Another busy week in the studio, the aim is to finalise the menswear in the next few weeks, so I have been busy grading patterns, and finalising designs, I am not an experienced grader (grading is simply taking a garment pattern and making a version in all of the different sizes from extra small though to extra large) so it has perhaps taken longer than hoped but there were two of us working on the patterns which was great.

Excitingly a previous employer has offered me access to machinery that I don't have - button-holers for example, for free, this is great because sending garments off to be finished can delay deliveries and obviously add cost to the customer so for now we have managed to avoid that - GREAT NEWS.

Evenings have been spent producing artwork for swing tags, which we are going to do in fabric rather than in paper, I have sourced somewhere in London to do this at a great price which again is very exciting, these will be printed out by this Wednesday so we are beginning to have an idea of how your garments will look when you receive them. Wilf, my son has offered to create the lino-cutting for the logo that will be stamped on the boxes, we just ned to decide on size.

The hunt for a studio also continues, more difficult than we thought it would be, we have been looking for months now with no success, the deadline is June when we really will need to move out of where we are - we may need to think differently!