As the royal wedding draws closer, speculation is rife as to who will design the wedding outfits of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

But bookies' favourites Bruce Oldfield and Alexander McQueen's label, have been beaten to the job by Chorleywood knitter Fiona Goble.

The 53-year-old from Farm Road has not only created knitted versions of the much anticipated dress, but of the entire Royal Family themselves.

Ms Goble started the project in November last year, and has crafted Prince Charles, Prince Philip, the happy couple themselves, all the way down to the Queen's corgis.

She said: “The models are only small but there is a lot of shaping, each one took about a day and half of knitting. I designed people before but I wanted these to be different, with bigger heads so you could see the details.

“Once I'd made the basic figure I could tweak it, Kate has a heart shaped face whereas William has more of a wider face.

“The one I found the hardest was Prince Philip because of his medals and to get his jacket right. We did a lot of research to make them as accurate as possible.

“The corgis were hard too, first I knitted them too large and they looked like donkeys in comparison to the people, then I tried again and my son said they looked more like dogs but not much like corgis.”

Ms Goble, who will be celebrating the royal wedding with a street party, has been knitting since she was seven-years-old, her first project being a yellow tea towel.

She said: “I learned from my aunt and at school, I went to a local convent school and in those days we were taught to do those kinds of things.

“It's really therapeutic but I've had to get special repetitive strain injury gloves. I tried to teach my son but he's really not interested.”

Ms Goble has released the patterns in a book entitled “Knit Your Own Royal Wedding” after finding success with a previous Christmas publication called “The Knitivity”.

She said: “I worked as a researcher for the Watford based European MP Eryl McNally, but was made redundant in 2004.

“It was only when I left there that I thought I needed to make a job for myself, I'm not that good at taking orders and wanted to be my own boss.

“I thought 'what can I do?' I can make things and I can write, so I decided to write some books on embroidery.”

But how accurate is her rendition of Kate Middleton's dress?

“I think Kate will be wearing something simple and plain,” she said, “so hopefully my version won't be far off.”