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April 30, 2011

Plus Size Clothing

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 6:25 pm

The clothing industry is utterly enormous and is certainly one of the largest industries in the world employing millions of people, especially in Asia. Think of the number of factory workers and sales people and all the hauliers in between who are involved in the textile industry. Possibly only the food industry is bigger.

In spite of all those people and all that money, there is not really a lot of money to be made from selling regular, everyday clothing. Just look at how cheap a T-shirt can be and it has probably been made and transported from somewhere like Thailand – half a world away. A retailer has to sell a great deal of this stuff to make a living.

The real money in the clothing industry comes from unusual clothing. That is specialized garments and by ’specialized garments’, here I am including high fashion, haute couture and designer clothing. People, particularly women, like to keep up with the latest styles and in the realm of fashion a small fold here or a slight tuck there is all it takes to demonstrate that one skirt is this year’s fashion and that that one is last year’s.

Plus size clothing is an unusual case. Plus size clothing is expensive, but it was not fashionable for a long, long time. Manufacturers seemed to believe for decades that plus size people were content to wear black or garish colours. They seemed to think that plus sizers were not interested in fashion. Often the plus size department would be dumped next to the maternity department and not in the fashion section.

Even though the state of affairs is getting better for the plus size woman, the fabrics and the colours used in plus size clothing still tend to be different from those used for the sizes ten and twelve.

The colours are often flashier and the styling tends to make plus size women look older especially when they are dressed in formal evening wear.

The other option is to go to specialist plus size clothing shops, but this is where they get you again. Specialized fashion translates into very expensive, so very few large women can afford to buy their wardrobe from these stores.

A good question to ponder upon is this: if there is a crisis of obesity in the western world in general, why does the fashion industry concentrate on smaller, often younger, women? Older, often heavier, women have more money that their younger counterparts too.

It is true that the situation is improving on the fashion front for plus sizers and people are also trying to lose weight, so maybe the two sides will gradually approach one another.

In the meanwhile, larger ladies have to discover a way of making the world’s manufacturers of ladies clothing comprehend that they want fashionable plus size clothing made in exactly the same style, from exactly the same material and in exactly the same colours as the clothing that they make for smaller women.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is at present concerned with thinking about crutchless knickers. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Personalised Knickers.

April 4, 2011

Famous British Caricaturists – Part Two

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 2:05 pm

This list includes both British born artists and those who were born elsewhere but did most of their most important creations in the U.K. The selection is listed in chronological order by date of birth.

Max Beerbohm ( 1872 – 1956 )

Sir Henry Maximilian “Max” Beerbohm was born in London, son of a well-to-do Lithuanian-born grain merchant. His family gave him he nick-name of Max and that is what he signed himself in his work and was known as for the rest of his life.

Beerbohm was educated at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford but left without taking a degree as he was already well recognized as a caricaturist and humourist.

He had an incapacity to draw hands and feet but was very good at heads and his dandified figures with inflated heads quickly became his trade-mark. The Times newspaper in 1913 described him as ?the greatest of English comic artists and he was variously hailed as ?the English Goya? and “the greatest portrayer of personalities in the history of art?

Henry Bateman (1887 ? 1970)

Bateman was born in New South Wales, Australia of English parents who returned to England soon after he was born. He studied art at Westminster School of Art and the Goldsmith Institute.

His style matured early in life and by the age of 17 it was already established. He achieved a contract with Tatler magazine but is best well-known for his ?The Man Who??.? series of cartoons. These showed hapless people who had committed mostly upper class social faux pas. ?The Man Who lit his Cigar before the Loyal Toast? is a prime instance.

Sir David Low (1891 – 1963)

Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was born in New Zealand and taught at Dunedin and Christchurch. He began his professional life in New Zealand and in fact his first effort was published while he was only 11 years of age.

He later moved to Australia and subsequently to England and by 1927 was working for The Evening Standard. He is best well-known for his caricatures depicting Hitler and Mussolini both before and during World War II. In fact, generations of New Zealand school children learned about the origins of the Second World War using textbooks illustrated by Low.

