I Love My Handmade Kimonos

I've loved Japanese culture ever since I was a child; the food, kimonos, manga and anime!
I am dreaming of going to Japan one day to eat a lot of sushi, get a geisha makeover, wear kimonos.. ^_^

Making a kimono had been on my list of things to do for a while.
I made a kimono inspired dress 4 years ago. Beautiful peacock blue fabric with embroidered flowers. The dress has kimono sleeves. I was so lucky to find the obi with the separate bow in a charity shop for pennies! And it's in my favourite colour too! Still LOVE IT!

As you can see I have a thing for dressing up^_^

And today my new kimono comes in red, solid red colour in a light summery fabric. I like to wear red with my currently lighter hair and so I have quite a few red items in my wardrobe. Apart from the liking part I still have half a roll left of that red fabric, that's why I've been sewing a lot of red garments!^_^ 

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I am wearing my red kimono with a fuchsia pink leather obi inspired belt.

I am planning to make a shorter kimono, probably in red too for a more casual style.

Thank you for visiting.

Malgosia
xxx

Royal Blue Loose Sleeveless Shirt

Finally, here it is! My new shirt in a very light and summery royal blue fabric.  

I designed it with sleeves, however, I had only bought enough fabric for one sleeve and when I went back to the shop this particular colour sold. As impatient as I am and couldn't wait for it to be back in stock, I went for a sleeveless design instead.. 

This sleeveless shirt in an awesome royal blue fabric has a contrast fuchsia pink top stitching detail and also (two first times for me) features hidden button placket and side french seam- both figured out as I carried on with this project.

And here styled with fuchsia pink clutch and obi leather belt. I just LOVE royal blue and fuchsia pink coupled together for this beautiful contrast. 

 And of course my lime green coat that goes with so many outfits had to accompany this look too!^_^

I have to admit I did consider one sleeve shirt.. thinking I could start a new trend:).


Thanks for popping over.

Malgosia
xxx

Ruched Black And White Stripe Dress

I have been working with the Drape Drape 2 book again.

 I am a bit of a bore here and sadly no new design to share. 

It's the same pattern with the altered top that I used for my first version in an awesome royal blue colour:  http://mycolourfultexture.blogspot.com/2015/02/royal-blue-draped-dress.html

Well I guess it's my favourite sewing pattern to use with stretch fabrics... ^_^

The hem of my new dress is slightly longer (about 2 cm), neckline simpler and the jersey fabric is a bit warmer. I fell in love with the fabric when I first saw it and since I don't have anything in stripes I really wanted to use it.

I was working on this dress when it was really warm and sunny and remember thinking to myself: 'Oh man, I'll have to wait until winter to wear this dress..'' with a sad face. 

How wrong was I! Be careful what you wish for as they say.. It suddenly got so cold that not only did I get to wear this striped dress now but I also took my green winter coat out again.

Note:  While sewing I experimented with a few stitches and machine feet and discovered that my Bernina can do a blind/ invisible stitch.  

 It's Bernina foot no 5 and looks like this:

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I was such a relief to learn that, from now on no more (or much less) hand stitching!^_^ 

When you try to achieve a minimalist look of your garment and don't want any top stitching then this blind stitch is perfect. I used it on the hem, sleeves and even to secure the interfacing around the neckline.

Malgosia

Revamp your wardrobe

Recently while decluttering my wardrobe, I found a lot of dresses that were pretty much new, I bought some of them on sale and others as impulse purchases.
I'd been reading a bit about body types and colour analysis and now I could see that the styles didn't fit my figure at all and the colours were completely wrong, no wonder these garments spent so much time just hanging in a wardrobe.
Unfortunately I worked through this project so fast that I forgot to take any before pictures..

You can see in my previous post that I've already revamped a shirt:  http://mycolourfultexture.blogspot.com/2015/04/revamp-your-clothes.html

This dress was made from below the knee pencil jersey skirt with side ruching and a loose tunic with a nice bra detail.

The ties look really nice crossed over the front:

Or can be tied at the back:

You can see the ruching here, it's a narrow hip friendly detail:

Revamp your clothes

This is a shirt I made for the military fashion project at college. I've always liked it but have never worn, it might have look good for a fashion show or a photo shoot but I found it too theatrical for a daily wear. Six years later I say it's time to revamp it!

Before:

Photograpy by Orange Lemur 

Photograpy by Orange Lemur 

Photograpy by Orange Lemur 

And today my shirt looks like this:

I added a zip closure and removed the military buttons and blue and gold cords. The stand up mandarin collar now turns down:

The sleeves  became much narrower and the long tight cuffs are turned up now with buttons:

And the back is plain now.

This is just a close up of my screen prints with hand embroidered french knots:

Malgosia