to pick up trios instead with the matching side plate as well as the saucer. Some times it's easy, sometimes not so much, either because a pattern is discontinued, or because it never had a matching plate to begin with. This was the road block for me when I was looking to add a super art deco cup to the fold.

See, I fell in love with the "Deco Bloom" cup from the Wedgwood Harlequin collection. Since the line launched they've
adding extra pieces like side places to the collection for some designs like my spiffy polka dot set, but sadly Deco Bloom wasn't one of them. I wrestled with the fact it was my perfect dream cup, but that it would never be a full place setting. Then something amazing happened! An identical cup showed up on Ebay, complete with side plate! Uncanny right? The crazy thing was the auction cup wasn't Wedgwood.

My Paragon Pink Hydrangea Trio

Wedgwood's Harlequin collection is based on old designs from their design archives brought back to life, but this old auction trio was by Paragon.

The Paragon china company ultimately became part of modern day Royal Doulton, It's old pattern books presumed lost. I wonder if some of those books or later ones found their way to the good people at Wedgwood?

No matter how it happened it was a dream come true when this vintage trio made it way into my hands!

I dug around looking for more info on the pattern,  just stamped with a number on mine the design sometimes pops up as "Pink Hydrangea". I've seen a few pieces show up on auction sites as part of big lots. The cup and plate shape was used with a few other designs from Paragon for any other deco china fans. My little set is also marked as being a replica of a service made for the queen, though I couldn't find any information on the pattern's royal provenance they way I could with my other Queen Mary set. Royal or not though it's amazingly pretty, amazingly deco and amazing that I was able to get this dream setting after all!

Faking the Frippery

It's possible that one of my favorite things to design and
collect in the world is costume jewelry. Growing up I used to scour my favorite antique shops for their sparkiest pieces. I'm a die hard magpie and costume jewelry could always transform an outfit and make me sparkle like a duchess! (but not like a princess because that's too much of a pain)

We rather take costume jewelry for granted these days, but the decade we can really thank for it for starting the fervor for fakery is the 1920's...

With styles changing fast after WWI, and a growing spectrum of women finally able to participate in fashion, the inherited gems of the aristocracy could no longer fill our thirst for baubles, and it was time for paste to make a come back.

Used by Coco Chanel as a means to complete a woman's costume and unify her vision, fake gems were a must have for the wealthy woman looking for a little frosting to co-ordinate her pristine new outfit for the night,  and for the average gal on the streets it also allowed women of more modest means to enjoy wearing "jewels" of a less modest design. Jewelry designers also got to let their imaginations run wild without the constraints of precious material costs creating all kinds of whimsical designs.

I love vintage jewelry, real and "fake" from the 1920's for it's unique designs. There were a lot of interesting mixes of sparkle and colorful geometry. They also loved their pearls, and long time blog followers know what a soft spot I have for pearls!

I've been craving some deco gems to ad to my wardrobe lately, and despite being seeing some amazing period precious stone pieces, I just don;t have a Christie's budget, I'm also concentrating a great deal on sharpening my skills in the jewelry area so it felt only natural to turn my hands at designing and making a little costume jewelry set for myself, ready for when I get that deco feeling!

I went with a bit of Nile green  and tried to capture the long lean lines of my favorite 20's jewelry pieces. Something with the hard geometric shapes, but in a softer pallet to go with my usual wardrobe of pastels. They've proved quite versatile together and separate, and something I'm going to get a lot of millage out of.

I love working in costume jewelry using a lot of techniques I was taught to work with in fine jewelry, and I always give a big "thanks" to the 1920's for setting the ball rolling!

Deco Month

I've been all psyched up for the return of Boardwalk Empire. Coupled with knuckling down to finess my 1920's dress making techniques, I'm all swept up with an art deco fever this month! I figured I cant be alone in all this so I'm dedicating this month's blog posts to the 1920's. Got some tutorials on the way, some recipes, clothes, and who knows what else. For right now though here's a 1925 photo of a girl with an infinitely more picturesque sewing space than mine.

Bumbury Bound

I've managed to get it under control (ish) again, but I'm crippled with a long term Animal Crossing addiction. I've been shaking down trees (suck it tree), and digging up fossils since the 1st game came out in 2002. But the newest incarnation, Animal Crossing New Leaf has left me useless. I mean this time around I'm the mayor you guys! I can't sit back and expect Tortimer to take care of things, I'm dragging the town of Bumbury from forest squats to forest splendor! I... I... I have a problem...


So yeah this game came out over a month ago, so old news. But I've been playing since then so where was the time to blog about it going to come from? (That's right it wasn't.) After chewing my nails waiting for this game to come out for what feels like a lifetime, it ended up one of those great moments in life where fulfillment totally lived up to expectations.

This time around there are so many things to do. Muck about on a tropical island with actual real life friends (I still have those if they pay animal crossing too),  play hide and seek with my townies, build stuff, make clothes, and there are squeaky hammer toys! Yup finally a game that fully captures all the chores of my daily life in virtual life! 