He was especially hated by Hitler and after the war it was uncovered that his name was in the ?Black Book? which listed those who the Nazis wanted to arrest after they had conquered Britain.

Low was knighted in 1962, a year before his death. His obituary described him as “the leading cartoonist of the western world”

Ronald Searle (b. 1920)

Ronald William Fordham Searle was born in Cambridge and began drawing at the surprisingly early age of five and was working professionally by the age of 15. The War interrupted his art studies and he enlisted in the Royal Engineers .

He was serving in Singapore when he was captured by the Japanese. He was a prisoner of war for the remainder of the war eventually working on the infamous Siam-Burma ?Death Railway?. He produced, in secret, many drawings depicting conditions in the camps which survived detection by being concealed under the mattresses of dying prisoners.

He returned to England at the end of the war and produced a prodigious volume of work in the 1950?s and 60?s. However he is best known as the originator of ?St Trinians School?.

Gerald Scarfe (b. 1936)

Gerald Anthony Scarfe was born in London and as a child was severely asthmatic. During his early bed-ridden years he busied himself by drawing. He began his working life in advertising but by the early 60?s his caricatures were appearing in ?Private Eye? and this led to a job with the ?Daily Mail?.

But it was his effort with the British rock group Pink Floyd for which he is most known especially the illustration for the cover of their 1979 album ?The Wall?.

Searle also provided the caricatures for the opening and closing sequences of the well-liked BBC comedy ?Yes Minister? and in 1998 he drew caricatures of Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecombe, Joyce Grenfell, Les Dawson and Peter Cook which were shown on a set of five British postage stamps celebrating British comedians.

If you would like one of our unique, hand-painted, custom cartoons or caricatures from photos supplied by you please click on one of these links History Of Rugby. If you would like to find out more, please visit our website at Custom Cartoons.

March 4, 2011

Some Ideas On Baby Cribs, Cots And Blankets

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 4:45 pm

It is important for everyone, even babies, to have somewhere safe and secure to sleep. I say ‘even babies’ because it is simple to think that babies are not quite conscious, but closer contact makes the observer soon realize that babies have a sense of security. For instance, they might cry if one stranger comes near and smile if a different one comes near. A bit like animals, they have instincts.

Well, they are animals and so are we adults, so that ought not come as much of a revelation either. Babies need warmth and softness and something akin to a nest. Naturally, parents have realized this for thousands of generations and the way we have dealt with that need for thousands of years is by wrapping babies up and putting them in cribs or cots.

In other words somewhere safe and secure. Even though they do not know it, they sense that they are in a walled enclosure where animals cannot see them easily and they cannot drop out of either. a crib or cot permits a baby to sleep comfortably as if it is hidden from peril.

However, as they get older, they become more adventurous, which is precisely why they require ‘walls’ around them, which make them feel safe and frustrated at the same time. This is obviously the time when toddlers are at their most vulnerable, because they want to explore but are not very aware of the dangers of the world. Every parent worries about their children wandering off.

Once a child can walk and scramble is the time when it has to be removed from a crib that is off the floor to a safer bed, from which they cannot clamber out and fall.

These beds are often called toddlers’ beds, but now the sides have to be high enough for them not to be able to break out of – a type of pen.

Some cribs can be converted and although they might seem more expensive at first, they can be cheaper in the long run.

It is one of the most hazardous times for babies and one of the most worrying times for recent parents too. Putting the toddler’s pen in the parents’ room is an easy trap to fall into, because it can make the eventual necessary break moving the child from the parents’ room to the nursery all the more a problem when the time ultimately comes.

However, that time will come when the child has to sleep in a room of its own either with other brothers and sisters or not, but the fact of the matter is that parents need their sleep too so that they are alert enough to both earn money to support their family and be awake enough to watch over their offspring.

