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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

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Typhoon is Here

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Hi everyone! Typhoon is here. It’s been raining since last night..I woke up last night not because Kiko was crying but because the sound of rain was so loud! Andy and I were thinking of going wind surfing this Wednesday, but it seems like we will have to re-schedule it for some other time.

Perhaps because of this crappy weather, I’m feeling tired and not motivated. I did finish a muslin for my friend’s wedding dress, but after that, I was done with sewing for the day.

I picked up this book shown on the left the other day at the library. It is like a sewer’s dictionary – it talks about things you need to know for garment making, drafting patterns, adjusting patterns, different sewing techniques and more. It is a 600 page book! I thought now would be a good time to review and revisit the basics and really go over the proper way of sewing, because I want to make a top notch wedding dress for my friend! So tonight I’m reading this book.

What’s on your reading list? What do you do to motivate yourself on a rainy, gloomy day?

Image via Amazon

 

 

Windy City Dress Knock-off

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Have you ever shopped at ModCloth? I myself have not yet shopped there, but I check their site sometimes because they have a great selection of pretty dresses. I wanted to show you the dress I recently made for my dear friend Naoko, and it is a ModCloth Windy City Dress knock-off. Naoko is a college friend, and not only do I love hanging out with her at thrift shops and fabric shops (Gaffney’s is my favorite  thrift store found in the Germantown section of Philadelphia) , but she is also someone that I have a huge amount of respect for. She is extremely skilled with computers and web design.  She is the one who made this website. On top of that, she has amazing thrifting skills!

Naoko got this vintage fabric seen below from her friend as a birthday gift and asked me to make a dress. The fabric is quite unique – I haven’t seen anything like it at any of the stores I frequent. It has a 60’s, kaleidoscope somewhat psychedelic feel to it. I was bad and kept delaying production. But I only did this because the fabric is absolutely one-of-a-kind, and I was scared to put scissors to it. But last week, I finally did it.

She wanted me to make a dress that would imitate the neckline of the Windy City Dress, but would not incorporate a waist band.

And here is the result…What do you think?! I hope I made a respectable knock-off.

Making Wedding Dress Pt.1 – Fabric Shopping

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As I mentioned before, I’m making a wedding dress for my friend who is getting married in early September. I was really flattered when she asked me to make her a wedding dress. It is actually going to be a wedding dress for her after party. You see, Japanese weddings are a bit different from the ones in the U.S. Here, most hotels have a fake chapel for the purpose of wedding.  They offer fake priests who give fake sermons (in fact, my husband was recruited to be a fake priest just because he is White..to which he said No). You are supposed to rent, not buy a wedding dress from a boutique that’s associated with the hotel, and it’s insanely expensive! Costs start anywhere from 300,000 yen (over 3,000 USD) to rent it. If you are bringing in your own wedding dress, they charge you about $500 for a “bring in fee”. Some hotels won’t allow you to bring in your own dress at all forcing you to rent from them. Back to my friend’s case, she is renting her wedding dress which can be used for the ceremony and reception, but in order for her to take the same wedding dress to the after party, the hotel would charge her an insanely expensive additional fee. So, instead of wasting money on a rental fee she decided to have a custom dress made by yours truly!!! Now, she can wear something different at the after party from what she will wear at the ceremony. Plus…no ridiculous hotel ripoff fees.

Anyway, all that to say that It will be fun to document the dress making process on my blog! As a part 1 of the series, I wanted to show you what we bought during our trip to the Nippori fabric district last week. There you have everything you need. A store called Tomato is very famous because of its reasonable prices. Another store, one that people might not know about is Miki.  I go to Miki whenever I need some higher end dressy fabrics. They have a great selection of dress fabrics and linings.

For muslin:
– 5m of sheeting fabric, 160yen/meter, 800yen
– 1 invisible zipper, 180yen

For dress:
– 3 ivory color surger thread, 360 yen
– 1 ivory color sewing thread, 200yen
– 1 invisible zipper, 180yen
– 2 meters of bone, 340yen
– 12 bone caps, 25yen/1 cap, 300yen
– 1 set of bra pad, 680 yen
– iron on interface, 360yen
– 1m ribbon for shoulder straps, 132yen
– 6m dress fabric (polyester matte satin), 780yen/meter, 4680yen
– 3m organza fabric for bow in the back, 390yen/meter, 1170yen
– 6m cupra lining fabric, 300yen/meter, 1800yen
– dress cover, 1050yen

Everything included, it was about 12,000yen, approximately 140 USD! I’m making a muslin for her now, and will update the process soon:)

Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S. I updated the shop with two new dresses today: this and this 🙂

P.P.S. Orient watch giveaway is still open! Enter it here!