V2900 dress

This is my third V2900 dress from Vogue patterns. I really love the first and second ones, which can be seen here and here, respectively. They're probably my best favorite own made dresses in the history because of their fit and comfortableness, and indeed they were quite often used on the hot summer days. At the end of the last summer, the one in white linen went rotten because of my heavy use, at last. Although the brown one was intact, I eagerly felt that I needed a replacement for upcoming summer. Maybe two copies of replacements! Or three copies!

Anyway, I made another one in a red African waxed-print fabric and here you see the result. I think I will need another one in a plain solid color too. In my opinion, those long and cozy dresses in pretty fabrics are super must-have items in every summer. I will happily wear almost same dresses in all summer, do I think there is anything wrong with it? Nope!

I am really happy with my new V2900 and it brings me a huge smile.

Have a happy weekend, everyone!
I hope you're sewing something which brings you a very happy giggle.

Love,
yoshimi


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Pattern: V2900 dress from Vogue patterns
Style A (bias cut)
Same alteration as the first copy.
(it has narrower shoulders, shallower front slit, and higher and smaller waistline than the default calls)
Fabric: Plain woven cotton, African waxed print
mid-body, stiff like paper, very smooth, dry, great for hot weather
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Rosebud

Hello! I had a quick sewing yesterday.

I made a tank top with irregular+wavy stripes all over. It has a set of twisted neckband and armbands (do you recognize them as "armbands" in English, by the way? armholebands?) too. The pattern is my staple tank top pattern from Aviver paper patterns, which is a Japanese company.

I really love this tank top! The twisted neckline in this fabric reminds me of a tip of rosebud that is about to bloom.

Besides adding a bit of interestingness to the garments, what is great about the twisted neck/arm bands is that we can use the same jersey fabric as main parts for the bands even if the fabric isn't stretchy as much as normally required for "straight" bands. They tend to sit nicely on the neckline(or armholes) quite easily, without very complicated calculations, imho. I totally recommend them if you are interested in this technique. It is easier to follow patterns and instructions when you already have those with such neckband, but you can also find good tutorials for turning simple necklines into twisted ones, over the internet. I'm quite sure there are many of them in your most convenient language, after a bit of googling.

Happy sewing!
yoshimi

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pattern: gathered neck tank top pattern from Aviver paper patterns
fabric: cotton jersey, multicolored, mildly stretches, T-shirt weight
140cm wide x 1m long
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May is Over

Hello!
May is always a hectic month in a year to me. I happen to have everything "annual" in this month, without any reasons. Naturally I didn't sew much in this May and thus have no new sewing to tell. Said that I'm going to write some today for the links that I'd love to mention here.

May 3, theme Friday: water

1. My Flickr Album for Me-Made-May'13
I had the Me-Made-May challenge again and it was great to participate, as always. The number of participants this year was rather overwhelming, and thus it was difficult to get to know all of them. But, hey, I tried to be active as much as I could. I've had many conversations with lovely people, which was really really really great. I felt that, I sew only for myself, yet sewing is always there for everyone.
I collected my photographs of this year's challenge in a set of Flickr Album. You can visit to see the photos from this link.

2. Our New Photo Blog
One day, Carolyn from Handmade by Carolyn told me about her interesting idea which turned into our new photo blog. "photo maisonette" is our new space to have photographs from our daily life. The plan is that each of us post one photograph a day. This is a one-year project to archive our lives and surroundings through the lens. You can imagine two friends, who live very apart yet similarly have passions for sewing, are going to share this virtual maisonette. I'm sure Carolyn is going to write about it in her blog soon, too. Please visit her blog for better explanations, stay tuned!

You're always very welcome to drop in our place to see what's going on with us, and I wish there you feel our world is connected to yours as well, in a wonderful way. In "photo maisonette", there is neither texts for the photographs or comment section. What you can do is simply to look at some accumulating slices of life of two hobby sewists. I hope you find it interesting. By the way, I watched a great documentary film about Bill Cunningham yesterday, finally, and would recommend it to anyone who loves fashion.

ta-ra!

much love,
yoshimi

champagne gold trousers

I sewed a pair of trousers.
The title of this post may let you imagine something bold and spectacle to wear for certain special occasion, but they're not. I don't have any plan for attending parties, I even don't have a chance to pass by the doors of banquet hall where people dress brightly in the nice outfits. My trousers are for everyday use.

Anyway, I've longed for trousers that have something like thick embroideries, metallic content, laces, sequins, etc... anything with statements in their texture without deep colors for some long time. People might have thought differently though, I was thinking it was a cool idea. Recently I met this lace fabric for my plan that had been incubated for too long and my job was done on it pretty quickly.

