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Hong Kong Photo Diary

October 23, 2012 By Chie

My trip to Hong Kong was short and sweet. We went at the end of September to celebrate Andy’s birthday. Regrettably I was sick, and was strung out on Nyquil a lot of the time. We did a lot of walking, saw a lot of neon signs, failed in our exploration of the fabric district and ate a ton of noodles. There were paper lanterns everywhere (even at train stations) so we had to buy some for Kiko’s room. Our primary objective of getting many foot massages was accomplished. They were surprisingly painful. We stayed in a place called “Panda Hotel”, which was a fair distance away from downtown. The train system in Hong Kong was pretty good (reminded me of the one in Thailand), less complicated than here in Japan. Overall I really enjoyed the trip, and next time I certainly want to explore the massive fabric district.

Minnie Halloween Costume for a Girl

October 17, 2012 By Chie

Have you decided what you or your little ones are going to be for Halloween? I’m more excited about Halloween this year than any other year in the past because I have my little girl to play dress-up 🙂

This Minnie costume is not for Kiko, but I borrowed it for the sake of taking the photos. I made this for my friend’s daughter. She has a tradition of going to the Tokyo Disney Land with her daughter every fall, and dresses her daughter with a little Minnie mouse costume. Last year I made this dress for her. This year, she sent me her sketch, so I made a dress based on it. Her sketch has a white round collar, big polkadot baby doll dress with puff sleeves and tutu underneath of the dress to fluff it up.

I didn’t use any patterns; I traced an existing dress that fits Kiko well and added a bit more room and seam allowances. For round collar though, I did make a paper pattern so that they fit accurately. I like this tutorial on how to draft round collar patterns.

I added a sash in the back, and invisible zipper for closure. I made it a bit short so that the tutu will peek out at hem.

One problem I came across was pre-washing the fabric. I almost always pre-treat the fabric before I work on it, so I soak this polkadot fabric in a cold water first. Then I realized that the red color dyed the white dots! I wash it for three times, tried the detergent but the color did not come off. So the white dots are dyed in pink! I did a quick internet search on how to fix/avoid this problem, but no reasonable solutions were found.. Anyone has any advice? I think it was the right decision to wash the fabric even though the dots were dyed in the process, because if I hadn’t, the white collar would have been pink too.

My friend emailed me that her daughter loved the dress. I’m thrilled!

Video: Hong Kong Fabric Shopping

October 16, 2012 By Chie

As I mentioned earlier last week, I had a chance to visit the fabric district in Hong Kong last month. Here are some photos and video of the place. The video was edited by Andy, which explains the captions..

I referred to the Traveller’s Yarn‘s blog post as a guide. As suggested in the post, I got off at Sham Shui Po station and looked for Ki Lung street. The Hong Kong fabric district is massive! It’s not even comparable to the Nippori fabric district. I hope to visit the place again in the future….not during a national holiday!