It hardly seems a moment since last year's racing season but here I am, whizzing along with this year's Race hats. Aintree is on 13th April and I've been pretty busy with regular clients wanting to choose from the new designs. A young lady called on Saturday, recommended by her friend, and was bowled over by the sixty or seventy hats on display.

We had such a good time fitting first a flirty little nothing, then an opulent statement of a thing and I must say, she looked quite the business in them. Finally we found the exact hat for her and she looked breathtaking in it. We agreed I'll post it here for us all to drool over, so close your eyes whilst I upload it. No looking yet!

Now you can look. The flowers are handmade in organza and just seem to flutter in the light breeze. Is this a Race Hat or is this a Race Hat?

Well, I suppose you've all guessed what I was hinting at a couple of weeks ago when the concerted efforts of beading and hats overwhelmed me. Beads and hats go together so naturally that I can't resist the combination any longer.

For some time I've added small beaded trims to cocktail hats or made glistening swirly finials to embellish lush feather mounts. It's a whimsical amusement to tuck away a discreet glimmer of beading amid exotic veiling; indeed the Dark Lilies hat I made for the Goth lady was quite heavily beaded on top of the lace so it isn't a new thought.

But sometimes a hint isn't enough and only a full-blown affair will satisfy. I made a lovely beaded cocktail cap for my New Zealand lady (which I can't show you yet for discretion) and from there the Beading-Hat Dragon roared to full power. One head glinted shiny beady eyes at me, the other head twirled its veiled plumes. What chance did I have? Here is what emerged:

Can you see the centre? It's a smaller version of the Dark Star pendant we looked at recently. The surrounding six-point stars are stitched bead by tiny bead in a manner bordering on the obsessive. But don't they look lovely? Isn't it an elegant and enviable marriage? Does the two-headed beastie not have me tight within his grasp? Tell me you love it.

Here's a diversion that I hope will amuse you as much as it does me:

Thank you to Irene for showing me the final nifty bit and thank you to Anna for asking if one could make a cat with this technique. For the infocrats, this puss is about 10 cms tall.

I've been racing along with some new beaded pendants that have been filling my head lately. You know how beads seduce me with their shapes, their colours, their age-old mystery, and no matter how I try I can't seem to stop myself drifting back to the bead table. (Not that I try very hard, I must admit.)

And it isn't just stand-alone jewellery. Often the new hats suggest their own jewellery and like as not I'll make either earrings or a necklace (or pendant) or both, sometimes I get completely out of hand and add a bracelet, too. So you see, I'm beset on every side! I think to do the latest hat idea that's floating in and out of my mind and before I know it, the beads are waiting in the wings. What is a girl to do?

But I think I've found a way to foil them. A cunning plan, if you wish. What can it be, I wonder. Here's a clue: if you can't beat them, join them.

I'll stop there, on that cryptic note, and share Friday's Dark Star pendant that's just smiling up at me. Yes, there are matching earrings.

There's a phrase hardly used these days - a woman of a certain age. A lady was in my shop recently, feeling a little overwhelmed by the speed with which Time overtakes us. She was slim, womanly and attractive. It took a lot of courage for her to tell me her age. She admitted to feeling lost within herself and sadly this is something I often hear. How do I look right? How to avoid mutton done as lamb? How can my body look like this when I'm still eighteen in my heart? There are, she observed, so few role models for women as they leave youth behind. 

I had to agree with her. The emphasis and fashion at present is to be between fourteen and twenty-two, and Heaven help a woman who slips over twenty-five!  For the woman in her late forties, it can become a minefield of misery although happily this doesn't happen to everyone. What makes it difficult is that one is bombarded by images of lissome, sleek-jawed young things with silken skin and one's mirror has become a no-go area.

We might look at ourselves with dismay, seeing only incipient wrinkles and fading hair, or we might feel angry and distraught because we don't know how to retain any feeling of desirability. Women deal with the issue in different ways; some refuse to accept anything is any different and wear the clothes, attitudes and make-up that delighted them in their younger days. Others refuse to believe they are still attractive and slide into invisibility.

