Month: December 2009

life
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New Year

This is a New Year card that Sidra made yesterday. The writing says: あけましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu = happy new year). He drew a tiger’s head there because next year will be the year of the Tiger. The blue building with television antennae on the far right is our apartment building. Tonight is the second New Year’s Eve in Japan for me and Sidra. I can’t think of more way to say about how much I love living here with my little family. This is one of the best times in my life. My old life was busy and noisy, […]

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bags and purses, tutorials
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Makeup pouch – upcycled placemat

This is a makeup pouch that I use everyday. The outer fabric is blue Japanese cotton with pretty white floral pattern on it, and the lining is blue cotton. But I didn’t sew the lining myself because this pouch was actually a rectangle placemat with lining already attached. I found a set of pretty placemats in a thrift store, still new and unused. Since I don’t have a dining table to put these placemats on, I turned them into soft pouches. All I did was sewing the pompom trimming on one short side, fold the placemat, and then topstitching both […]

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womenswear
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Reversible jumper dress

This is another dress that I made for TokyoMade Market. The orange and green fabric is called songket, a type of traditional fabric from Sumatra, Indonesia, featuring hand-woven cotton with gold threads inserted in specific areas to create the intricate pattern. This songket fabric used to be worn by my mother in several occasion when I was little. My mother used it as sarong, a type of lower garment from uncut cloth. The fabric was quite old and the gold threads were pulled in several areas, I unpicked the seamline and opened the fabric back to its original rectangle shape. But then […]

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life
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TokyoMade Market!

That’s me in Shibuya station, bringing my stuffs to the TokyoMade Market. The picture was taken by my husband in the morning. Due to a little mishap, I had to come again in the afternoon, accompanied by Sidra this time. He insisted to help bringing those big bag ^.^ The market will still be going until after new year, so if you’re in Tokyo area, be sure to drop by mememachine gallery in Shibuya and check out some pretty stuffs! more pictures soon! (erm… maybe)

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womenswear
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Batik top with bow brooch

I’ve used the fabric for this batik dress, and still have some left to make a simple top. The fabric is actually not a real batik, as the pattern is printed to resemble the batik technique. The pattern is an orange variation of parang rusak pattern with orange and blue flowers. I made a very simple pattern for this top, consisted of two pattern pieces, front and back. The neckline is V-shaped, finished with bias bindings made from the same fabric. The big bow on the chest is a brooch, so it can be removed or placed somewhere else. The […]

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tutorials, womenswear
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Easy full skirt (and a little tutorial)

This is a super easy skirt I whipped up in literally a few minutes. It is very easy, and I will say it again, very easy! You can make it and you will make it! Err… anyway, the black fabric is Japanese fabric, made of thick cotton with brownish swirly pattern on it. Actually I wasn’t really sure what I was going to make when I bought the fabric, I was thinking of making a bag with it. Then I suddenly had this idea and proceeded to make it. The fabric has wide blank area on each sides, so I […]

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life
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Meet me in Shibuya!

When I first came to Japan, I got to know this really cool site, TokyoMade, an online shop supporting independent Tokyo and Japan-based creators. They have the most brilliant and stylish stuffs I’ve ever seen. Bags and purses, clothes, stationery, arts, all made by Japan-based independent designers. Every season, TokyoMade held a special event called TokyoMade Market as an offline extension of the shop. I went to the market once and bought some very cute rings there. So I was very surprised when TokyoMade contacted me! They invited me to join the upcoming market this month that will be held […]

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womenswear
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Blue

I have had this book, ‘The Art of Manipulating Fabric’ by Colette Wolff for some time, it is sort of wonderful textbook of any kind of fabric manipulation. Ruffles, gatherings, shirrings, pleats, darts, anything. I really like the book and read it several times already. But as much as I enjoyed reading it, I felt a little bit guilty for not using it for a real project. I finally used one of the technique, called single-shell ruffle for this blue dress. The blue fabric is double-gauze cotton by Nani IRO. I just love all fabrics from this Nani IRO collection, the […]

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