Velvet Ribbon

Hi there, I'm back from our summer holiday in Bangkok and we had a great time. I hope your summer holiday was enjoyable. As usual, I made new dresses for the holiday but will show you the dresses later. For now, I will show you a batik shirt I made for my husband. The shirt was his birthday present and I was glad he loved it. He got the batik from my mom last year, a typical Indonesian batik with a combination of black and brown. For the pattern, I used Ottobre Design Four Fellows shirt, size 54. I made this pattern before in a short sleeve and this time I made the hemline straight. After I cut all the pieces and fused the interfacing on the collar pieces, I started working on the shirt according to the usual manner. It was an enjoyable process, especially since cotton fabric was easy to work with. The only tricky one was sewing the collar and attaching it to the neckline. I did a lot of pinning and basting to get a neat result. I uploaded a video of the making of this shirt and al...

Hello, I'm enjoying slow sewing lately and happy that I managed to finish my latest batik dress after weeks working on it. This dress is my entry to  #magamsewalong  "Multicultural May" challenge in Instagram and I chose batik that is a typical fabric from my home country Indonesia. Luckily that I don't need to fly to Indonesia to buy this fabric, I found it locally from a friend that supplies batik. I was searching a lot for inspiration in Pinterest and found a very cute yellow polka dots blouse from J.Crew to copy the yoke and sleeves ruffles. And then, I adjusted to the dress that I want to make.  My plan and inspiration posted here  if you are interested to take a look. My pattern was self-drafted, I followed the instruction from the book "Basic Pattern Making" by Lucia Mors de Castro and I posted the first dress  here . Based on my concept, I modified the basic dress pattern by making the v-neckline, stand collar, moved th...

Hello, I finished the dress for my April stash "make a garment a month" . The fabric is one of my oldest stash and it is a very special batik from my country produced by Batik Keris, I am not sure which type, I bought it just because of the print :) After so much thinking of the right pattern, I decided to use BurdaStyle pattern from 08/2014 #106A  size 36. The dress is sleeveless, seamed in between a natural and drop waist for structure and hip pockets, just perfect for hot summer weather. Actually, the pattern suggest to use scuba knit or high tech fabric but I went with cotton. And as I used cotton, I added 2 cm in the both sides until the waist and 3 cm in both sides of the hips. And then I drew new facings for front and back. I also added the dress length 3 cm - just right in my knee with 2.5 cm hem allowance and 1.5 seam allowance in all edges. The sewing process was enjoyable, I decided to hand-sewn the armhole facing to get prettier look - in my m...

Hi everyone... I mentioned in my facebook post  that I will be making four garments for June Magam with theme " Stashbuster" and here is my first garment, I was planning to make the dress with a hole at neckline and pleated hem but the hole didn't turn out well. So I have to cover the hole with a bib and sew eight buttons for accessory. I will explain more about the unsuccessful hole in the below post. Materials: I bought this batik in Kuta - Bali almost two years ago. The fabric already cut in a big rectangle with 1.8 yards long finished with rolled hemmed in both sides. I think the fabric is ready for beach cover or even tablecloth :) The reason why I bought it because the length is enough to make a simple dress and the print is so beautiful. I especially love both end of the fabrics, Beside the fabric, I also need invisible zipper, fusible tape, 9 small buttons, elastic for button loop, fusible interfacing, 1/2'' self-made bias tape from same f...

Hello... I made a new dress! This is my fourth version of BurdaStyle Vintage Modern Jamie Shift dress. I didn't make a change in the pattern but instead of using facing for the finishing neckline, I used bias tape piping. I also added back darts and sewn two little pleats in the front at the waistline. Those pleats were included because the dress was a little bit loose. I don't want to reduce and sew the dress in both sides again, so I pleated it and problem solved :) Here I am, wearing my new dress last Friday for MMMay'15 day 29 - with theme : My Town. The picture was taken in the old part of Taipa. Pattern: BurdaStyle Vintage Modern Jamie Shift Dress size 34. I made adjustments on the neckline and shoulder. Also added the dress length. You can see my muslin and pattern adjustments here Materials: I bought 3.5 yards of batik fabric in Bangkok last year and I still have a leftover that is enough to make another dress/ blouse Invisible zipper 1/2"...