Year: 2009

life
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Sidra got caught by street style hunter in Harajuku

My husband had to work for a half day last Saturday, his office is not far from Harajuku area, so Sidra and me went along and we had a little walk by ourselves in Omotesando Hills. Suddenly there was a guy came to us and told me that he wanted to photograph Sidra for a street style section in a kid’s fashion magazine. I asked Sidra about it and he agreed, so we went with him to meet the photographer. Standing beside the photographer was a familiar face, it was the editor of Sesame magazine that we met last year […]

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womenswear
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Cotton tunics

These are the cotton tunics that I made last week. I really love the natural colour of the fabric and how comfortable they feel to my skin. The shape of the tunic is very simple, sort of basic item that can be combined with lots of things. The tunic has round neckline and front opening with fabric loop and button. I use cotton linen binding strips for the loop and neckline. The linen fabric also used as side tab and details on sleeves. Love the result! And don’t they look good together? ^.^

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life
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Maikeru Jakuson

Sidra: Mama, when I grow up, I wanna be Maikeru Jakuson! Mama: Oh? That’s good. Why do you wanna be like Michael Jakson? Sidra: Because he’s a great dancer! Sidra: Ma, which one is greater, Maikeru Jakuson or Obama? Mama: Uh… well… they’re different. I don’t think we can compare them. Sidra: What can Obama do? Mama: Obama? Let’s see… what can he do? He’s smart, he’s the president of USA. Sidra: Is that it? Can he dance? Mama: Well, I don’t think he can dance. Sidra: Then Maikeru Jakuson is the greater one! Sidra: Ma, how many Maikeru Jakuson […]

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womenswear
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Making identical things

I love making identical things with slight differences between each other. But of course this opportunity doesn’t come very often if I only made things for myself. Next week I’m going to participate in a local craft market, so I’m kinda busy preparing some things for the day. This fabric with Matryoshka pattern was bought in Nippori, but I guess they’re pretty famous already and can be found in lots of places. I just sewed a piece of lace on each doll, put linen fabric on the back, slip some grosgrain ribbons, and sewed around the doll shape. Then I […]

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bags and purses
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Colorful small things

A few days ago I went to Cottonfield, a fabric store in Kichijoji, and found this pretty fabric. I’m sure that this Echino prints by Etsuko Furuya is quite famous already. The fabric featured retro-inspired airplane images, stripes and polka dot patterns in pretty colours combined together . I turned the fabric into into several mini wallets and a zippered pencil pouch for the shop. Actually there were two pouches, but I had to keep one of them for my colored pens. And this one is mine ^.^

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bags and purses
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Scrap bucket

This month is Scrap buster month in Sew, Mama, Sew! blog, and they have so many great projects for fabric scraps. After browsing on those wonderful projects, I got inspired by this bucket and made my own version. The bucket uses scraps of Ikea fabrics that seemed to have never stopped overflowing my sewing room. I sewed several strips together, the lines are not straight because the strips are in different widths. Then I ironed fusible interfacing on the back and cut them into 35×80 cm rectangle. I wanted a circle for the bottom of the bucket, so the diameter […]

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life
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Etsy front pages and other thing

I just found out that my madras dress and one of these reversible bags were featured in different Etsy front pages a few days ago. There they are, first one on second row and first one on third row! They are my first Etsy front pages, ans since I don’t update my shop too often, I’m pretty happy that some of my stuffs made it to the front page. The screen captures are from the flickr group: Etsy Front Pagers- Treasury Screenshots which have screen captures of most all Etsy front pages. On another note, Sidra said that he wanted […]

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bags and purses, Free patterns, tutorials
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Wallet tutorial

Here’s the tutorial for these wallets! The tutorial includes two variation of the closure, one with tab and velcro and the other with fabric loop and button. For the tutorial, I made a pair of wallets from pink Japanese cotton fabrics, one in polkadot and the other one in floral pattern. The beige linings are Indian cotton fabrics. I hope the colours of the fabrics are not too muted in the pictures. The tutorial can be downloaded below, it’s a 7 pages of PDF file. Please contact me if you have any difficulty downloading it, or if anything is not […]

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bags and purses
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Boxy pouch – Fuchsia and yellow

After teaching my friends how to make some boxy pouches, I got inspired and made one myself. This is such a nice little project, the fabric is IKEA scraps I had in my stash with yellow lining inside, yellow zipper, and yellow cotton webbing for the handle. I still have like tons of fabric scraps that I accumulated in one and a half year in Japan and whatever I do with them, they still keep growing (and I still keep buying *sigh*). I don’t know how people can have such a nice and neat sewing room, mine is a mess!

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life
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Boxy pouches for sewing session

Aren’t these pouches so pretty? But these are not made by me. Today we had another sewing session at my friend’s house as they wanted to learn making these boxy pouches. I’m always a bit nervous about teaching something to people, I’m afraid my explanations wouldn’t be clear enough or they wouldn’t understand. These friends of mine don’t even speak English (only one of the three can), but then I guess we didn’t really need to talk much. Let’s just cut and sew those fabrics. Anyway, I really love their fabric choices, the pink one with ice creams have very […]

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