Career With help from her mother and husband, Madine set up her own chain of children's clothing shops in called Madine's Miniatures in the Liverpool area. Business took off when she began designing Communion outfits, but a few years later business disintegrated and she was forced to close shop.
In , she managed to resurrect her business with financial help from her aunt and a business partner. She set up a stall in Paddy's Market still selling Communion clothes, specialising in christening outfits for girls. Madine's designs were inspired by the elaborateness of historical outfits. In , a traveller woman who frequented her stall and had become her friend asked Madine to make a wedding dress for her daughter.
After that, she received more requests and gradually attracted the attention of the media, including Jenny Popplewell, the creator and developer of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.
Naturally the mother-of-four missed her family, but amazingly the Liverpudlian insists she actually enjoyed her time in prison. Good time: Thelma Madine says she enjoyed her stint in prison, meeting people she wouldn't have met normally.
She says: 'I'm glad I went to prison. I know it sounds wrong but I thoroughly enjoyed it; I mixed with people I would never have met normally and I saw the other sides to their stories. Thelma started claiming benefits after the break down of her marriage 17 years ago. While still receiving benefits to look after her then three children Thelma started a business making old-fashioned Christening dresses with two rolls of fabric bought for her by her aunt.
Soon her creative designs were getting noticed and the business started to take off while Thelma continued to claim. She ended up serving four months of the one year sentence after being caught out several years later. Go-to designer: Dressmaker Thelma has forged a special relationship with the traveller community - thanks in part to her experience in jail, she said.
She says now that being separated from her children and long-term partner was the hardest part of the experience. Thelma told the Observer:. Now she puts all her energy in to making her dressmaking business a success after becoming the go-to designer for the travelling community.
And she admits that her spell in prison and subsequent ability to empathise with the Gypsy women who crave her outlandish designs is the one of the keys to her success as a business woman. She says 'I only served four months but it was the making of me.
They get knocked from pillar to post. Yes, there are a few bad ones, like any group in society, but most of them are decent people. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.
Speaking of mothers, I spot a pile of nappies in her office and ask if she has a toddler to contend with too. For a while things were going well. However after a spate of break-ins she was declared bankrupt and ran the business from her garage.
Her marriage to her childhood sweetheart was also on the rocks. I called it a day when I found out he was having an affair. Yet the end of her marriage was the start of her wedding dress empire.
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