The choice of silk organza as underlining was obvious: this taffeta is sort of stiff, but is very thin and wrinkles easily. Organza, treated with my fashion fabric as one layer,  adds a little more weight to the lightweight fabric and results in a better-looking finished garment. How often do you see a RTW silk or any other lightweight fabric garment which ends up looking like a sausage?! Well, underlining prevents this effect.

Another great quality of underlining: it helps to conquer wrinkles! Despite being a lightweight fabric as well, silk organza is very tough. Organza strips are often used as stays: they are difficult to break but are flexible by nature. And that is why I used them to reinforce the corners of the vent in my skirt!

I cut four pieces of silk organza and sewed them on to cover the corners. Now I am not afraid to take long strides and hear the "crack" of ripped seams. The organza scraps will keep my seams in place!

Have you also noticed how I attached the pieces of organza? I sewed them into the underlining! If the skirt was not underlined, I would have had trouble attaching the pieces of organza and the stitches would probably have shown through.

After I finished this post, I sewed a hand-picked zipper and added the waistband. More to come in future posts!

No, this time I won't show you my butt! Some time ago when I was searching for some interesting knitting projects, I came across Danish Knit Design and their Charlotte lingerie kit. And I was smitten.

Charlotte lingerie kit

Danish Knit Design is a small family business run by a mother and daughter living in Denmark and the US who share a love for the tradition of Scandinavian knitting design.When I think that in the past (way before the Internet era and the beginning of mass production), most businesses were family-run and nurtured tradition, I wish I could travel back in time and see what it was like.

Luise lingerie kit

It took me several days to pick a pattern: both Charlotte and Louise were screaming from the screen "Pick me!". But since the winter's almost gone, Charlotte seemed a more appropriate choice. At the moment, I am not sure whether I'd wear it as pajamas or actual underwear, but I am pretty much excited to start knitting! And Louise can wait for later.


The yarn that came with the pattern is made of wool and silk. I picked the smoky gray yarn out of the four colors suggested by the designers. The soft thread reminded me of touching a fluffy puppy; oh, can't I just knit all day instead of going to the office tomorrow?!


I also wanted to share with you my favorite activity since the end of last year: Coursera! From the statement on their website, they are a "social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free". They offer a wide range of courses from Maths to Humanities to Philosophy to Computer Science. If you, like me, are thirsty for knowledge and curious to learn new things, Coursera is for you! Of course, not all of the courses are great (I've dropped out from two) but since it's free, everyone can explore find the right combination of topic and teacher suitable for the. The great thing is that some of the courses can be perfectly combined with crafting!
Do you have experience knitting underwear? Have you taken any interesting courses online, craft-related or otherwise?

This my first blog post in a couple of weeks, most of which I spent with my mom. Having been diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of last year, she recently successfully underwent surgery where the doctor removed her left breast and replaced it with a silicon boob. Luckily, she's doing great after the surgery but a year of chemo is still ahead. Since learning about her illness, I have felt very motivated to improve my lingerie-sewing skills hoping to sew some cute custom-made bras for her one day.

I made this lingerie set from Merckwaerdigh supplies. Both the lingerie kit and the pattern MIX30I were purchased from their eBay shop. They also sell supplies and patterns on Etsy with slightly different offers.

Speaking of lingerie, I am a big fun of cotton sporty type underwear and never wear lace. This time, the choice of fabric for the set was a bit extreme but intentional - I decided to sex up my underwear!


In the past, I already made a bra using Pin-up Gils Classic Bra #1230 and I would have continued wearing it had my breast cage not widened because of yoga. For the new bra, I cut a longer band so that if my breast cage becomes narrower in the future it'll be easy to alter. Regarding the size, my previous bra was a 34A, but the new bra was cut as a 32B.

A few other modifications were applied for this set:

• Since my left breast is smaller, I reduced the left cup - an easy modification due to the princess seam
• I added 1.5 cm to the bridge because, as you can see from the picture below, the distance between my breasts is quite significant
• The bra is wired and it feels quite comfortable
• I added less lace to the panties because I am just only converting into a lace-gal

Following the suggestions from the pattern, I cut the panties in a M, but it should clearly have been a L. Luckily, there's still some fabric for one or even two more pairs!


As the next step in my lingerie-making journey, I'll try to draft my own underwear patterns. I am currently working with Patternmaking for Underwear Design by Kristina Shin and I hope to be able to show you some results in April.

P.S. I've never posted pictures of myself in my underwear before, but wanted to show how it sits on a real person! *Embarrassed*

This time, the Danni Dolman dress from Style Arc is made from a gorgeous panel knit jersey from Tesutti Fabric.  I decided to cut the fabric so that the bodice remains less print heavy. Needless to say, the girl in the picture is pretty happy with the end result!






This fabric was sitting in my stash for several months waiting for the perfect project: the Danni dress. I would put it on for work/party/after-party! I would wear it all year long with different tights, bangles, scarves and earrings. I intentionally avoided the back seam featured in the pattern. If it were closer-fitting, I would not like it as much. But maybe with your critical eye you think otherwise?

Quick-project-therapy did its job and I am ready to go back to my UFO! *SIGH*

At the beginning of January, Sarai from coletterie.com wrote about her wardrobe inventory and inspired me to do something similar.

