Cheltenham Vintage Fair & A Rococo Garden

Although the nights have been chilly, we've been blessed in the UK with some glorious Autumn days recently. Last Sunday I had a girly day out with my good friend Victoria, who incidently has had another sell-out vintage-inspired textile design out in Marks and Spencer (click here to have a peek!).

It was an early start but I'm so glad I was up to see the gorgeous countryside around Chepstow, part of it was like Lord of the Rings and I half-expected to see Hobbits popping out from behind the trees! We had a bit of a drive then to Cheltenham, to the Blind Lemon Vintage Fair being held at the Pitteville Pump Room, a rather imposing building dating from 1902 that you could mistake for being a lot older - something of a Georgian feel about the place.


Having been to a few Blind Lemon fairs, I was impressed with the quality of this particular one - lots of 1950s and earlier items, which you don't always get. Some items were unfortunately pretty pricey and most disappointingly teeny tiny, but that's just the way it goes with my Amazonian modern figure. I did however find a selection of 1940s dresses that were in my size, and I ended up buying a gorgeous wrap-front peachy pink dress that looked sad on the hanger but perked up immenseley once draped over womanly curves again for the first time in 60 years. I think clothes are like pearls in that you have to see them on the skin to see them at their best. It's easy to be dismissive of something on a hanger, but if you get in the habit of looking at the cut of a garment, you'll walk away with something fabulous that lots of other people have overlooked!

We then sat in the park outside the Pump Room and shared a flask of tea like old people do. In the picture below I'm wearing my 1940's repro skirt from Tara Starlet and a cardigan from Laura Ashley's sale that I simply couldn't walk away from once I'd seen its adorable quirky dog design!


After a leisurely drive through some pretty Gloucestershire countryside we ended up at the Rococo Gardens in Painswick. We'd missed lunch by about ten minutes, so alas were forced to eat cake instead. I had a spicy pepper-seed cake and Victoria had a light-as-air Victoria Sponge, washed down with fruit cordials. Feeling better after some food we spent a good couple of hours exploring the lovely gardens, with their orchard, vegetable plots, forest, maze and little buildings. It also gave me the opportunity to try out my new camera - I love the pro-focus mode where you get a short depth-of-field effect, like you would with an SLR.