I found this double-gauze knit fabric from nani IRO line in Yuzawaya, and immediately fell in love with its simple but adorable pattern. The fabric is 80 cm in width, so I decided to make a simple dress that can be worn over my swimsuit. Perfect for summer! The shape of the dress is very simple, I make it very wide with enormous armhole and racerback shape. I finished the armhole and neckline by sewing strips of the same fabric, leaving the raw edges show. As the fabric is double-gauze, the bindings show layers of raw edges curling together. The […]

I think I’m inspired by madras dresses that I’ve seen a lot lately. So when I found this madras 2 m cut fabric in Yuzawaya, I snatched it right away and carried on to make this dress. This dress is sort of my experiment of making clothes without pattern. I measured myself and drew straight on the fabric. The checks pattern really helped a lot for positioning. The top part stops above the bust, and the bottom part is just a pair of ruffled long rectangles. The sleeves are a pair of long rectangles, each folded in half and then […]

I was in the sewing room, about to finish Sidra’s art bag, when I saw this white Indian cotton lying around. I’ve used some of it to make a hat and it was still about 1 metre left. And suddenly I had the urge to make this white dress. The pattern is basically the same as this purple dress with hood , sans hood and sleeves. I put 4 buttons on the bust and added a pair of big pocket. The neckline and armholes are finished with ready-made double-gauze binding strips. Love this quick and easy project!

This black stretchy lace fabric had been in my stash for a while, and I didn’t really know what to do with it. Yesterday I suddenly got an idea and proceeded to make it. This dress is actually very simple. I traced the top part from a T-shirt, and that’s the only part of the dress that used some kind of patterns. The cape/sleeves is just a long rectangle, about as long as the cut I had (about 2 meters), then I gathered one long side and sew it to the neckline of the dress. The other long side is […]

I was looking through my stash when I found this colorful batik fabric. It was bought about 3 years ago for several occasion where I had to wear Indonesian outfit in a 1 month exchange program in Netherlands. I never had the opportunity to wear it again after that, but I really like it so I brought it when I moved to Japan a year ago. The fabric has big and colorful pattern, so I decided to make a simple dress out of it. I didn’t use any pattern and just cut the fabric into 4 rectangles, sewed into a […]

Due to my newest addiction to knitting and crocheting and the dropping temperature in the sewing room, I’d been taking a break from the sewing machine for quite some time. But yesterday, I suddenly got the urge to sew again, so I made this quick project. The fabris is the same type as my husband’s and Sidra’s long-sleeved shirts, only that mine is grey. This is sort of my experiment in making a clothing that can be worn in more than one way. It started as a long dress with empire line. I traced a long-sleeves shirt of mine to […]

This dress uses the same denim as Sidra’s denim pants. I have about 3 meters of this denim, and even after the pants and this dress, there’s still about half a meter left. I use JJ Bodice block from Burdastyle size 34 to make the upper part. The sleeves was drafted from an old book called Pattern Drafting vol. II, published by Kamakura-Shobo Publishing in 1970. I bought the book very cheap a couple of years ago in a secondhand bookshop. The lower parts were drawn on the fabrics without pattern. As I always like the selvedge part of a fabric, […]

I really like this red dress I made sometime ago and wear it almost everyday. So when I found yet another wall-hanging fabric, I decided to make a variation based on the pattern. The bodice area is lengthened and a hood added. The hood pattern was traced from my husband’s hooded cardigan, with the neckline adjusted to the neckline of the dress. I also made a pleated area on the front, but instead of stitches, it is held by two buttons; creating an illusion of front opening. The sleeves are on fabric selvedge so I didn’t have to stitch the […]

I think I’ve wanted too many things when I started sewing this colourful cotton fabric; pipings, collar, princess seam, ruffles. It ended looking like a toddler dress, and when I put it on, it looked so costumey. So it went back to the sewing room again. I just chopped off the old bodice and made a new one. Fortunately I’m on the small side, so the scraps are enough for a whole new bodice. This time, I only played with a little pleats on the button area and use bindings to finish the neckline and armholes. There. Now I’m happy.