Year: 2009

bags and purses, Free patterns, tutorials
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Mini wallet tutorial

Yay I finished it! This is the tutorial for the mini wallet in this post. For the tutorial, I made a pair of mini wallets in Japanese cotton with colorful houses pattern on it. I really enjoyed making them and the tutorial. The tutorial for the bigger wallets is still in progress, and it will be posted soon when it’s ready! As it would be too long as a blog post, the tutorial is made it into a pdf file that can be downloaded here. Please contact me if you have any difficulty downloading it. This is also my first […]

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bags and purses
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Wallets!

Several friends of mine wanted to learn to make these linen wallets, but since I’ve never taken notes while making things, I had forgotten how to make them. Duh! So I made another wallet to remind myself back, taking proper notes this time. This one is pretty much the same as my previous wallet, the same fabric with velcro closure on the tab. Once I had a decent note, I made two more wallets with more variations. I sewed a piece of cotton lace on the green one and change the closure to thin fabric tubes with elastic inside and […]

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womenswear
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Two batik dresses

I had a bit of irritation in my eyes from contact lenses and doctor told me to give my eyes some rest and not wearing contacts for at least two week. Yaiks! I’m so used to wearing contact lenses that I wear them all day, so I don’t have a proper eyeglasses for my minus 3 eyes. The only eyeglasses I have is not very comfortable and I can’t get a new prescription until my eyes are okay. Oh, well. Anyway, I still managed to finish these two dresses for the shop. Although I worked slower than usual because my […]

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womenswear
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Stylish Dress Book 2: Dress F

When we went to Indonesia last summer, I came back with quite a heap of fabrics. Several of them are from my mother’s collection which are too beautiful that I’m still afraid to cut them, and several are store-bought. This cotton batik is bought from Danar Hadi, a batik store in the city of Solo, Central Java; the brown and indigo pattern is called ‘Parang rusak‘. I browsed through my Japanese pattern book and find dress F in ‘Stylish Dress Book 2’. The pattern is very simple, a loose dress with raglan sleeves, several rows of shirrings on neckline, and […]

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bags and purses, womenswear
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An apron, another bag, and a pinch pouch

A few days ago, I joined a cooking class in the neighbourhood. And just a day before the class, my friend told me that I had to bring an apron. I guess it wasn’t too unusual since almost every housewife in Japan has an apron that they wear everyday. Well, I do some cooking at home and had thought about using an apron, but somehow always postponed making it. I immediately turned to my scrap bag and found that I still had some leftover from my IKEA bags. This one was just enough for a small apron without pockets. Maybe […]

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womenswear
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Stylish Dress Book 2: Top A

This ‘Stylish Dress Book 2’ is one of the most popular pattern book among crafters, and I’ve been eyeing it for sometime. I’ve already had ‘Stylish Dress Book 1’ and made several dresses from it. The dresses in both books are relatively simple, yet so pretty. The pictures are also very simple, both books featuring the same model standing against white wall with serene look. I finally bought the book and decided to make the first pattern in the book: A. The top has flowy sleeves and several pleats on the front part. The fabric is thin cotton with stripes […]

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life
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Go no poo

 The last time I used shampoo for washing my hair was about 2,5 months ago, or to be exact, in June 18, 2009. My hair was not the best hair in the world. I’ve abused it in many ways, colouring it, spraying it with curling spray to keep the shape, and rubbing it with shine serum to make it shine. Actually they looked kinda alright, but then I noticed that without all those styling stuffs, my hair would look dull and lifeless. Then I read this article about ‘no poo’. Here’s a woman who has stopped shampooing at all and […]

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womenswear
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Three dresses

These are the three dresses that I’ve finished almost a month ago (gasp!) . I’ve been very lazy after the vacation and keep postponing to take some pictures. They are actually in the same pattern as this madras dress that I’ve made a couple of months ago. Two of them are made of Sevenberry cotton in ochre bird print and turquoise elephant print, and one is made of another madras fabric. The summer vacation is over and Sidra has started going to school again. Now I had the chance to take some pictures and uploaded them here and to my […]

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kidswear
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Hawaiian shirt and denim pants

Actually it’s been more than a week ago since I got back from summer vacation in Indonesia. In ten days, the three of us went from Tokyo to Jakarta, then to Bandung, and Jogjakarta. Yes, the families are scattered around several cities. In Jogjakarta, the big family from my mother’s side went to our family cemetery to visit my father’s grave and put some petals of roses on the tombs. There lies my father, grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents and so on. It was the first time for Sidra to visit the family cemetery (or any cemetery), so there […]

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womenswear
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All made up and nowhere to go

I should be packing by now because we’re going for summer vacation the day after tomorrow. And I should be folding my dresses neatly to be put in the luggage instead of making a new one. But yeah, I just… can’t… resist….. But how could you resist this lovely fabric from Kokka? The fabric is called Girly & Bitter, designed by Asuka for Nina’s sewing factory line. It has birds, buttons, scissors, bunnies, stars, candies, mushrooms, girls, basically every pretty things on it. This dress is made without pattern, it’s simply smaller rectangles for bodice and bigger ones for the skirt. […]

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