But you know, lovely as girls are, youth is the blossom of a life and not the fruit of it. It is a promise and not a fulfillment. A woman who has left girlhood behind has gathered other attributes along the way; there is a warmth, a strength, a compassion about a woman that girls have often still to find. At twenty we are anyone and everyone. At fifty, we begin to know more who we are and how to use the qualities we have developed. Yes, our bodies and faces change. How can it be otherwise? But are we saying our battle-scars are a source of shame and embarrassment? We have fought and we have survived.

Partly it is a matter of the times in which we live. Looking at photographs of Queen Mary, her elegance and perfect deportment, one would never class her as a little old lady but rather as a mature woman. For a role model, one needs to return to the times before 1914 and to look closely at the women then. The Seeberger brothers took many photographs of fashionable women of their time and one would not class their models as 'old' although many were of a certain age.

Rudyard Kipling's poem, My Rival, has heartened me many times:

   'They walk beside her rickshaw wheels, they never walk by mine. And that's because I'm seventeen and She is forty-nine.'

Here is this week's hat to cheer us.

I was both pleased and nervous to see that the Ascot Dress Code has been revised and will be implemented for the coming Racing Season.

In the early 1900s, my grandfather sang of 'a dress quite up to date, that seemed to end a touch too soon and start a trifle late,' so the current fashion for exposure isn't new. I'm not really surprised to see the ban on strapless and sheer-strap tops and dresses, nor the new insistence that skirts must be either just above the knee or longer. It isn't as if we are losing the chance to look lovely or to dress up for the occasion; indeed, revealing clothes can be much less flattering that the wearer thinks. 

The other revision (for ladies) concerns hats and headwear and it was this that initially gave me the twithers. Fascinators, beloved the length and breadth of the country, are not acceptable any longer. This sounds serious stuff. We have become completely comfortable with our frippery and feathers and being told they are adornment non grata might bring on the crinkly mouth.

BUT it is not what it sounds. The code-makers say that hats should be worn (then here comes the crux of it) and that a headpiece which has a base of four inches (ten centimetres) or more in diameter is acceptable as an alternative to a hat.

Yippee! I was so pleased to see this clarification that I pogoed round my work bench. Why? Because most of the new things I'm making are either hats or are on the stipulated base! Oh happy day, kalloo kallay! she chortled in her joy. The larger, airy headpieces I offer are for the most part on bases so that they can sit securely in wear so we don't have a problem with the new Code, do we?

Not a bit of a need to panic or get scowly. Just delight your eyes with today's treasure and tell me how you could feel deprived wearing such an indulgence.

I must be enjoying myself! In yesterday's post I said we'd been playing with the Truth Sleuth notepad-hat in autumn but how wrong can a girl be?

The original post was 24th June - doh! - so if you're wondering what I'm talking about, so am I. Sorry for misleading you. That's what happens when I don't check back but rely on my obviously not-total recall.

Now I really am going to have to show you the latest mouth-watering creation next week, to make up for it. Better get stitching, hadn't I?

You know me well enough by now to guess what I'm up to - the new Spring Collection for 2012! I'm enjoying myself so much I can hardly call it work, although I'm at my bench from early until late. Indeed, I must confess that sometimes even the small hours find me groping on my night-table for my notepad to jot down a whizz-bang idea that's woken me up.

Sometimes by daylight it doesn't always seem so whizz-bang, but you never know, do you? My 'ideas head' feels like a revolving door, splurging half-made concepts onto the pavement or whirling them back into the vaults if they don't exit quickly enough. Between the hats, the handbags and the jewellery pushing and shoving at the back I can only hope they don't all make a mighty jam because finding the key-log would be a game.

Every year at this time I have a panicky week of feeling I'll never get things done in time, although it is only myself who sets the deadlines. Calm yourself, I murmur, calm yourself. Turn your eyes to the beauties adorning the display, how elegant, how clean of line, how fresh. And this is but the start. Yet more feminine and exquisite creations are waiting in the wings and I shall be able to bring them on stage in all their splendour, ready to delight both the wearers and the beholders.

It has been quite an international month so far. I have had orders for hats to go to New Zealand, to Las Vegas and to Germany, as well as for ladies nearer home. This is so exciting! And the year is young... 

