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Custom Wedding Dress & Kimono Upcycled Clothes | オーダーメイドウェディングドレス&着物ドレス

/ Archives for Chie

Chie

Sewing Tool: Eyelet

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What is the most used tool in your sewing box? I think mine is an eyelet (or do you call it prick punch?). I keep it beside the sewing machine at all times. This little pointy tool is so useful!

I use the eyelet to mark the button hole. I used to use tailor’s chalk to mark button holes, but I find it less accurate. With the eyelet, I mark the fabric with a small hole, and the mark dissapears after you sew the button hole.

An eyelet is great when you are sewing and want to guide the seam allowance to face the way you want. I used to do it with my finger and would almost sew my finger to the fabric!

The eyelet is a great tool to mark the dart point. I mark 2-3mm short of the dart point with a hole, and mark the dart legs with notches. When I sew the dart, I go over the hole a bit to cover the small hole. Although with time and wash, the hole goes away pretty quickly.

Besides these, I used the eyelet to push out the square corners and help turn things inside out. What is your must-have sewing tool?

Strawberry Dress

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Hello! Today I wanted to show you the dress I made recently for a lovely customer. She chose the tuxedo dress design, but wanted the dress in a strawberry print. After both she and I looked around online for a possible fabric choice, she came up with this pretty print at spoonflower.com. I’ve been on the site in the past, but never ordered from there. I’ve always wanted to try ordering something from the shop, so I was excited that the opportunity finally came. Overall the service was good. It took about two weeks for me to receive the fabric in Japan. I ordered two yards of Kona Cotton. It is a good quality cotton with a bit of stretch and it was very easy to work with. The only complaint I had was that the print was printed off grain. Look.

The picture above was after I pre-washed and pulled the horizontal thread to straighten the grain. You can see that the print was not printed straight; and it is tilted a bit. It is kind of horrifying to think if I’ve gotten some prints that the grain line makes a lot of difference, like plaid or stripes.

Be that as it may, I enjoyed working together with a customer to make her special dress! I’m thinking of making a new listing, called “Build a Dress”, where you can pick your designs from several designs of mine, and fabrics from Spoonflower. What do you think?

Mommy’s Diary 53: Foster Care Registration Process So Far

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My mini sailor, 1 year and 2 months 🙂

Hello! I wanted to do an update on the foster care registration process that Andy and I are in the midst of. As Andy mentioned in the past, we are working on getting approved as an approved “adoption family” while at the same time getting registered as foster care parents. We are also working with a private adoption agency, but for the foster care, we are dealing with the local government. I usually hate dealing with government agencies since they are a slow bureaucratic nightmare, they are not flexible and lack basic communication skills. The child guidance center which we have to deal with for foster care is no exception.

When we first approached the child guidance center to register as foster parents, Kiko was six months old. We took her to our initial interview with the case workers. They complimented us on how well behaved Kiko was and told us that we should NOT be foster parents. The case workers said that they did not want to ruin our “happy family” because the kids in the institutions are full of troubles, badly behaved and socially awkward. Even if they consider us as foster parents, they would not give us any child until Kiko turns at least three and it will be a “weekend visit”, not a long term assignment. We came back home disappointed and angry. Shouldn’t the case workers be on the kids’ sides? How dare they insult the kids when they are suppose to be protect and care for them. I don’t doubt that lot of kids have “problems” since they have some abusive history etc. But, that does not mean that the case workers should flippantly insult the kids in front of the hopeful foster parents!

After the initial interview, we weren’t sure if we should continue  pursuing the foster care option. It sounded like a long arduous fight. But in the end, we decided to push on since Andy said “Don’t take Japanese people’s “no” as an actual “no”. Japanese people will eventually say ‘yes’ if you are persistent enough”. I called back the case worker a couple times and hounded her  until she agreed to allow us to continue the process, which involves taking three group courses. So far, we’ve gone through two out of three, and the last group course is coming up this weekend.

The first group course was terrible. We had to sit in the class room for 6 hours listening to boring lectures on the Japanese orphanage and foster care systems. Most of the info I already knew. They gave us reading materials, so we could have just read it on our own and skipped the lecture. Instead, they felt it was necessary for them to read it out loud to us like we were in elementry school. The topic that bugged me the most was the abuse by foster parents. There were news articles about a foster mother who ended up killing and sexually abusing her assigned little girl. It made me really sad but at the same time, it planted doubt in my mind, “how do I know that I won’t follow the same path?”. I remember coming home all depressed thinking about this. Have you ever thought that maybe it is possible that you end up abusing your kids?

There were five other couples in the course. Those couples depressed me even more. It was obvious that the guys were brought there by their wives unwillingly. Some of them were out right sleeping during the courses. I understand the course was boring, but still. I feel like Andy and I were totally qualified to be foster parents compared to them!!