Category: womenswear

womenswear
45 Comments

Floral dresses (and second take on Tara dress)

I found these pretty floral fabric when going shopping to Asakusabashi with Chie and Kayo the other day. The fabrics are cotton with embroidered border on one side. I love how comfortable the fabrics felt on my hand. I used one of the fabric to make another try on the Tara pattern. No alteration other than making the sleeves double layered with raw edges shown.  It was finished pretty quick and I made no mistake this time! The finished dress is rather lingerie-looking, I guess it’s due to the shape and embroideries. But I think it looks pretty cute. The […]

Read More
womenswear
65 Comments

Green dress: Fail!

Tara is one of the most popular Burdastyle pattern and yesterday I decided to give it a try. It is a top pattern, but as usual I lengthened it to make a dress. The green fabric is another vintage fabric from my mother, it is now pretty old and has a lot of little holes. As it is a traditional cloth from one of the area in Indonesia, the width and length were a bit unusual. I apologize that I can’t remember exactly what area it was from, there are really a lot of areas in Indonesia, each with their […]

Read More
womenswear
31 Comments

Simple tops

One of the advantage of having a small body is that I only need small amount of fabric to make clothing. That way I can make use of those impulsive half-yard cut fabric shopping. These tops were whipped very quick today, the pattern is so simple, and only consisted of two pieces. The batik top is made with leftover fabric from my tie-front dress. It has side slits with the front and back hem in different lengths. The wide stripes one  is made with very comfortable double gauze cotton. The fabric is not enough to make the neck facings, so I […]

Read More
womenswear
40 Comments

Everybody is making a tie-front dress, so am I

The Mociun tie-front dress has been going around for a while, its easy and adorable design has inspired many crafters to make their own version. I still have heaps of fabrics that my mother gave me last summer, so I use one of them to make my own tie-front dress. There’s still many of those fabrics, and it seems that I will need some time to consume them all. The shape of the dress is very simple, the idea with the tie-front is just brilliant. I’m sure that Caitlin Mociun is a genius. My version is looser than Mociun’s as I […]

Read More
womenswear
46 Comments

Stylish Dress Book 3: Dress N

Still not a sunny day today, but eventually I managed to take some decent pictures of my new dress. By the way, I really like this dress, the shape, the ruffled sleeves, the pockets, and the pattern of the fabric. It’s officially spring now! The fabric is vintage Javanese cotton batik that used to belong to my mother. It has black and red pattern, which are quite unusual choice of colours for traditional Javanese batik. The quality of the cloth itself is fabulous, the weaving is so tight that I had difficulty pinning through it. The fabric has a little […]

Read More
womenswear
11 Comments

I made a dress today

Here’s a glimpse of a dress I made today! The pattern is dress N from 大人のクチュール毎日着たいワンピース、ブラウス、パンツ…―Stylish Dress Book 3, the newest of the Stylish Dress Book series. Yes, number 3 has just been published and since there’s already Stylish Dress Book 1 and 2 in my book shelves, I couldn’t resist buying the number 3. Things that come in series are my weakness. Anyway, I love this new dress. It has ruffled sleeves and a pair of pockets and the fabric is perfect for spring. Unfortunately, the sun is not my friend today so I couldn’t take proper pictures. More […]

Read More
womenswear
35 Comments

Bib dress

This very pretty embroidered cotton was found in a local fabric store, but unfortunately it was only in a small piece. So I planned to make a bib dress with it, combining it with this denim-like blue cotton/linen fabric. I was ready to draft a pattern myself when I found this Wenlan blouse pattern in Burdastyle, the pattern is actually for a blouse and the recommended fabric is flowy materials like chiffon and silk. My blue fabric is a bit stiff, but I think I can use this pattern for my dress, so I went ahead and bought the pattern […]

Read More
womenswear
14 Comments

Stylish Dress Book 2: D (uhm, sort of)

I think I got the winter blues. I haven’t made a single thing since New Year! My sewing room was too cold, and then I just couldn’t get myself to start a thing. Being uncreative made me restless. Has any of you experience the same thing? Or maybe I was just getting lazier T.T This top was supposed to be an instant gratification to coax me back into making stuff. The fabric was from a local store that I just found not far from my house. There were various fabrics, buttons and trimmings, and non-sewing knick-knacks like cups and saucers […]

Read More
womenswear
6 Comments

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 […]

Read More
womenswear
2 Comments

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 […]

Read More