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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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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:)

Heart Cut Out Dresses

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I worked on these heart cut out dresses last week and they are all up on my etsy shop, plus one new romper! As you might know, I love interesting back details and cut outs. I enjoyed adding a little heart in the back of these dresses, and will be posting a tutorial on how to modify a pattern to add a heart cut out next week!

Top left: Puppy Print Heart Cut Out Dress, Top right: Navy and Gingham Check Heart Cut Out Dress,
Bottom left: Lavender Sakura Print Heart Cut Out Dress, Bottom right: Navy and Stripes Heart Cut Out Dress

My favorite is the puppy print dress…I found this fabric a while ago, and snatched it up without clear usage in mind. It sat in my fabric stash for a couple of months. I wasn’t sure if it would be too quicky or weird to wear dogs all over your body. but…last week I finally decided to give it a go, and I really like the result. I think the navy color as a background helps to tone down the cutesy puppy print.

Also I put the rest of my Secret Garden collection on sale. Check them out here!

Mommy’s Diary 11

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I meant to post Mommy’s Diary yesterday, but I was too exhausted to write anything. I went out to fabric shopping in Nippori with my friend who is a soon to be bride. The trip turned out to be really successful, and I am so glad we got everything we needed for her wedding dress! We got the fabrics, notions and even a dress cover. I’m so excited to do this, and will update with more details of the process of wedding dress making as it gets underway.

Kiko seems to have realized that she has voice and she is trying to omit different sounds. I have no idea what she is saying, but she coos and woos, and then look at me as if I’m supposed to understand:) She also seems to have come to a realization that she has hands. She grabs different things and eats her own fists. Not sure if they taste good.

The other week, I wrote that I was going to write about postpartum weight issue sometime. I gained 10kg through out my pregnancy, and lost 8kg within a week after delivery. I did not do anything special to lose 8kg – obviously I could not exercise at that point. I didn’t change my eating habits or anything like that.  I really did nothing and I was relieved that the weight came off so easily.  After that first weight drop I expected the rest would come off just as easily and I would be at my pre-pregnancy within a months time.  that was not to be. I was sadly wrong. Two months passed and I was still 2kg heavier than I was before Miss Kiko. I began to get really frustrated. So I decided to workout harder, and count calories. I aimed for 1800kcal per day with some kind of work out everyday. I did that for about two weeks, and got on scale only to see that the needle had not moved. It just did not make sense! How can I workout so hard and eat less, but not see results on the scale? This made me really miserable. Sometimes I would work out twice a day so thinking that a 5km run will cancel out 300kcal ice cream that I wanted to eat. I began to hate life! Exercising is one of my hobbies, but I realized I made it a chore.

After thinking about this for a few days, I decided to forget about the whole diet thing. It was not worth it! Of course I want to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but I made the whole process  miserable. I love working out, and I should not be thinking , “If I do this, I can eat a bowl of cereal without guilt and gaining weight” while on treadmill. It takes the joy out of working out.

Honestly, the weight issue hit me harder than I expected. I would look at my stretched-out belly and be sad. I thought my fat belly would disappear right after I popped out Kiko. Am I the only one who felt that way?