Category: review

Craftsy Pant Fitting Techniques by Sandra Betzina

Pants. Why is it so hard to find the perfect fit? I get how to fit a dress, skirt or even bra, but it seems that I just don’t get pants. Luckily for me, recently I was asked to review a Craftsy online class: Pant Fitting Techniques. I love Craftsy’s sewing classes so this is perfect for me! The class is about 4 hours, divided into nine chapters, and taught by Power Sewing host Sandra Betzina. It includes Vogue 2948, a pattern for classic trouser with princess seams in sizes A-J, that will be shipped directly by Vogue. If you live […]

Snood Dogg

Several months ago, I was invited by Nora Abousteit, BurdaStyle co-founder, to have a first look at her new creative community, Kollabora. It is a social platform for people who loves DIY and crafting, where they can share projects and connect with each other. Kollabora has sewing, knitting, and jewelry making communities and is planning to expand into many more DIY communities. It also has a market place where people can buy DIY supplies and kits for their project. I love that they have DIY kits! They are wonderful for people who has just started crafting or just want to start […]

Green Pastille dress (The Colette Sewing Handbook)

A pretty dress was hanging on the wall of my clean room, as if it was magically appeared out of thin air. There were no traces at all that not a few hours before, the dress was a nightmare and the room was a complete mess. Surely I have to thank the magical power of a vacuum cleaner. The pattern is Pastille dress from The Colette Sewing Handbook, the one on the cover. I’ve loved the pattern since the first time I saw it, but kept postponing to make it because apparently I’m too small for Colette patterns. Doing a […]

Create Your Style with Swarovski Elements Magazine: review and giveaway – CLOSED

About a month ago, I was contacted by Swarovski to check out their magazine: Create Your Style, Issue Sound. The magazine is of course about the famous Swarovski crystals, but that is not all. As the name of the magazine suggests, the magazine offers a lot of inspirations and how-to to create your own style using Swarovski crystals. There is a lot of tutorials with step-by-step pictures to make accessories like pendant, earrings, necklaces, bangles, rings, and bags.My favorite is the Unchained Necklace! I love the array of chains in muted color palette. Another one is the Snakebites Bangle which […]

Pink Pendrell and Zebra print Kasia

  The sun is shining today so I can take some pictures of my recent sewing. Here’s another combo of  Kasia and Pendrell that I finished a couple of days ago. When I made this Kasia skirt for me, I wasn’t quite sure if I would be wearing it often. Turned out that the skirt has become one of my wardrobe staples that I reached often. I decided that it  is time for another Kasia! As before, I printed the pattern at 92% and used size 38. I love this method -instead of merely shortening the hem- because it makes the shape and details of […]

Sewing for Boys blog tour and giveaway!

Everybody know how hard it is to find nice clothes for boys. Now you think that you can always make them yourself, but where’s the sewing patterns?! It seems that nice sewing pattern for boys are even harder to find. So I was very excited when I heard about Sewing for Boys by Shelly Figueroa and Karen LePage from Patterns by Figgy’s. This book features 24 projects to make a handmade wardrobe for boys. All sewing level is welcomed here, from beginner to advanced. It’s about time we have books like this! I have finished one project from this book, the Henry shirt pattern, and really […]

Giveaway: Seam Allowance Guide – CLOSED

As someone who often uses Japanese pattern and draft my own pattern, the last step after drafting and tracing is something that I like the least: adding seam allowances. Sometimes I forget to add spaces between pattern pieces, so I had to tape new piece of paper or trace the whole pattern piece altogether, which taking so much of oh my precioussss sewing time. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about as only fellow seamstresses share the same thing, and I wonder why I never came across any tool that address this problem. Until one day  Hollie offered me to […]

Discovering Blogher

This is a compensated review by BlogHer. I found Blogher several months ago when I did some research to find the best ad network for my blog. You can see now that there’s a Blogher ad on the sidebar with links to featured posts from other blogs. I often clicked the links out of curiosity, and then found out that they were indeed very interesting to read! And while reading the posts, I got to find several new blogs to be added in my RSS reader. I guess those are the first things that attracted me to the Blogher community. […]

DIY couture book

The first time I heard about London-based DIY couture by Rosie Martin was in this etsy’s Storque post where she shared her well-written tutorial on making a simple gathered skirt with clear illustrations and step-by-step photos. So I was very surprised when Rosie contacted me one day and offered me one of her books. I chose book number two: How to make a cloak, which I thought would be perfect for the upcoming cold weather. This is actually part of twelve books collection on how to make different types of garments. The other books offered are pleated skirt, gathered dress, wrap top, shrug, straight skirt, grecian dress, jump […]