Owen Jones, the writer of that article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with the satin baby blankets. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Woollen Blankets.

March 2, 2011

The Methods Used To Patch A Quilt

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 8:53 pm

Patch work quilts are ageless, are they not? Patch work quilts have been manufactured for hundreds of years, because in essence a patch work quilt is manufactured from off-cuts of cloth. A housewife would make a set of curtains and store the off-cuts. Then she would make some clothes and store the off-cuts. And so on and so on until she had enough off-cuts to create a quilt, if she required one for her household.

This old-style of constructing bedspreads or quilts always manages to look traditional and contemporary at the same time. A specialist variety of this old-style is the American tradition of women embroidering off-cuts of fabric in order to create a quilt as an excuse for a social life. Nowadays there is more money floating about in society and the patches on the quilt can be more personal and more elaborate.

There is also a lot more choice of cloth about than there ever was, so it is not always necessary to embellish a swatch of cloth to make it one’s own. Someone might always use blue and white stripes as a signature or green and black squares for example. Most people create a patch work quilt of uniform squares, but others will use squares with curved corners and even oblongs, rhombuses, circles and triangles.

Some patch work quilters like to select a theme whilst others are happy to let numerous participants sew in any patch that they like. There are also patch block patterns. The four patch scheme is almost certainly the most common, but the nine patch scheme is also fairly common.

A four patch scheme is achieved by dividing the quilt into equal squares and then bisecting each square across the top and down the sides. Every block of four squares can then have a theme. The same goes for a nine patch scheme, but divide every large block on the quilt with two vertical and two horizontal lines constructing nine small squares in every large square.

You can design your quilt pattern on graph paper if you like. To do this, first work out how big you want your quilt to be. Then draw that on graph paper and divide your graph into the number of that you want. Novices might be better off using larger squares in the beginning and then boosting the number of squares by reducing their size.

Begin with a four block scheme and move up to a nine and then twelve block scheme. You can repeat the swatches of cloth at regular or irregular intervals and you can change the orientation of the swatch in your patch work quilt too. A patch work quilt can be well planned or completely random. Well planned quilts can be fairly dazzling, but even random quilts look fantastic.

Owen Jones, the author of that article, writes on a number of subjects, but is now concerned with the chenille throw blankets. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Woollen Blankets.

February 5, 2011

Suggestions For Baby Showers

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 4:17 pm

Baby showers are well-liked events, particularly in America. A baby shower is usually given or hosted by a friend of the expectant mother, mostly before the birth but occasionally after it as well. The point of the baby shower is to collect presents for the child and its parents, which is why family of the mother find it awkward to organize the baby shower themselves – it seems too much like begging.

If you can get a friend to arrange a baby shower for you or if someone offers to do it, the invitations should be sent out a month or two before the birth day, so that the mother is not in too much discomfort and is not likely to drop the baby during the party.

It is nice to have handmade baby shower invitations. There are two ways that you can do this: either design the invitation card yourself and have it printed out or select a template at the printers. Both ideas give satisfactory results.

If you have the invitations printed to a standard size, you can buy cheap envelopes at a budget stationery office, but if you go for some weird size, ask the printer to provide the envelopes too.

Standard details like the date, the time, the venue, your name and the baby’s name can all be printed but you will have to write or type the recipient’s name in personally. Add your phone number too so that people can ask questions if they have any. If you would like the party (and the presents) to have a theme, you should say that on the invitation. Perhaps the card could be in the same theme too.

In fact, if you want to go down that route, you could download a suitable image off the Internet, say, a scene from Peter Rabbit, and give that to the printer so that they can print that onto your card.

People are very busy these days, so make sure you give your friends at least a month to book you in and get a fitting gift for the shower. If you would like to be fairly sure how many guests are coming, enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard in with the invitation, so that people can let you know easily.

