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!

I had bangs years ago and as I was growing them out, I apparently invented a new braid?

Anyway, this has become my favorite way to wear my hair (when I have the time to do it) and I often get compliments and questions on how I did it.

So here’s how! (apologies for the number of photos, it is super hard to get a photo that shows the whole braid, especially by myself!!)

It’s just a basic french braid that you make in a spiral around your head. It takes a while to figure out how to make the spiral, but once you’ve got it, its pretty easy.

Will try to make an actual video of the process someday….

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And the process:

You may have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. There’s a simple reason. I ran out of things to post about and I have been going through a period of depression. My depression is triggered by my anxiety and I tend to loose my creative drive during these periods of my life. These are lifelong conditions I have been dealing with since I was a child and a teen. They will never go away and I have and will continue to work hard to manage them. This does mean that there are times when I can’t get out of bed, and sewing or creating anything is simply beyond me. The last 5 months have been like that, but I’m happy to say that I’m coming out the other side and have gotten the creative juices rolling again.

The boyfriend of a good friend of mine played a show in Oakland last Friday followed by another group of friends closing out the show. I wanted to make something new to wear, but was having a really hard time choosing exactly what to make, and in classic Katy fashion, ran out of time.

Instead of finishing one of the four new projects I’m in the middle of, I chose to alter an old skirt to fit me now. This is something I had been meaning to do for months, but it took an actual social even to get me up and working again. This is a skirt I’ve posted about before here, but had never actually worn in real life.

I chose to leave the skirt as it was, but removed the waist band, re-sized it to fit me now and then gathered the skit to fit the new waistband. This way there was a little extra fullness at the waist, and I didn’t have to mess with getting the stripes to match up again.

It turned out that the hem was super uneven, so I did my best to straighten it out, and though there is still a slight dip in the back, it’s not enough for me to care!

The white tank is from H&M and yes, I am intentionally wearing it backwards. I have them in every color imaginable and have started to like wearing them like this. This way my boobs don’t fall out, and a tiny bit of my back tattoo shows 🙂

Up next, a quick tutorial on the Katy braid I’m wearing in the photos 😉

This is a skirt I made years ago and had photographed, but never posted about and have never actually worn. I don’t remember why I made it, or even when, but I found it cleaning out my sewing studio and realized that I had taken in a the waist at some point so figured I would take some new photos to show here.

Here it is now. Sadly no pockets, and it’s linen so its going to wrinkle like crazy, but its a fun skirt. It has what is called a paper-bag waist (so it’s meant to be worn tucked in) and double inverted box pleats for fullness. I top stitched everything to add some detail and to get it to all lay flat. I found the flower applique online, it’s basically just a really big iron on patch!

 

And here is what it used to look like. Boy do I miss having Drew around to take photos! Using a tripod just isn’t the same.

 

p.s. If you would like to see more awesome things from Drew Beck, please check out his page!