This week I was saddened to learn the passing away of a lovely lady, Pascale Tassin, after a long battle against cancer. Pascale worked in a hat workshop called “Prise de Tête” in Paris (it closed a few years ago), along with Cécile Roumanet. In 2006, in the middle of my fashion design course, I [...]

The new issue of ‘Télérama’ has come out today (Télérama is a french cultural magazine as well as a TV guide), which has a special round up of the special craft courses/schools in France – in areas such as art restoration, ceramics, glass-making, wood crafts, fashion and jewelry. It’s really interesting, I sure wish I’d [...]

While over in New York I though it would be a good opportunity to go over to the Etsy headquarters  (in Brooklyn, you could see the Manhatten bridge out of the window) and take part in a craft night. Craft nights are held every Monday from 4 – 8pm.  I went on August 9th, the [...]

Yay!! I received my diploma this weekend! It’s officialy official, I’m a qualified hat maker/milliner!! No more studies, just sew, sew, sew! Youpi!! J’ai reçu mon diplôme ce weekend! C’est officilement officiel, je suis une modiste chapellière qualifiée!! Plus d’études, que de la couture encore et encore!

The past week I had my hat exams, the most important part being three days (18 hours) spent making a hat from A to Z completely by hand.  Here are photos of the hat we had to make (scanned them of the exams papers), we had different colors though, blue hat with green ribbon.  It’s a [...]

The school where I’ll be sitting my exams / L’école où je vais passer mes exams   The end of my course is here and tomorrow I’ll be starting the most important part of my exams!! Tomorrow, I start of with an art exam (it’s a quick two hour long test where we basically have to draw [...]

I work as an apprentice, this means that I divide my time between my work place and my school. It’s really great being able to learn in a professional environment and yet still have classes to learn other techniques aswell. I don’t have many classes, I only have two days of school every two weeks. I go [...]