Category: womenswear

womenswear
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Broken striped top and black shorts

These are the simple shorts that I made yesterday, along with an equally simple top. The waistband of the shorts is elasticized while the front waistband is kept flat, so there’s no need for fastener. The original pattern is for pants but I shortened it and added a row of black cotton lace on the hem. The top is pretty simple with only two pattern pieces, the front and back pattern are the same except for the neckline. Both patterns are from a Japanese pattern magazine called ソーイングナチュリラ vol.4. You can see the top and pants are on the left in this […]

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life, womenswear
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Sew Weekly Challenge: Kidding Around

My first Sew Weekly challenge! If you haven’t heard about Sew Weekly (who haven’t?), you should check out the site now! This week’s theme is ‘kidding around’ where people make creations inspired by outfit worn in their childhood photo. I was quite excited with this theme as most of my clothes are basically shaped like a bigger version of little girls’ dresses. Hello baby dolls, gathered skirt, and ruffles! Now for finding the childhood photo. This turned out to be not quite an easy task. My late father loved to take pictures of his kids when we were still very […]

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womenswear
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Loose drape dress

I’ve had this pattern book, ドレープ ドレープ (Drape Drape), for about a year now but had never made anything out of it. Most of the pattern in the book use knit fabrics, I guess I was a bit intimidated by it. But after making several clothes with knit fabrics (without serger), I found myself browsing the book again and decided to make one of the pattern. This is pattern no.1, the loose drape top that I lengthened into a dress. The pattern is pretty straightforward, consisted of only two pieces with binding for finishing the armholes. The fabric is double-gauze knit in […]

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womenswear
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Purple Tank

So many things happened in just two weeks. We didn’t have any blackout again since the last time, although the schedule for next blackout will still be  planned to roll until summer. Summer without aircon? I might need to take a vacation then! This week is also the last week of school year, and Sidra missed the entire week because he is down with bad cold. It’s too bad that he didn’t have the chance to enjoy the last days in second grade, next month he will start third grade with new classmates. I hope he will get better soon. […]

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womenswear
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High-waisted pants

The fabric may look like denim, but in fact it is quite lightweight. It’s cheap polyester, initially bought to make a muslin for my husband’s shirt when I changed my mind and used it for my pants instead. I’m sorry! I rarely wear nor make pants for myself, but I ‘d been wanting to try this 1958 McCall’s 4822 pattern. The cheap fabric is perfect for this, just to see how it would look on me. If it turned out horrible, I can pretend that it’s a muslin…. I made view A, the long pants but without the pockets because I didn’t […]

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womenswear
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Spring dress

I’ve finished tracing the pattern pieces for the MPB Men’s Shirt sew along and washed the fashion fabric. But before moving on to the next day, I still need to find some cheap fabric for the muslin. In the meantime, I finished my dress! It’s the floral printed cotton that I bought in Nippori, made with this 1967 pattern, McCall’s 8746. Inspired by the sew-along, I also did the pattern tracing so the original pattern stay intact.  I made no significant alteration other than shortening the bodice and the hem, rather aggressively for the latter. Apparently I’m that short (-_-) I read […]

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womenswear
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Flat collar blouse

I’m joining a Men’s Shirt Sew-Along at Male Pattern Boldness, starting at February 1! If you’ve never heard of Peter of Male Pattern Boldness, you really should check out his blog and read his adventure in clothes-making, written in the most entertaining way as possible. He posts everyday, which I really admire. Reading his posts often makes me chuckling in the middle of the night (got to blame those time differences!). Peter is arranging a sew-along using Negroni pattern from Colette (but you can use any men’s shirt pattern as well), and the time is just perfect because my husband […]

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womenswear
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Red cardigan

Red is such a hard color to photograph! I just finished this red cardigan yesterday. The knit fabric is indeed wonderful. It is a bit transparent but surprisingly warm with fuzzy surface and tiny heart-shaped holes all over it. Too bad the pictures don’t show the fabric well. The pattern is Pris, I bought it as PDF pattern from Tamanegi Kobo, a Japanese pattern shop. The pattern is in Japanese, but the drawings and diagrams made it really easy to construct it. The original pattern was mid-hip length, but I lengthened it about 20 cm because i don’t like anything that […]

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womenswear
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Grey jacket

Another pattern from Pattern Drafting vol. II, this is from page 134 and it is called The Onepiece-Coat Ensemble (it is spelled that way!). I only made the coat and made several changes to it. It was shortened into a jacket since I only had one meter of the fabric, and three buttons are used instead of one. As my autumn dress, I didn’t draft the pattern, but cheated by scanning the page and enlarging it by 1000%. Cheating is the way to go! The jacket has a pair of neck darts on each side and I love the fact that a […]

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womenswear
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Autumn dress

This is one of my favorite pattern book, Pattern Drafting vol. II, it was bought several years ago in a secondhand bookstore in Indonesia for only $1! The book was published by Kamakura-Shobo Publishing in 1970, it shows how to make a basic bodice pattern and how to use it to draft patterns for blouses, dresses, coats, skirts, and pants. There are also small sections for maternity and kid’s garments. The drafting techniques used in the book is from Japan, but the book is in English. The last section in the book shows several sewing techniques for pockets, collars, zippers, and […]

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