. . . Recently I was asked if I would be able to encapsulate fragments from a silk wedding dress into new pieces of jewellery to give to the customers sisters and niece . . . 

. . . The customer had re-made her own wedding dress from her mothers wedding dress, she had the removed the sleeves and presented them to me to make the jewellery. So first, we discussed which pieces of jewellery she would like for each person and then I prepared the metalwork . . . 

, . . Meanwhile I made lots of suggestions for areas of the fabric that would work well within each shape and the cutomer chose her favourites, she left me to decide complimentary areas for the partners of each pair of earrings . . .

. . . When the metalwork was completed and oxidised I began to add the silk. I realised that I needed to add masking tape to the reverse side to give the silk stability and stop it from moving around while I cut the shapes . . . 

. . . Then the exciting bit, I began to fit the silk into each setting . . .  

. . . And gradually the collection was completed . . .

. . . So the work was ready to be collected by the customer. She came along with one of her sisters, who didn't know about the commission until they collected the pieces. There were some tears, and I am sure some more tears and stories over that weekend when all the sisters met up. It was such a privilege to make this collection and so lovely to work with fabric, which I have not done before. And thought I would like to work with fabric again. Another fabric opportunity did happen soon after, more about that soon! . . . 

. . . Thank you for reading!