I made my niece Alice an apron for Xmas this year. Her initial reaction was captured below 😂

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I made it from the scraps I had remaining from an apron I made her mom, my amazing sister in law a few years ago. Seen below on the left. I posted about the similar one I made my mom (seen below on the right) here. 

Of course after warming up to it, she now loves it. My brother sent me the adorable photos below. 

I look forward to many baking adventures with this little spitfire!

Though there often doesn’t seem to be much to be thankful for these days, today I choose to be thankful for my family and friends, my cats and good food and the privileges my life affords me. 

I wish you all love, happiness and acceptance, today and every day ❤️

Just a quick photo of me in the backyard before I head off to make the rest of Thanksgiving dinner with my ‘little brother’. Before I changed back into sweatpants obviously 😉 

I love that Stone Mountain and daughters half price cotton section has Batiks. This was another amazing find there. 

Sorry for the terrible lighting on my white top, I don’t have time today to fix it!

I have no idea where the inspiration came from anymore, but I got a very clear image in my head of what I wanted my niece to wear for Halloween this year a little while back and just got it finished. It’s all made of fleece to keep her cozy and warm. The openings all have elastic so it just slips on and all the little details were hand sewn. I had a LOT of fun making this!

I’ll post more photos of her actually in it after Halloween!

Hope you like it my love! 

I’m a full time nanny and I love making these little hats for my little people. I just started with a new family, so of course had to make my new charge a hat of his own. He has a doggie sister so I made him a dog hat to match her. 

I have also been meaning to make myself a hat for ages and finally got around to doing it. I had meant to put a big monarch butterfly patch on it, but it just wasn’t looking right. Thankfully I have a bunch of other appliqués and found this great one. 

Let me know if you’d like a hat of your own, or one for a little person, and I’d be glad to make you one!

Enjoy

My new hat:

Today, in the northern hemisphere of the world is the Autumnal Equinox! We are starting to feel some signs of fall, but it’s also still very much summer here in California. 

I made the skirt a little while ago, but couldn’t figure out how to add the little bit of me I felt it needed until yesterday. I was digging through my iron on appliqué stash and found these Autumn leaves I had completely forgotten and about. Then I noticed with the date was and realized it was perfect. 

It is still a simple dark blue skirt with pockets, but now it’s got this really beautiful added detail of Autumn leaves cascading down skirt. The detail was actually two sets of please put together. I still have a third set of believes that I will do something else with. 

Crystal Embellished Headbands:

I made one of these years ago from my friend Suzanne to wear during her wedding reception. I didn’t really know what I was doing back then and the glue I used wasn’t strong enough and the Crystals eventually started falling off. I am not one for sparkles or headbands (my head is a very weird shape and they just fall right off. I had to pin these to my head to take the photos!) but they were fun to make so I kept at it and came up with these two. Each one takes quite a while to make and eventually I abandoned the projects. 

Well, I have been cleaning out my sewing room and found them and turns out the glue or use this time works super well since these are about six years old and all the crystals are still attached!

They are both for sale on Etsy here, and I have supplies to make many more if you’re interested in a different design. I left the ribbon extremely long on both so you have a lot to work with. 

Design 1

Design 2

 

Framed Artwork:

In cleaning out my sewing studio I also finally got around to framing my favorite drawings from FIDM! The first four were from my final collection design, inspired by modular origami. The other four were from my final drawing project in which we were asked to find a culture that still had a traditional form of dress and be inspired by it. I chose Indonesia, specifically Balinese dance costumes.

 

A New Toy:

I finally got myself a new toy that he’s going to make taking photos of myself so much easier! This tripod is super bendable so I can attach it to anything and it even has a remote control shutter. Plus now I can take the photos with my phone instead of my old camera and I can see myself while I’m taking shots! Looking forward to my next solo photo shoot. 

I am lucky enough to be Auntie Katy to this amazing little person. Alice is my twin brothers daughter and she just turned two. She is the goofiest and most adorable person I’ve ever met and I love that I’m related to her!

For Christmas I made her this little “Sugar Plum” dress and meant to add the bloomers a few weeks later, but life happened and I didn’t get them done till now. They’re super big, so she’ll be able to wear them for a while. 

I ended up using a pattern for these as I’m not familiar with making kids clothes and tweaked it a bit of course. I had hoped to find a peach fabric, but found this really nice purple plum instead and was quite happy. 

This was a super easy project and I may just have to make her another one!

I love clothing swaps and a few years ago found the most amazing pair of traditional wrap pants from Indonesia/China/Thailand (getting different info from different sources!) and have been obsessed with them ever since. I’ve been wanting to make my own pair for a while with a few tweaks to the traditional design and this week was the week to do it!

These are the original inspiration. They are my best clothing swap find ever.

They do amazing things when you walk and are incredibly comfortable, but they are very long and really need to be worn with heels.

 

The traditional design uses big ties for both the front and the back and end up being very bulky under a top. Part of my redesign was to add a real waist band and have snap closures instead of ties so that a top did not have to be worn tucked in. I of course forgot to take photos of that part. Sorry!

Here is my version.

The fabric may look a little familiar, I’ve used different shades of it twice before, here and here. Apparently I’m obsessed with it and thrilled I keep finding it in so many different shades and combinations. This was from the 50% off section.

They are so comfortable. I love that you get the feeling of a skirt, but the practicality of pants. Unfortunately the design is not conducive to pockets, but I’ll work on that.

 

Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley is my favorite fabric store and they have a really great 50% off cotton section in the back that usually has a batik a just can’t pass up. This fabric is just such a find.

I only bought 2 yards of it, so decided to make myself a simple flared skirt with a wide and high waist band. This was one of the project I was working on before my friends show, but I realized none of the shoes I could pair with it were appropriate for the venue. Girl problems!

I’d also just like to take a moment to explain that all the photos in the last year were taken by me. I set up my tiny little Canon PowerShot on a tripod in my backyard and do my best to find the right light and poses. That’s why they sometimes end up in a bit blurry. I’m looking into a new system but just wanted to explain how I’ve been doing it so far. Each post on here takes me a lot of time to put together as I not only design and sew each garment, I’m the photographer, edititor and writer. Every single thing you see here is done by me, so there may be a week or two where I don’t have time to get something done, but I am going to try to keep posting weekly!

Enjoy!