You recall the Truth-Sleuth notepad from last Autumn and the fun we had deciding how it stayed put?  Here is the natural progression, albeit in a different guise. The silk devore from which the hat is made has a lovely, artless pattern and I thought it would be interesting to have a blossom burst free of the surface. Dyeing the satins to match the silk's colours enhances the effect, don't you think? 

Now how might it look in those sea-greens I spotted in the silk drawer? Maybe replace the ostrich plumes with something sharper? Or what if - ? See the next thrilling instalment at this blog-spot next week! Well, maybe not next very week but sometimes very soon.

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and that all the presents, both given and received, were successful. I've had a lovely time playing with a new dyeing technique, getting rainbow hands if nothing else. Once it has progressed a litlle, you'll be able to see what I'm up to.

Earlier in the year the Plain English Campaign commissioned me to design and to make a hat to be worn at the annual awards ceremony when congratulations and brickbats are handed out to the deserving. The hat was to be suitable for a man or for a woman, to incorporate the Campaign's crystal logo and to look traditionally English. Phew!

With any puzzle a good plan is to start from the end or with the biggest tease. A woman's hat, be-crystalled and grand is easy enough but it had to work for a man, too. H'm...and what about size? Usually men have bigger heads than women (we won't pursue that avenue just now) so one hat would not do, unless it was elastic.

Two hats, then, identical but in size. OK. That was a good start. A flattering colour, a sumptuous fabric, a shape that reflects the importance of the wearer and, of course, the crystal. Here is what I made:

I made the basic shape in buckram, wired and mulled it and then covered it with midnight blue silk velvet. Appliqueing the silver embroidery took a little time. I stitched an open-backed bezel of silver beads around the crystal and secured it to the brim with a beaded picot trim. Setting the ostrich plume was the easy bit. Don't ask how many tiny hand stitches there are, I can't tell you. Let's just say there is no way you can do this work by machine.

Yes, the man's hat is the same but slightly bigger and looks just as splendid. The lovely lady from Plain English was delighted when she collected them and bore them away with much glee. The ceremony was held on 9th December in the Cavern, Liverpool and I hope to have a photograph or two of the hats in wear. I'll share them with you when they arrive.

The new hats for Spring and Summer are already congregating on my bench, so stay tuned.

All I want to add is my wishes for a peaceful and prosperous 2012 for us all. See you next year!

With such miserably cold weather when it is almost dark by mid-morning, we might cheer ourselves by thinking ahead to Springtime. It isn't that far away, is it? When the Collections were shown in late summer, I was interested to see what the clothes designers have in store for us because I do like to be prepared.

Colour, how I love colour and its effect on how we look and feel! Here's a mighty phrase: simultaneous colour contrast. Wonderful, isn't it? If I were into power-dressing and like games I might find it a phrase to stun my boardroom enemies. It's good enough to read again: simultaneous colour contrast.

There, that feels better. All it means, though, is that a colour appears to change depending which other colour is its neighbour.  This is why the living room walls never quite look the same shade as the little square on the paint chart (which was surrounded by lots of other little squares of different colours.) It is also why I always ask a client to bring her ensemble with her when choosing a hat. It is so difficult to carry colour in one's mind and so disappointing to find that perfect pink is not quite the exact match we believed it to be. And sometimes an unexpected contrast can be just what we want to make an outfit sing.

The new Spring colours promise to be quite exciting. Here is a precis of the coming trends: Cabaret, Bellflower, Tangerine Tango, Margarita, Sweet Lilac, Cockatoo, Driftwood, Solar Power, Sodalite Blue and Starfish.

Put in more prosaic language, these are a slightly blue-toned pink, lilac-blue, light orange, clean light green, pinky-lilac, strong aqua, grey-brown, sunflower yellow, mid blue and light taupe. This second list might not sound as enticing but it makes more sense, don't you think?

My usual amusement is to make swatches of the colour trends and play with them on my bench or pin them onto the workboard so that I get to know which are best friends, which are acquaintances and which just bow coldly to each other. 

Over the holidays I shall be starting in ernest developing my latest designs for Spring and Summer but I hope to still find time for the traditional pleasures like making and eating mince pies and stuffing dates with marzipan. What do you enjoy most about Christmas preparations, I wonder.

Whatever it is, I wish you much joy and peace for the holidays and the coming year. Good fortune to us all.