If you are looking for items to do during the party, you could get the guests to suggest names for your baby and guess the sex or weight of it too. You could use a cross on a chain as a pendant to see if it the movement predicts a boy or girl and how many individuals get the same movement. You could also discuss themes for the child’s bedroom after it is born, one for if it is a boy and one for if it is a boy.

Owen Jones, the writer of that article, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with the satin baby blankets. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Woollen Blankets.

February 3, 2011

Sewing Beautiful Traditional Quilts

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 6:09 pm

One of the excellent things about making quilts is the tradition behind quilt making and the usefulness of the final product. It is certainly nice to have a hobby that can enhance your life by either being functional or by being saleable.

One of the other good things about quilt making is that it is so flexible. If there is more than one way to skin a cat, there are thousands of ways of sewing a quilt.

Patch work quilts are one of the most gorgeous and traditional quilts to use to keep you warm at night. They are also one of the cheapest ways of making a quilt, but they are not the easiest of quilts to begin with. Matching all the squares in a patch work quilt is not quite as easy as it seems. The easiest way to begin is to buy two big squares of fabric that you like.

However, there is a great tradition in Europe and America of sewing patch work quilts. The craft of doing this has even become a social gathering in the United States. If you would like to get started sewing patch work quilts, you could join a group if you live in America or you could join an Internet group that specializes in making quilts. Do a search on line and you will find what you are searching for.

There is such a great deal of scope if you want to create a quilt. For example, you could create the top of the quilt either completely smooth or totally fluffy or totally smooth or a mixture of all or some of them. Then you can have the underside as a extraordinary fabric too or you could just use a sheet or preferably something a bit more rugged.

If you are thoroughly intimidated by the idea of sewing a full-size quilt, you could try constructing a quilt for a baby. Okay, you might not have a baby and you might definitely not be planning having one, but you could create one for the practice and keep it to give to a special person in your life who is having a baby or only sell it through a local shop or even eBay.

Once you are confident about constructing and selling quilts for babies’ cots or toddlers’ beds, you could upgrade them a bit and offer to embroider your name and the baby’s name on the quilt. Later still, you could accept orders for custom quilts, manufactured to the requirements of the orderer.

Making quilts, especially babies’ quilts is a decent way of making money from home for people who cannot leave home a lot. People such as work at home mothers and fathers, the elderly and the infirm.

Owen Jones, the writer of that article, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with the chenille throw blankets. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Woollen Blankets.

January 1, 2011

Hand-Knitted Baby Blankets

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:03 pm

What can you give the parents of a new-born baby who have everything? Parents who have already had a baby or two will already have objects like a crib, baby’s clothes, a pram and most other things, but the one present that is always appreciated is a personalized or handmade knitted blanket. Home knitted baby blankets are much better than shop-purchased baby blankets and can either be passed down or kept to give to the baby twenty years later as an heirloom.

Up until fifty years ago, many people, such as aunts and grandmothers knitted and it was fairly common to see hand-knitted baby blankets. This all but died out in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, but handcrafts have seen a resurgence in the new millennium. This has to be a positive sign. Coupled with this is the fact that contemporary wools, yarns and other fibres are more sturdy and safer than ever before.

This means that a hand-knitted baby blanket is a better gift than ever before. There are dozens of colours and textures which makes it easy for the knitter to match any theme that the parents may have decided on for the baby’s nursery.

A hand-knitted quilt or blanket is a very special gift which can either be passed down to the next baby or can be put away to be a present for the ‘baby’ at a later date, in the same way that a bride might put away her bridal gown for her daughter if she ever has one.

When you are deciding on a design for your baby blanket, you ought to make safety your prime consideration. That should include thought for the size or the blanket. The blanket has to fit the cot precisely so that there are no dangerous folds or gaps. The weave should also be tight enough so that small fingers and toes cannot get tangled up in them.

It is not a good idea to have beads sewn into the blanket either. That is because babies soon start teething and you do not want your baby to bite off a couple of beads and choke on them. Traditionally, people used blue colours for a boy baby and pink for a girl and although that distinction blurred for a few decades it is being respected again so you will have to find out the sex of the baby – subtly if the knitted blanket is going to be a surprise present.

