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DIY

Mommy’s Diary 21 – DIY Flag Ornament for Nursery

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I’ve been wanting to decorate Kiko’s nursery better. Although I did not make a drastic change, I added some small decorating pieces to her room last weekend, and this flag ornament is one of them. It is very easy to make, and a great way to use left-over fabrics!

Materials needed:
– Cord
– 2-5 different fabrics of your choice
– Thread
– Quilt batting


1. Cut the cord in the length of your choice. Cut fabrics in a triangle shape. Mine is 4″ each side, and I cut out 10 of them since I wanted to hang 5 flags. Place two triangles of the same fabric with right side facing together, and sew one side of the triangle. Turn inside out and iron. Then sandwich the cord with the triangle pieces you just made. Sew the edge to secure the triangles on the cord. I used pipping foot to make it easier to sew this.

2. Cut the quilt batting in triangles that are slightly smaller than your fabric triangles. I stuffed this quilt batting between two fabrics to make the flags look puffier, but you can skip this process if you want a cleaner look.

3. Insert the quilt batting triangle piece between the fabric triangles. Then zigzag stitch around the two sides of the triangles.

4. You are done! Enjoy different combinations of scrap fabrics 🙂


Here are some photos of Kiko’s nursery – I bought the number baskets from Ikea and put them up on the wall. I organize the items I use very often there, like bibs, wash clothes and diapers. I decorated the wall with my favorite pinafore that was gifted from my co-worker.

On the left, I love this grandma rocking chair. Andy found this awesome chair at a local recycle shop for 1000 yen (8 bucks). We used to have this chair in our living room, but now it was moved to the nursery. I rock Kiko in this chair at night to put her to sleep.

My sister made the camisole Kiko is wearing 🙂 I think the fabric is so cute, with little ladies in Kimono all over the cream background. Kiko is doing well and continue to be chubby. She started to roll over, but once she is on her belly, she is stuck and can’t roll back on her own.. This is week 4 of her eating real food, this weeks menu is pumpkin soup. It’s more like a water down cooked squash since I don’t add any spices. Still nursing twice a day, but the rest of the day she is taking formula:)

DIY Cat Object

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I’ve been moving things around the house lately to decorate and organize the place better. We got rid of the old ugly TV that we never watched. We also bought a new cabinet for the kitchen, and re-painted the old one to turn it into a liquor cabinet (I’ll show you the result soon! 🙂 ) I stopped by at a local recycle shop on the way to the post office the other day, and I found this cat. It’s made out of wood, and one of the ears is cracked. It’s relatively ugly, but I brought her back home. It was only 200 yen.

Inspired by these white animal objects from cute furniture and interior decoration store, fran fran, I spray painted my cat white. I sprayed it with a couple of layers and voila! Now she is sitting on our liquor cabinet-to-be.

This pretty post card is my most recent purchase from a shopping (mostly window shopping) trip to Shimokita. I love it, and put it in a pretty frame to decorate the house.

Tutorial: Heart Cut Out Dress

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As I promised, here is the tutorial on how to add a heart shaped cut out to the back of your dress! It’s pretty simple, and once you get the hang of it, you can make the cut out in any shape of your choice! Round, square, star shaped, whatever…variation possibilities  are limitless 🙂 I’m not terribly good at explaining things, so I hope this tutorial makes sense! If anything is unclear, please feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll try to answer your questions.

1. First, pick out your pattern. Recommended patterns are something that’s fitted to the bodice, and has a separate panel for skirt part. For this tutorial, I used the Heidi pattern from BurdaStyle. I recommend Heidi or Danielle (although you might need to modify the pattern a bit to fit to your bodice) from BurdaStyle. If you have a basic bodice pattern that’s fitted to your size, you can use that as well.

2. Cut 4 pieces of back bodice pattern (not center folded). For Heidi pattern, you are supposed to insert a side zipper on the left side, so the back bodice pattern says “cut 2, center folded”. In that case, add 1/2″ seam allowance to center back. You will need this seam allowance when turning the pieces inside out and connecting them together later on.

3. Prepare a heart shaped pattern. I typed “heart shape” in Google image, and printed out the type of heart shape I wanted. You can make the heart bigger or smaller, depending on your preference!

4. Fold the heart shape in half, and place the heart 1/2″ from the center back line. I like to have the heart cut out about 2-3 inches from the back neckline, but not too low, so you can wear a regular bra and not show the bra line.

5. Cut out the half heart from your back bodice pieces. Do the same for all 4 pieces.

6. With the right sides facing, sew the neckline, arm hole and half heart shape as the picture above shows. For the places that’s circled in the above picture, leave 1/2″. You will need this space to connect two back bodice pieces later.


7. Clip the seam allowances for curves.

8. Turn the pieces inside out and iron.

9. Now we connect the heart pieces together. With right sides of the outer pieces facing, pin the right sides of the seam allowances you left in step 6. Top picture shows the seam allowances above the heart and the bottom picture shows the seam allowances bottom of the heart shape.

10. Sew the outer back pieces together as you pinned in step 9. You are only sewing the outer side of the fabrics together, leaving the seam allowances of inner or lining fabrics open.

11. Iron, openning the seam allowances of the outer back bodice pieces you just sewed. Then you iron the seam allowances of the lining back bodice pieces so that the lining covers the seam allowances of the outer back bodice pieces.

12. You can either hand stitch the center seam in the back bodice pieces, or sew it with sewing machine. As you can see, I used my sewing machine to finish the seam.

You are done! Enjoy adding different shaped cut outs to your back:)