Tag: sewing

bags and purses, tutorials
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Makeup pouch – upcycled placemat

This is a makeup pouch that I use everyday. The outer fabric is blue Japanese cotton with pretty white floral pattern on it, and the lining is blue cotton. But I didn’t sew the lining myself because this pouch was actually a rectangle placemat with lining already attached. I found a set of pretty placemats in a thrift store, still new and unused. Since I don’t have a dining table to put these placemats on, I turned them into soft pouches. All I did was sewing the pompom trimming on one short side, fold the placemat, and then topstitching both […]

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womenswear
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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 […]

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womenswear
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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 […]

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tutorials, womenswear
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Easy full skirt (and a little tutorial)

This is a super easy skirt I whipped up in literally a few minutes. It is very easy, and I will say it again, very easy! You can make it and you will make it! Err… anyway, the black fabric is Japanese fabric, made of thick cotton with brownish swirly pattern on it. Actually I wasn’t really sure what I was going to make when I bought the fabric, I was thinking of making a bag with it. Then I suddenly had this idea and proceeded to make it. The fabric has wide blank area on each sides, so I […]

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womenswear
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Blue

I have had this book, ‘The Art of Manipulating Fabric’ by Colette Wolff for some time, it is sort of wonderful textbook of any kind of fabric manipulation. Ruffles, gatherings, shirrings, pleats, darts, anything. I really like the book and read it several times already. But as much as I enjoyed reading it, I felt a little bit guilty for not using it for a real project. I finally used one of the technique, called single-shell ruffle for this blue dress. The blue fabric is double-gauze cotton by Nani IRO. I just love all fabrics from this Nani IRO collection, the […]

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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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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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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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