BEHIND THE SCENES - photoshoot

It takes a LOT of baby whispering to get a great shot!

A photoshoot for a new collection always feels like a very tangible step towards realising all of the hard work that the MillaMia design team have put into developing unique and exciting new pieces. The knitted samples begin to arrive at the office a few weeks beforehand - always received with squeals of delight - and then Helena, Katarina and Tanya begin to plan for the shoot itself. They source props, locations and work on the theme for the collection - often making backdrops and parts of the set.

As the day approaches, we are all caught up in a flurry of excited activity, and this shoot was no different. With a full collection of beautiful garments for babies and kids in our (shhhh!!) brand new yarn weight, we knew that we needed a LOT of lovely young models.

We've been fortunate with sourcing some of our models for previous collections as Katarina has very generously produced three beautiful children whom we have shamelessly exploited - and their friends have also happily featured in some of the books too!

Baby Benjamin was so calm and little Olive kept a watchful eye on Mum

This time, we sent out a request on all our social media channels and were utterly thrilled with the amazing response! We want to say a HUGE thank you to all of those who took the time to get back to us and to the incredibly obliging mums, dads, aunts and other family members who brought their precious models along - we hope you'll love seeing your children swaddled in cosy knitwear in the next book.

Helena stole a quick cuddle with sweet Clara, but nephew Erik wasn't so easily charmed!

It was such a relaxed day considering the shots we needed to get, and the amount of garment and set changes we had scheduled. There were two Dads who brought their kids along - in sole charge - who did a fabulous job organising and keeping their offspring happy. Katarina and Helena managed to persuade their brother Mikael to bring the super Erik along to feature in his first photoshoot - although I'm sure he'll be 'employed' for lots more in the future! It was also lovely to meet 2 new people who, quite by chance already had connections with MillaMia. Baby Daisy's gran had knitted the Teddy Blanket for her when she was newborn and Louise's mum Linda had knitted with MillaMia - something we only found out after we had approached her in the park!! What a small world!

Cousins Johan and Erik hangout before their big moment

If you are now wondering just what this exciting new collection and yarn is all about, then keep watching this space! We'll be releasing sneak previews - like this one - right up until we launch in July here on the blog and on all of our other social media channels.

(posted by Max)