Have I mentioned dressmaking and alterations? Elaine is a fully trained seamstress and tailor, able to work in any materials from the most complicated pattern to achieve an accurate fit every time. She has worked on wedding clothes, ball-gowns, cocktail dresses, suits and children’s apparel; nothing is either too big a job or too small. From work requiring pin tucks, ruching, lace, sequins, lacing, seed-pearls, frogging, lining, stiffening, eyelets, buttonholes, pattern matching, -she can then go on to the replacement of a broken zip, or the turning up of a pair of jeans, or the simple mending of a split seam. She can reduce the size of favourite items of clothing, and in some cases even cunningly increase it.