Chie

Available at my shop
Look! The color of my tights are matching with the flower in the back yard:p
I made this dress last night after watching prison brake.. I am so into this show now. I am at the season two now. Wentworth Miller is too cute.

Anyways, I can think of so many different variation of this dress. For instance, I am thinking of making it in light gray & pale pink combination, or dark red & dark gray combination..
Also, if I get too lazy, I can use already-made t-shirt for the upper part.

This is embarrassingly unprofessional, but this pic above is the pattern I drafted last night. I use flyers which comes with news papers in the morning:p I usually use two big ones, and tape them together. Then using the measurements, I quickly draft patterns, and change here and there as I go along.

I have never been trained as a professional seamstress or anything. I learned everything from BurdaStyle, other online sources and books I take out from libraries. So I am not in a position to advise anyone about sewing, but here are some tips I learned over time to make your sewing time a bit smoother and faster:
* Don’t pin patterns to fabric. I use paper weights (actually just heavy coasters I got for my wedding) to hold the patterns, and cut it out. This saves a lot of time.
* Don’t baste. I personally think this is a waste of time, unless you are making a wedding dress or something big. I use some pins, but sometimes skip that entirely as well.
* Serge first, then connect the parts together – I used to serge as I went, but I found out, taking care of the edges of the fabric first saves a lot of time at the end.

After seeing Kirsten Dunst in NY fashion week, I could not stop thinking about her gold sequin dress with cute bow in the front. She paired it with black opaque tights and Prada pumps, and looked so chic. I am used seeing her in casual hipster-ish outfit, so I was kind of taken aback. I did not have time to go get a gold fabric, but I used a polka dot cotton that I had to make this dress.

I drafted the patterns for the upper part, but I gave up when I got to the skirt part. I am too impatient. I did not want to make a complete replica of Kirsten’s dress, so I added a ruffle for skirt, and made an exposed zipper closure in the back with deep V-line.

This was the first dress that my mother ever complimented on. She is very critical when it comes to my sewing, but the first word that came out of her was “Kawaii!” (which means “cute” in Japanese), seeing this dress. I am pretty happy about that.