 I used a very sparse gold lace fabric layering onto trouser weight cream beige polyester fabric. I treated them as one sheet for making these slightly tapered straight cut trousers. I chose a very clean silhouette for them, to make the specialness of the fabric stand out. Of course I wanted them simple enough to migrate in my quiet life relatively nicely too ;)

I think you can see I really love them. This was probably one of the biggest let-off-steams of my swelling ball of plan for sewing, and I am very glad with that I tried. In my opinion they're less spectacle than I imagined from the raw materials I used. That is rather a bonus.

Maybe I can think that my gold trousers can make any day a special day for me, and they themselves are the occasion (you're suggested to voluntarily laugh at the writer here).



Do you have special plans that you've been secretly incubating in your mind? I have one more.

Happy sewing to you all!!

Love,
yoshimi


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champagne gold trousers
pattern: Cropped tapered pants "Quartz" from Tamanegi-kobo (PDF pattern), shortened quite a lot.
fabric: champagne gold lace and polyester trouser-weight fabric with some stretch, stacked and used (only attached at seams).
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Comments

I've recently uninstalled Disqus comment system because it didn't accept some genuine comments all the time. Because it seemed OK on keeping the comments that were previously received by looking at my recent posts, I wasn't worried too much about the change. However, I've just found that it seems that I have lost many of your lovely comments which were made via Disqus in the old posts. More than some are still here, but many are gone... So sad. I don't care even if I lost my posts themselves, but I do feel very sad when your comments are gone. At moment I don't know how many of them disappeared, or how to restore them. Please accept my apology if I cannot restore them properly. So sad.

yoshimi

camera tote

I made a tote bag for my camera, using Hatoto bag pattern.

I've been carrying two bags at once for almost one year, one for my DSLR and one for my things, and boy, they're so heavy together. I wanted to have one VERY light bag in which I can put my camera and other thing altogether.

For the outer bag, I used Alcantara that was basically same as polyester synthetic suede named Ultrasuede, or Ecsaine. The bag is lined using plain woven cotton and has 4 interior sections separated by the same fabric. It holds a camera that is protected by a padded compartment in the largest section, and miscellaneous stuff can wander about in the other sections. I bought the red cube compartment from a camera store for sure protection.

There is no fastener for the closure, but there are a tub and a set of magnetic hooks for keeping the bag in shape.

With such features and additional 8 outer pockets, it weighs 400g(=0.88 lbs). It failed becoming light as a feather, but actually it is not bad at all as a camera bag with a padded compartment.

Today, it was a holiday Monday. We went for a hike in the field and I checked if the bag would work well. Honestly, it was working superb. The bag made it much easier to carry my stupidly heavy stuff. It was easy to handle too. I even felt that it was light even though I carried a camera, the other lens, and everything.

yoshimi


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pattern: Hatoto bag, dimention altered and pockets and dividers added.
fabrics:
 synthetic suede (Alcantara) 1mm, light orange, 135cm x 1m
 plain cotton, woven, interfaced, light lilac, shirting weight
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P. S. I have uninstalled Disqus comment system. There are a few people who told me that they couldn't submit their comments using this system. Now I am tired of being worried about if it's working properly. I know there is no perfectly perfect system to avoid all internet problems, but this time I gave a second chance to Blogger's default comment system. We'll see what happens... Thank you for all your comments, including those which couldn't be submitted correctly, I appreciate them so much.

Boxy pink dress

Hello!!

I have to write up this post as quickly as possible, as I need to make a cup of tea and sit to watch the last episode of The Great British Sewing Bee. I know ALL of you but me have already watched it on TV or on youtube! I NEED to watch too!

I made a pink dress for everyday use. I used a dolman sleeved dress pattern named Fran from Annee-Patterns. For the dress, I applied a slash at the front center neckline, a pair of pockets with flaps on chest, and side seam pockets in the skirt. I shortened the sleeves, lengthened the bodice, and widened the skirt at the same time I omitted the waist shirring and the patch pockets on the skirt. Fairly big redecoration, don't you think?

I am so happy with the dress!
I think the color and shape suit me well. This is the moment of sewing joy.

Happy sewing to you, friends!

Love,
yoshimi

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Pattern: Fran from Annee-Patterns
Fabric: Linen.
Pink, plain woven, fairly heavy, flowy, crease much, and soft.
Can be worn as a single layer.
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OK, so, who left the bike here?!! This is trespassing. This. is. my. photo. location. I curse you until you remove it out of the way!!
...well... enough unjustly domineered. I shall go and ask my husband to move his bike. This space is communal and is not my territory anyway...