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This year I’ve been working on a very special project for our wedding. Tom’s Dad, Keith, is a methodist minister and he took our marriage service, which was wonderful! As lots of you know, I made waistcoats for the dads and groomsmen, but wanted to make something extra special for Keith – so I decided to make a stole for him to wear during the service.

A few months ago, we secretly measured one of his stoles so that I could get the size right. I think the most difficult part was getting the angle of the neck just right, but thankfully Tom is good at that kind of thing! I made a template for the outer shape, pinned it onto some material (Macao in cream from John Lewis) and cut out two using pinking shears.

Then I needed to work out where the hems would be and a ‘safe zone’ for embroidery. I’d marked it out on the original pattern, traced it (in case I ever need to make another stole!) and then cut it out. This inner patter was then pinned on to the stole pieces so that I could tack around it to show where the embroidery needed to go.

At the bottom of each side of the stole, I decided to embroider a cross, as this is often part of the design. Tom suggested that I use the leaf design to match with the waistcoats to embroider the outline, and that turned out to be a brilliant idea! I used a dotted notebook from Leuchtturm1917 (which was very kindly given to me after I won a competition through National Stationery Day last year) to draw the design, measuring out the exact dimensions to be able to make a template.

Once I had finalised the template, I was able to trace it onto some tissue paper and pin it on to the material. This seemed like the simplest way to do it and it actually worked really well – I’ve also discovered that greaseproof paper is also very good for templates! I stitched short sections of the stems around the template first, before adding the leaves. I used split stitch for the stems and the leaves as I find that the easiest and quickest stitch to do.

The next stage was to work out what the rest of the design would be like. I wanted it to be related to the waistcoats and include some other little designs. We laid it out on the floor and used some wool to mark out a wiggly line where the leaf and branch motif would go. Initially, we thought that the spaces in between would allow for extra designs to be embroidered in, but when I had finished sewing I discovered that it looked great without it (and that I was running out of time anyway!)

When the embroidery was finished, I sealed the back with fusible interfacing before using tailor’s chalk to draw the outline of the ‘safe zone’ so I would know where to sew. Then I cut the back panels out of Duchesse satin in champagne (also from John Lewis) and made some little pockets for the rings, stay stitching them on to the back panels. The next stage was to put right sides together and then sew!

After turning the right way round and pressing, it was time to do the most complicated bit: the angle behind the neck. This involved Tom measuring with a protractor and me getting a bit stressed, but the end result was really good! I stitched the outer side on the machine and then finished the inside using slipstitch.

And this was the finished stole, complete with ring pockets!

I’m so pleased that Keith loved his stole – and that I managed to keep it a secret for so long!

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I’ve been so excited to tell you about our wedding day and have finally got the time to sit down (with a cuppa, obviously!) to write a post about it! As many of you already know, we spent lots of time planning and making various things for the day – there have already been several posts about my wedding waistcoats but I’m planning to do a few more about other things that we made too, so watch out for them over the next few days! It was important to us that our friends and family played a part in the day, so many of them helped out too – a huge thank you to you all

We went down to York a couple of days before the wedding to give us time to do some last-minute things, the first of which was to help my Mum decorate many cupcakes! Our wedding was a little different to how people often do it, in that we invited everyone to the service and a smaller group to the reception, and therefore we thought it would be good to have tea and cake after the service to give us chance to chat to everyone (and it also means that people coming to the reception could have a snack to keep them going!). This made even more sense because our wedding was at 2.30, so it was just like afternoon tea! A huge thank you to everyone who made all those yummy cakes!

The day before the wedding, my gorgeous bridesmaids arrived! We haven’t actually been in the same place for 4 years, so there was lots of tea-drinking and nattering going on before we got down to the business of making buttonholes and bouquets! The buttonholes were a little bit fiddly at first, but we soon got the hang of it. I decided to use pink gerbera, gypsophila and a fern from Mum and Dad’s garden, and I’m so pleased with how they turned out! This is my Dad wearing his as we’re about to leave for the church. Look out for a tutorial soon!

I was so pleased with how the bouquets turned out too! We bought a selection of flowers from various stalls on York market and some from Marks and Spencer the day before – including freesias, stocks, peonies, roses, gypsophila, carnations…it was hard to decide because all of the flowers were so beautiful! Because my bridesmaids all had different dresses, we decided that their bouquets should be all white, and I would go for a mixture of pinks, purples and whites. It got nature’s seal of approval when I got out of the car and a bee landed in it!

If you’d like to see my original tutorial, click here.

We had lots of wonderful music throughout the day, played by lots of our amazing friends! Thank you so much to Judy, Pat, Mel and Lee and to all of the other musicians who came to play too – it really made our day very special. One of my favourite bits of the day was walking out of the church to Glenn Miller’s In The Mood, played by brass quintet – it took me so long to persuade Tom that it was a good idea! And it was!

We had our wedding reception at Grays Court, which was the most beautiful venue (look out for another post coming soon!). We were incredibly lucky with the weather, which meant that we were able to spend lots of time in the wonderful garden there. And they even let us put up our family bunting too!

One of the things that we decided fairly early on in the planning stage was that we weren’t going to have an official photographer. This was because we didn’t want lots of posed photos and we wanted the more candid shots that are often captured better by people who are there. This turned out to be a great decision and was in keeping with the relaxed atmosphere of the whole day – and we’ve got some fantastic photos (don’t get me wrong, there are some dodgy ones as well!).

Our wedding cake was made by our amazing friend Hannah, and it was her first ever wedding cake! She did an absolutely incredible job, and all of the flowers are made from icing – even the gerbera! We have kept the flowers and I’m planning to take some more photos of them because they are just so amazing. Thank you so much, Hannah!

There are so many more things I could say about our wedding – it was just the best day ever! But I’ll leave it there for now! One thing I will say about weddings in case you are planning one, is that it’s your day and you should do whatever you like. Don’t do things for the sake of tradition, or because that’s what everyone does. Do what you want to do and what makes you feel happy and relaxed. And enjoy it – it really does go so fast!

I can’t leave without posting a picture of the men in their waistcoats – I’m so pleased with how they turned out! Yay!

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