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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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diy

Forest Fairy Halloween Costume

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I was undecided whether to post this project, because Andy constantly made fun of me for wanting to dress up for Halloween. Andy is not a big fan of Halloween, or any holidays at all in fact. But we had a party to go to on Halloween weekend, and I needed something to wear. I forgot how I ended up with a fairy, and am a bit embarrassed by it since I’m almost 30, wanting to dress up as a…fairy.

Anyway, at first I wanted to make a Tinkerbell costume, but as I made progress with sewing, it did not look like a Tinkerbell costume. First of all the fabric was wrong. I was too cheap to buy one of those shiny costumy fabric, so I ended up using a home dec fabric..the same one that I used to make for our bedroom curtains. By the way, this fabric is just a terrible synthetic, and when I ironed it smelt terrible. You know, I don’t know about you but I just assumed that I can whip out a costume in a few hours because I can sew women’s clothes. It was disappointing to realize it was not the case, and sewing a costume is a totally different story. My costume kind of turned out to be the same as the rest of my dresses, and lacked drama. It reminded me of one season of the Project Runway…I forgot his name, but he was a costume designer before he was on Project Runway, and although he might have been a great costume designer, he wasn’t a good woman’s clothes designer at all because everything he made was just so dramatic.

So I was irritated that this did not turn out like I imagined, and on top of it Andy gave me his honest opinion as always and reminded me that it looks like “just one of your dresses”.

Well, I shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear his comment because I did use one of my dress patterns (same as this). I added the “leaves” to skirt part, and inserted a wire so that it creates some movement. The fairy wings were made based on this tutorial, using two wire clothes hangers, pantie hose, and spray paint.

As opposed to my costume, Kiko’s costume turned out well! Because I used a costume pattern! I’ll post about it soon. Did you dress up for Halloween? Do you feel as silly as me for dressing up as an adult?

DIY Paper Origami Crane Mobile

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Today I wanted to show you a craft project I finished recently. When Kiko and I went to a mall the other day, they were giving out these paper origami cranes. They gave us three pretty cranes in pink and red; it was too cute to throw them out. I decided to enjoy them a bit longer by making them into a mobile for Kiko’s nursery. Although I did not make these cranes, it is easy to find many different origami tutorials online (Youtube is great for that), and you can follow this instruction for cranes. There is a custom to bring a mobile made out of 1000 paper cranes for someone who is sick or is hospitalized, to wish them to be well and for a long life. The crane is good luck here in Japan.

 What you need:
– Thread
– Wire
– Pliers
– Origami cranes
First I made cut a wire of about 50cm, made three little circles by bending the wire. The circles are to be used as hooks to hang the cranes. Then I made the wire piece into a big circle as a base to hang all the cranes. It helps to have some kind of circle object as a guide to make this big circle. I used Andy’s weight.
After that, I simply hung the cranes with a thread, and added another thread in order to hang the mobile from the ceiling.

DIY: Black Tank Maxi Before & After

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I bought this black tank maxi dress at a small shop in Aoyama, Tokyo for 599 yen ($6). I don’t remember the name of the shop, but it was on a back street near the Max Mara store. The shop has a variety of clothes, shoes, accessories and watches for all 999 yen, but when I went there they were having a sale and some of their stuff were 599 yen.

I usually try things on even if the clothes are super cheap, but this shop didn’t have a fitting room. So I went ahead and bought this dress … mistake! I put it on when I came home and the fit was horrendous. Look at the pictures above! There were multiple problems with this dress – I don’t know how one simple dress can have so many flaws. The armholes were too tight and uncomfortable; neckline cut super unflattering; and the whole dress made me look like I was five-months pregnant.

So I decided to dissect the dress and made it better:

First, I lowered the neckline. I wanted the neckline not too low that I’m showing my bra, but low enough so I have breathing room (I hate turtle necks!!) and still look flattering. I wore the dress in front of the mirror, marked where I wanted the new neckline to be with chalk. After that, using a  french curve, I drew a new neckline and cut.

The neckline and arm holes are finished with bias strips.  I didn’t have the same black jersey for new bias tapes, but I had a similar one with the black block pattern. So I made bias tapes with that.

Using this bias strip, I finished the neckline and arm holes. I had to widen the arm holes because they were too tight.

For the body, I marked new lines based on my bust, waist, and hip measurements so the dress fit to my body. I did not include seam allowances because I wanted the dress to have minus ease, considering the fabric has a lot of stretch.

Finally I added a thigh high slit on the left side.

Now I like this simple maxi dress so much better. I can see a lot of possibilities for different styling, using belt, scarves, accessories and jackets. It is also a great transition piece to have from Summer to Fall.