Little K started ballet classes lately and she loves it! I decided that she should wear a wrap skirt around her little butt when she hangs out in her leotard after class. She chose this rayon fabric (she’s a BIG fan of rayon) for her skirt. It was very easy (just one rectangle with pleats), and took about an hour to finish. I love the vibrant color and little K loves it too!
Jewelry by little K. Styled by little K🙂
I have a lot of summer dress posting coming up – even though it’s end of summer now! I’ve made quite a lot of quick dresses lately but haven’t gotten around for photos.
This is a short peasant dress that also doubles as a top. To be honest, short dress and parenting does not match – I constantly need to bend down for the kids and a short dress can be a little revealing😛
Anyways, I simply extended the top of McCall 5039, put in some channels for strings and elastic. Some shoe lace tips at the end, Tada! Easy peasey.
A good friend of mine is having a baby, and while I was thinking about a baby blanket as a baby gift, he offhandedly mentioned donating some old clothing. I thought a blanket made from his shirts would be pretty cute. So I set to cut his shirts into little squares and sewn them together.
It was lucky for the baby that I chose to make the blanket out of his shirts, because afterwards I really wanted to keep it for myself! (So did my two girls.) There is definitely another blanket in my sewing queue now!
This is definitely more of a quilt comparing to my last one. I caught a bit of a quilting bug and am now thinking about a walking feet🙂 now every piece of old cotton dress/shirt is going in my bin as possible quilting material. Let the fabric hoarding start!! The only thing is that’s quilting takes quite some time, even for a simple piece like above – definitely not an instant-gratification kind of project!
This is my second version of Vogue 8926 (first one here). It was supposed to be a dress – I simply extended the length to the knee. However, after finishing, it really didnt look right on me as a dress. So I unpicked the belt attached to the front, put two belt loop on the side, and now a summer coat is here!
It is quite nice to wear over a dress, or as a coverup at the beach, I ended up liking it!
We went on a mini vacation @ Pajaro Dunes… rented an apartment right on the beach – it was very relaxing and the kids loved it! I pretended here that I am wearing my new summer coat with bikinis, but in reality it was super duper cold, I was in my winter coat most of the time!😛
I made a proper trench coat! Years ago I have tried making my first trench. While I liked it – I had made it out of pretty soft cotton twill, got too greedy making it more fitted, and the whole thing just really didnt work together after our initial honey period. (Do you have a honeymoon period with your handmade garment? I surely do!)
Another corset from me! This took a while to actually finish. In fact, I started the project before the JBJ coat, but put it aside because I wanted white grommet. to my dismay, it is pretty hard to find reasonably priced white grommets. I kept putting off ordering from corsetmaking supplies, because it would set me back a whooping $25 dollars to get a good set of grommets. I mean, isnt that a little ridiculous for grommets?
So I debated between using my existing gold or black grommet vs buying white ones. After two months (when I finished my JBJ coat), hubby convinced me to just get what I think is the best for the corset. So here it is! a corset where the grommets probably made up for almost half of the cost, lol. (I still think its a bit of a spurge but… erm, treat yo self?)
I used the Cupid Corset pattern from corsettraining, and honestly, this pattern doesnt fit me very well. I think one need bigger boobs to fill out the bust area. Even if I had bigger chest, I am not quite sure if I love the way bust is cut here with the inset. I think next time when I try to make a overbust corset – I will stick with simpler straight piece patterns and avoid insets.
For fabric, I used cotton shell and cotton duck for lining. I decided to not use a waist stay because I dont like how my corset doesnt stretch evenly with a waist stay. Also, the fabric I chose has a  little give – its more comfortable to wear.
It does go very well with this cute undie I made a long time ago, and it shows up wonderfully in photoshoots. Its such a happy color – I think I will keep it around despite the weird fit. Maybe one day I will be chubbier and would fit better in this.
Year 2016 is proving to be a year of slow sewing. Work has been quite busy lately, kids have been demanding, and Ive been doing time consuming projects. At this rate, I am going to have only 1 finished project a month! (Its end of march – I only finished 2 projects so far with 2 in progress). Fingers crossed for more sewing time!
First creation of 2016! Last year – I skipped my yearly Talea coat rendition. This year, I really wanted a toggle coat like this:
The original idea was to use Grainline Studio’s cascade duffle coat pattern, but after much debate I decided that using a TNT pattern is the safer route to go – I dont have much time to play with the fitting of a new pattern these days and Cascade looks like it would need some adjustment for a person with curve. So I merged the front and front side pattern of Talea, and another rendition of Talea coat is born!
Oversized hoodie, as usual. I love the little button poking out.
I really cant get over how awesome that shoulder flap thingy looks with the hoodie. in this picture I look like I am wearing armor! I made sure the arm part of the flap curves with the arm hole. It looks just as awesome in person as it does on the photo
Those oversized toggle & rope is one of my favorite buttons on coats so far. It makes me happy every time I need to button up. I was debating on using an actual shell from a bullet, but decided that I dont want to play with gun powder/lead too much.
Real leather for pocket and toggle button patch. They are a pain to sew on. I lined the toggle patches against the dart on the bust – worked out very well.
My awesome logo on the hoodie. A friend visited wearing a lulumelon jacket – with a logo on top. I decided to copy it and i love how it turned out!
The inside is lined with a playful poka dot polyester slippery material, and more logo-ing as well.
I wanted to put a tab on the back – but now I am digging this clean vertical lines on the back and also sick of working with this fabric. I think I will keep this as is.
While I love how the coat turned out, I didnt enjoy sewing this coat as much I did with my previous coat. I think its because the material is a little funny. It is a wool with a rubbery, water-proof backing. But the wool feels very thin and the rubber feels thick. So the material is actually a little stretch-prone. The top stitches also sinks in quite a bit since its squishy. It feels like this coat will not last as long as my other makes – at which point I would have to remake one because I love it too much!
We took the kids to halfmoon bay over the weekend. The weather was gorgeous, I always enjoy the California coast in the winter on a sunny day. All the fun and no need to fuss with sun block. Little A is quite something when she gets to the water. A few minutes after the above photo, she was literally waist deep in a tide pool. Crazy little spirit🙂