When looking at my wardrobe critically, I realized that what hangs in my wardrobe does not entirely fit my lifestyle and the garments do not always go together. For instance, I own too many fancy dresses which I have worn only once. My wardrobe also lacks some simple essentials, and could benefit from a couple of classic pieces.

When you live in Japan, sooner or later you become an otaku (geek in Japanese). The more I sew/craft and the more I develop my skills, the more I prefer working with higher quality materials and tools. Lately, I have been focusing on needles and little by little this passion has transformed me into a needle geek.

My latest discovery is Misuyabari, a needle shop which has been in the industry since 1651. They were the official needle-makers for the Emperor's palace!


On their website alone, you can count 79 types of needles (there are more in the store), and after one hour of browsing I felt overwhelmed. I ended up ordering a kit with different types of needles. From right to left in the picture below: silk needles, tsumugi needles (for thin wool and cotton), cotton needles (for wool, cotton and hemp), okuke needles (for very thin fabric), a sashiko needle, dress-making pins and thread scissors.


The distinctive feature of Misuyabari is quite a wide eye. This picture from their website showcases an average needle (on the left) and Misuyabari one (on the right). This makes it easier to thread.

Source: http://www.misuyabari.jp/index.htm

Now, I want to go to Kyoto just to buy more needles! Meanwhile, I will be working with the ones from the kit and documenting my experience. Although Gillian won't see my sewing dare finished today (SORRY), I am using the silk needle to finish my dress.

The needles felt kind of lonely in their paper envelopes and begged me to make them a nicer house. Inspired by Kyoto, the needles' place of origin, I made this tiny needle holder.


I even dared to embroider the needles' names in kana and kanji!

These are the Japanese sewing needles which I sell in my Etsy shop

Allow me a few more weeks to work with more materials and understand the needles a little bit better, and I'll give you a deeper overview of these little darlings.

Is anybody else a needle geek? Or are you nerdy about something else?

Dear international community of seamstresses: THANK YOU for supporting my little Etsy shop! I did not expect such high interest in Japanese sewing notions! My little shop received many more orders in a week that I expected to get in a month!

Thanks to you, I've already learnt so much and am working on the improvements. For example, yesterday I re-took all of the pictures, I ordered business cards and return address stickers.

Due to the amount of time I have had to dedicate to it and my travel expenses to purchase additional stock, I have decided to slightly increase the prices for some products. I hope you understand!

I appreciate your suggestions about the additional Japanese notions you'd like to see in the shop. The newly featured products are: Japanese dressmaking pins, leather thimbles, double (or fork) pins and Japanese thread scissors. And here's a little overview of why they are so good:

Double pins or fork pins

Quilters often use these pins for better precision in sewing parts of the quilt together. The first time I saw how they were used in sewing was from Susan Khalje. When I tried the double pins myself, I realized the advantage of using them: due to their forked nature, they hold the fabric tightly preventing it from moving very much when sewing. Fork pins are especially great for sewing with striped or plaid fabric. You can get the fabric perfectly aligned and avoid ripping your seams.


Dressmaking pins

The quality of the picture below is not great, but that's the best I could make with my little amateur camera.

For the sake of experiment, I put two pins together: the yellow one is a pin from my shop, the black one from a manufacturer from Europe. I hope you can see that the yellow pin is way thinner and a bit longer.

Now I'll try to explain the feeling when you insert these two pins into fabric. It feels like the black pin is struggling to go through the fibers and does not slide very smoothly. My hand gets the feeling as if the surface of the pin is not smooth. The yellow pin seems to glide through fabric and I don't need to force it. It stops or moves where I want it to.

Also, the black pins leave tiny holes in the fabric, whereas the yellow ones do not.


Japanese thread scissors

As with many other Japanese sewing notions, I was introduced to these scissors by Ayumi-sensei. At first sight, they looked very strange and ugly. But my skepticism vanished as soon as I tried working with them.

Their advantage over classical embroidery scissors is that they spare you lots of time and effort due to the absence of the circular handle. Just think about it: every time you need to cut a piece of thread, you put your fingers through the handle (sometimes my fingers get stuck). With the Japanese thread scissors, it is just one easy movement - click -and then you are done!

Don't forget that kimonos are 100% hand-sewn and require lots of running stitching and consequently lots of thread cutting. Scissors like this significantly speed up the process! They are so smart, these Japanese inventors!

Another huuuge advantage is that they are for life. Made of metal, they never break! Contrary to the scissors where the handle is made of plastic. When the blades become blunt, it's recommended to sharpen them with a special sharpening stone. But the traditional "western" way at a professional sharpener works just as well.

If you live in an area with a high level of humidity, it's always better to keep the scissors inside a box.

Personally, I own two pair of scissors: the 100% metal scissors featured in my Etsy shop and another blue pair, from this post. I like the blue scissors less because of the ceramic blade. After using them for three years, the blade is not as sharp as it used to be.


Leather thimble

I added the thimble to my shop because two customers asked about it. You can read more about it here.  I can only say that having used it since November, I am more than happy with it. Despite its rather odd appearance, it feels very natural on my finger and protects it perfectly well!