How to feel great in what you wear evening

Whilst we are still enjoying this beautiful hot weather here in the UK, I am reflecting back on a fabulous sunny evening we had 2 weeks ago when myself and Nicky Jones of Look Chic image consultancy held an evening event at Elderberry Blacks Cafe in Knowle. The cafe was the perfect venue for our event. It is a beautiful independent cafe right in the heart of Knowle with lots of character and just the right size to create a relaxed and friendly atmosphere that we were after for our guests. It was a sell out event which was amazing and we were so excited to welcome everyone!

The event was focussed around a talk given by Nicky about how to feel great in what you wear. The plan was for it to be a fun and interactive evening as people learnt some great advice about how to feel great in what they wear. People would learn about their personal style as well as receiving valuable top tips for choosing future outfits and accessories. As quite a few of the guests were sewists and interetsed in dressmaking,  the advice was transferred to making your own clothes, not just buying ready to wear clothes.

So first things first….what to wear??!!! I bet I wasn’t the only one with this dilemma! I did have an idea to make something new (as I tend to do!) but with time of the essence I thought to what I already had in my wardrobe and chose a dress that I made last year and love. It was an Anna dress by By Hand London which you can read more about in a blog post I wrote here. Hopefully it was the right colour and shape on me!!! I felt comfortable in it and that was my goal!

When guests arrived they were warmly welcomed to the evening with a complimentary glass of prosecco and selection of canapés.

There was also the opportunity to buy some raffle tickets. The charity raffle was in aid of Parkinson’s UK. We had some fabulous prizes donated.

There was obviously an All About The Sew workshop voucher in there (had to be!). Nicky was also very generous in donating a 2 hour mini image consultation with her at her home (wow!).

The other prizes were:

A £40 voucher for Enzo hair salon in Dorridge. This is a fabulous hair salon in the village next to Knowle where I have been going for years. Such friendly staff, talented hairdressers and a warm welcome always awaits you.

A £20 voucher to spend online at Sewessential. Sew Essential is an online haberdashery that stocks thousands of products and is run by a lovely family who really know their sewing stuff! The business is headed up by Angela and Lucy who I have met on several occasions and are extremely helpful and knowledgable about all things sewing. There are so many goodies to choose from, Sew Essential stock everything from sewing patterns to sewing machines and accessories. They also publish a really informative blog with lots of tutorials and top tips, well worth a look.

Coffee and cake for 2 at Elderberry Blacks Cafe in Knowle (yum yum!!).

A bottle of prosecco (no raffle is complete without any bubbles!!)

I am totally thrilled to announce that the grand total raised for the charity that night was £295.41 which has been rounded up by another donation to a nice and tidy £300!!!!!!! This was from the sale of the raffle tickets, donations to the Parkinson’s collection jar and I have donated my share of the profit to the fund too. Amazing, amazing, amazing!! I know that this donation will be gratefully received by the Bristol branch of Parkinson’s UK so thank you very much everyone who supported the raffle – ticket buyers, prize donators and to everyone who came on the evening. I hope that all of the winners enjoy their prizes!

After a little welcome and introduction from myself it was over to Nicky for her talk.

Nicky talked about personal style, wardrobe personalities, body shapes, self care and lots of top tips on how to complement these factors with your clothes and accessories. There were opportunties to dicuss your styles and body shapes with each other with some very brave people volunteering from the audience for practical demonstrations, including a fabulous pair of shoes!!

During the interval there was the opportunity to chat with each other, have a drink, finish off the canapés and generally relax amongst friends.  Nicky had a colour board, colour swatches and magazine articles for people to browse through.

I also took along a selection of my handmade clothes to demonstrate some of the dressmaking patterns I teach at my sewing workshops. The rail had about 25 garments on it but they were made from just 7 patterns! This shows that once you have found a pattern you love and that suits your shape/style, you’ll use it over and over again!! This was also discussed by Nicky during her talk when she said that she has a top from Next that she loves so much she has it in about 4 different colours! There were chuckles from the audience – presumably in agreement that some do the same!

So just a final thank you to everyone that came along and supported on the night (including chief bouncer and photographer Husband and my Mother-in-Law and kids for taking charge of the raffle!!). It was a lot of fun and hopefully we will be able to run another event on the future! If anyone has any feedback from the evening we would love to hear from you!