There is no parent in the world that would not treasure a hand-knitted blanket or quilt for their new baby. It is a very extraordinary present that really will be considered as an heirloom to be passed down through the family or kept as a very extraordinary twenty-first birthday present. Embroider your name in a corner so that the person you gifted it to will always remember you as well.

Owen Jones, the writer of that piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is now involved with the Handmade Baby Blanket. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Woollen Blankets.

December 24, 2010

Young Girls And Their Traditional Dolls’ Prams

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 9:41 pm

Do you have a little girl in your life? Say a young daughter or a young niece? If she is between about five and ten years of age? If you are wondering what you can be a little girl of this age as a present, then perhaps I can help you out with a few suggestions

Does she love playing with dolls? Then I am willing to bet that she would like a doll’s pram. Young girls like to copy their mums and the mothers that they see on the street. They like to walk with their friends, pushing their dolls in their prams around the garden.

Some people say that this is a bad thing to encourage, but despite attempting to discourage parents from purchasing conventional toys for boys and, especially, girls for thirty or forty years, young girls still like to play with dolls and doll’s prams, Wendy Houses and toy tea sets..

Those young girls from the Seventies and Eighties are now in their thirties and forties, lots of them are feminists too, so the experience of playing with dolls and dolls’ prams and other customary girls’ toys does not appear to have done them any harm.

In fact, I think that it is far healthier for girls to play with dolls than it is for boys to play at being soldiers or cowboys brandishing toy guns, although even that almost certainly does not do any harm. Boys have probably been playing with toy guns, toy bows and arrows or even toy spears for thousands of years.

And I dare say that young girls have been playing with dolls and giving them tea parties for only as long too. While I was in infants’ school fifty years ago, our class had a Wendy House and girls and boys played in there together, although it was more for the girls – I do remember thinking that.

Traditional girls’ gifts like dolls, dolls’ prams, Wendy Houses and toy tea sets type of went out of fashion in the West in the last twenty-five years of the Twentieth Century, but they are back again now. These traditional girls’ toys can get seen in all the toys catalogues and toy shops such as Toys R Us.

They seem to have become a great deal cheaper now than they used to be too, unless you want a dolls’ pram from one of the traditional pram manufacturers like Silver Cross. Silver Cross dolls’ prams are beautifully manufactured displaying all the attention to detail and quality that they put into their full-size prams, which were ‘By Appointment to His and Her Royal Highnesses’ the kings and queens of the United Kingdom from about the mid 1930’s to the mid-1980’s.

Who knows, maybe they will become appointed again when the next royal baby arrives. At the moment Silver Cross, which has outlets all over the world and on the Net, is also giving away a traditional rag doll with each purchase of one of their prams.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with Silver Cross Dolls Prams. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Doll Prams.

December 18, 2010

Using Coupon Codes

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 2:29 pm

Toys R Us is one of the biggest retailers of toys in the world. It is also one of the most imitated names in the world. There firms all over the place with names like ‘Carpets R Us’, ‘Taxis R Us’ et cetera, et cetera. Toys R Us also has quite an extraordinary Net presence.

This equals that millions of people are looking for Toys R Us coupon codes, especially at Christmas. Money-off coupons for Toys R Us can save lots of money on modern toys too as traditional toys such as dolls’ prams, dolls’ houses, rocking horses, board games and dolls.

Coupon codes are a set of numbers and letters, which when entered at the checkout will reduce the price of the item that you are buying or entitle you to a bonus with that item. They can be entered at physical and Web checkout points of sale.in precisely the same way. There are a number of benefits associated with coupon codes, some of which we will discuss later in this article.

The first and most obvious advantage of using coupons is the discounts that they offer. A Toys R Us coupon could give a fixed discount, perhaps $5, a percentage discount as in 5%, or a bonus, as in a free outfit with every Barbie doll or three outfits for the price of two.

