Wink

I learned about a miracle boy who turned 6 last week. His wish is to have Winks from around the world. Please do stop by and wink.

Click here

Party Dress & more

My daily routine at work is
1. Check emails
2. Check craft blogs.
3. Repeat
:)

Nearly everyday, I would find a new inspiration or a new tute that I want to remake. One of them was this lovely party dress from The Cottage Home.

The contrasting sash, classic and oh-so-cute.


I had this fabric, intending to be made into a dress for lil miss.. but alas.. I didn't manage to because there were just too many elements for the party. Feeling guilty, I made sure it was made into a dress for Christmas.

Lil miss wanted a very twirly dress, so I made a semi circle skirt instead of the gathered skirt in the tutorial. Why not a full circle? ..  Erm.. let's just call it a cutting accident.. *blush*

I really hit jackpot with this dress. Lil miss was twirling the entire time she had it on. She even cried when she had to take it off before going to bed.
Annoying coz we had to coax her to change into her jammies.. but so 'heart-melting' that she loved something I made for her so much.

So what's the 'more' in the title?

Well, after making the dress, there was some fabric left. And I really liked this cotton.. it's thin, airy and very comfortable in our humid weather. So I made a flirty lil blouse for lil miss.

Hey, you even get to see her modeling it this time.

(sorry, the blouse was wrinkly coz it was fresh out of laundry.. and I wanted to capture the picture in natural light.. gloomy skies and all)

Picnic Dress

 

Have I mentioned how much I love border prints? 

Well, I love border prints :) 

Especially uber cute ones like this Kokka Cotton.

The moment I saw this fabric, I knew I had to make a dress for lil miss. It took ALL I HAD to hold off buying this fabric till I had a sewing machine and is more comfortable in sewing wearables. So finally, after many many moons.. I purchased it.

At first, I thought I'll make the dress for Chinese New Year, but hubby said the fabric looked more like Christmas. 

He's more of a traditional RED for Chinese New Year kinda guy. 

I had this Japanese pattern book that had this A-line dress pattern in it and it was really easy to whip up (a link to the book on Amazon can be found at the end of this post)

Plus, it really helps to show off the cute pattern at the border. (Yes, that's the selvedge you see at the hem.. I left it there so that it won't fray.. and yes, I'm that lazy)

 I loved the pattern so much, I even cut the bodice from the border.. and made buttons from characters found on the border..

I would definitely make this pattern again. It's so simple, and has plenty of room for lil miss to grow into.

Fabric bought from Fabric Fanatics

Linking to these parties

A badly executed plan

(image from here)

 So I had a plan. 

It'll be the talk of the clan.

Cut and sew twice

It just wasn't the right size

Now I'm sad

It turned out so bad

Happy New Year

Under Construction

It's the last week of the year.. and a new year is dawning.

I guess it's about time I gave this blog a lil spring cleaning and uplifting.

Watch this space :)

The Dress

About 2 years back, while surfing blogs, I stumbled upon a nifty little dress called the 'Infinity Dress'. 1 dress, multiple ways of wearing it. Brilliant!

Then I saw the instructions on Rostitchery, and decided to give it a try. I did not have a sewing machine, and was very green to the fabric market here in Malaysia (greater KL area to be precise). So I went off to the nearest Nagoya  to see if I could get any 'stretchy' material. When I was there, they ONLY had a Barney Purple knit (2-way stretch). I was desperate.. I needed to sew that dress.. and I got it.

Now I have to tell you this, I was struggling with my weight (am still) post-baby, and being a total noob.. I must've messed up measurements and obviously couldn't cut a straight line. Long story short. The dress was horrendous. So bad, that I do not have any photographic evidence. In fact, I have no idea what happened to the said dress.

Fast-forward, now. 

The 'Infinity Dress' or Convertible dress seems to have re-gained popularity. Many youtube links have been put in FaceBook and many have been tagged.. (since everyone's tagged into anything nowadays). And my sis was showing me this

Same dress, with more glam I suppose. 

So, for my sis' birthday, I decided to give the Infinity Dress another go.

I went back to the SAME fabric shop I went 2 years ago, and it now carries many more different fabric. The whole knit section was bursting with colors. Then this lovely border design fabric caught my eye. 3 meters, 1.5 hours later.. this happened.

The Infinity Dress

I stuck on to Rostitchery's instructions, but with some modifications.

1. Decided not to do a circle skirt. Leveraged on the beautiful border and made a normal gathered skirt instead. I prefer the more streamlined look of the skirt this way. 
2. Enlarged the waistband to become a tube top for better coverage.

Am glad that sis loved the way it turned out. She looks stunning in it. It helps that she's so thin too :P..

Back View

I intentionally left the straps UBER long, coz I sew the dress WITHOUT my sis around. So I wasn't sure how long was long enough. Since knit is so forgiving in the 'fraying' department, she could just cut the straps to size later.

I love the look so much, and have been searching for more and more ways of tying the dress, that .. dare I say it.. I intend to make one for myself now.

Such a dilemma.. I was all set to follow the sew-along of Crepe on Gertie's blog. But I may be able to squeeze in an Infinity Dress for myself. (I am hoping that my hour-glass challenged body shape could pull off this look.. )