Most of all I'm really enjoying customizing my town. Making my own little world to run around in, and clothes for my alter ego mayor Lady☆Bro, and pals, you have so much more control to make the game personal in new leaf. 

Also happy to have the game back on a portable platform too (pre-ordered the limited edition DS to enjoy this life suck in style!) it just seems like the most natural fit for the game. It's also kinda social now too. You can collect the houses of the players you pass in the street through street pass, and the device connects to various social media to share photos and bitch about townies building their houses in the middle of your carefully planned grand avenue (don't even try it guys!) with other borderline shut ins too.

So anyone else an AC mayor too? Maybe one day we'll streetpass from across a crowded room.

I started a little archive of animal crossing QR codes over on Dolly Daydream, and Tumbling my adventures on my little Bumbury Tumblr and with the Cheetah Gang (all of whom are hilarious!). And of course you can take a peek at my town in the dream suite if you like houses with lot's of pink. 
DC: 5700-2203-2275

Right guys, I have an illuminated heart dedication ceremony to attend, I mean work to do...

Tea is Always Greener

There was a time when I had more than enough teacups. Then it came to my notice that perhaps the cups and saucers also needed small matching plates to complete the setting? Now I have enough pretty trios to perfectly host a good old English afternoon tea. But what if the tea I'm hosting isn't terribly English? What if it's my latest wagashi treats and a perfectly brewed Japanese green tea with them? What then!? Well, we could go with my regular English and French bone china, or... we could start exploring another avenue of tea wear, we could try drinking from a small amount of Japanese tea wear, just a few setting for just a few guests...

And it's that kind of thinking that can get a girl into trouble. It's that kind of thinking that can lead to this, my first Japanese teacups, and a whole new world of gilded porcelain and lacquered woods.

To start off with are these two, meoto yunomi, or married couple cups. The big one for the fella, the little one for the girl. I'm guessing you're thinking what I was thinking at first too "sure give the man the lion's share!" but the size is actually an ergonomic consideration. Since the cups have no handles, how they feel in the hand is an important consideration, and since ladies on average have smaller hands than guys, the girl's cup is slightly smaller to fit more comfortably, and the boy's slightly bigger for the same reason. I have to admit, first drink I went for the big one, because "no one will tell me how much tea I can or can't drink!" but yeah in the end, the smaller one really does feel better to hold and drink from. I have to hand it to the wife cup! Different teas usually have different specific cups/bowls to go with them. Yunomi like these are taller than they are wide, and a less formal cup you can use with just about any tea.One of the reasons I liked them as a first Japanese teacup.

Another big difference between western and Japanese tea settings is that in the Japanese setting, all the pieces aren't expected to match. They are expected to compliment, but not be identical. I rather like this approach. It opens up for so much more creativity and personal taste. Not to mention greater possibilities for laying out the pieces you have to be different each time!

So obviously to start I also picked up these neat little plates for serving the sweets that accompany the tea, and to go with my lovely little cups.

I hoped the rich wood grain shining through the warm colored lacquer would play well with the tones in the teacups, and that the small gold pine needle would echo the pine motif on the cups as well. I'm not sure how good a setting they might make to someone who grew up with this type of tea wear, but to my maybe overly English eyes they work well. One of the main reasons to enjoy nice tea wear is the good feelings it brings to the flavors you've brewed. The happiness these items bring me mean in that aspect at least they work.

Still saving up for the perfect saucers to accompany the 2 cups (got my eye on these 2...)

Been doing more research, and started to pull in other pieces to the set. It's big subject, and it's always good to have more to blog about. So I'm going to go get a quick cuppa right now and write more about my latest teaventure next time!

High Society Dressing

One of the perks of my job is getting to work on interesting custom pieces I don't usually get to tackle. Recently one of my most stylish clients asked for something a little bit different, a re-production of a Grace Kelly movie dress she had fallen in love with.

In the movie High Society Grace Kelly wears an amazing sky blue and white stripe dress by Edith Head as her character Tracy Lords sweeps into magnificent room to dazzle the reporters from Spy Magazine. Big sleeve, big skirts, and big glamor!

At first glance it seemed a fairly simple construction, but a glimpse at the back, and a showcase at the V&A showed a more complex meeting of solid and sheer fabrics that Ms Head was famous for. On top of that tracking down a strip silk in just the right size stripe, and just the right shade of blue took some serious supplier sleuthing. Fortunately I contacted a silk supplier in NYC the week they happened to get in the perfect fabric!

The project took a lot of experimentation to get the right drapes and translucency, as well as more than 17 yards of pure silk!

A few changes here and there to fit the lady who would be wearing it, but certainly an enjoyable challenge, and one I was sad to see leave the studio! (The waist on the dress is actually much smaller than the display mannequin, hence the gap on the over skirt band)