If you are shopping on the Internet, the added value may be in the manner of free delivery, although that might be just within a fixed geographical zone such as mainland United States.

Convenience can be a big consideration. If you do not know what toy to buy for a child and you have a fixed amount to spend and you have a discount coupon for a fitting toy, then that can make your mind up for you.

For instance, if you were going to purchase a board game, and there is a 10% discount on Monopoly, why not buy Monopoly? It saves having to think about whether to purchase Risk, Monopoly or Cleudo, does it not?

On line shoppers frequently are sent pretty limited issue coupon codes as a loyalty bonus or to encourage them to come back and shop again. These personalized coupon codes are often fairly generous, but may be quite limited.

For example. if you purchased a Barbie on line a couple months ago, Toys R Us might send you a coupon code for Barbie clothing three or four weeks before Christmas. This type of coupon is usually distributed by email.

All in all, Toys R Us coupon codes, similar to any other coupons, are useful, if you want the device they are discounting or can find a use for it. They are especially helpful at Christmas, when people have to buy a number of presents.

However, you should not let coupons from any company persuade you to purchase and do not hold your breath waiting for a coupon off any item that is in huge demand, money-off coupons are usually reserved for items that are not selling too well or are last year’s hot seller.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with Silver Cross Dolls Prams. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Doll Prams.

Baby Boomers As Grandparents

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:05 pm

The children known as the Baby Boomer generation, those born in the twelve years or so after the Second World War, are now grandparents and one of the jobs of being a grandparent is to dote on one’s grandchildren. Baby boomers belong to the wealthiest generation that the West has ever seen and that is a good thing, because all this doting is quite costly.

Baby boomers were lucky because their parents survived the worst war the world has ever seen and their parents knew unprecedented wealth as the world rebuilt itself after the destruction of the war. Needless to say a great deal of the wealth that baby boomers’ parents were earning was spent on their children, giving them what they had never had themselves.

This meant that a great deal of baby boomers had way too much: rocking horses, dolls’ prams, toy forts, train sets, dolls’ houses, you name it. Nothing was too much for the generation of hope from the generation who had had nothing.

Now, fifty odd years later, those baby boomers are grandparents. But not only grandparents – the richest generation of grandparents that the world has ever seen and the way things are going, the richest generation of grandparents that the world will see for a generation or two to come as the Western world struggles to pay off the mountains of debt that the banking crisis cost us.

Nevertheless, money has a way of burning holes in pockets and grandparents like to dote and spoil their grand kids, so grandchildren, especially young grandchildren are being given the type of presents by their grandparents that the grandparents enjoyed themselves: rocking horses, dolls’ prams, toy forts et cetera are making a come-back big time.

The generation in between missed out, in general, on these old fashioned toys, but look on Amazon or eBay and see what is most popular now – it is modern versions of the old stuff, traditional toys. One of the reasons why traditional toys are so good is because they are timeless.

Yes, a computer is a great present – it is both a games machine and it can be educational, but it will be too sluggish to run next year’s games, whereas children will play with a rocking horse for ten years and then it can be passed on.

However, boomer grandparents were not just brought up on traditional toys, the Fifties and Sixties also saw a huge boost in science – nuclear science and the journey into space fascinated most people. Yes, it was a time of uncertainty and distrust as well because or the Arms Race with the Soviet Bloc, but that was not what most individuals talked about.

Music and science were the issues of the day. Flower power, hippies and a contemporary, clean, bright way of life powered by new technology. Educational toys were popular gifts: Lego, Meccano and chemistry sets.

Toys of this type are becoming popular as baby boomer grandparent gifts as well. Lego sells one Lego set every seven seconds of each day of each year, day and night! This is a new trend, or at least, it is a revived trend and definitely a step in the right direction. Baby boomers may not have been the best parents, but they are pretty decent grandparents.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety subjects, but is now involved with Silver Cross Rocking Horses. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Rocking Horses for sale.

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