Transform: Summer dress–> Apron

Do you have any particular shop you like to shop at?
I have a bunch. And ANTHROPOLOGIE is one of my favorites.
Their designs are so unique and pretty. Every time I go into their shop, I easily spend an hour or two to check all of their merchandise.
Of course I love their clothes, but I also adore their aprons.
You can see their great designs of their aprons if you click here –> http://www.anthropologie.com/anthro/catalog/category.jsp?popId=&navAction=push&isSortBy=true&navCount=264&pushId=&id=HOME-KITCHEN-APRONS
It is very inspiring and would be fun to cook, wearing it.

Today I was cleaning the clutter out of my closet, and found a summer dress which has several holes. I guess I washed it in the washing machine many times, and it got holes.
That gave me an idea: “Why don’t I transform this dress into an apron?”
And here’s how it looks.

The bottom part was a summer dress originally.
I added the top on it with some vintage lace.

I wish I could have better matching fabric for the bottom… but this bird printed fabric was all I had that was close to the color of the bottom.

Tonight I started to cook, wearing this, and somehow it made me more motivated for cooking. Maybe my husband will be happier than I, because of this apron

Transform: T-shirts

Last week, I purchased something I've wanted for quite a long time.
That is a MANNEQUIN!!!!
Well, actually I wanted a dress form to do some sewing, but I found a second-hand mannequin of my size, so I thought, "Why not?"
To celebrate it, I transformed a T-shirt as follows:

BEFORE

AFTER

You may remember this T-shirt from “Tutorial: stencil on T-shirts”(http://hirokohandmade.blogspot.com/2011/05/tutorial-stencil-on-t-shirts.html),originally it was a plain, pale pink T-shirt.
I stenciled some birds with white paint on it about 2 weeks ago.

And today I cut out around the neck wider and attached a motif of a feather. Cutting wider around the neck is not easy to do on the table. Definitely having my mannequin helped me cut it out evenly, nice and round.

Now it’s my turn to wear it!

What do you think? Does it look good on me!?

Make over: Cardigan

Not only making something new from the scratch is the beauty of crafting.
Making over the old stuff of yours and refresh it is also beautiful! That helps saving our environment, too!
Today I would like to introduce one of my make over project.
Originally this cardigan was plain just regular pink V neck cardigan.

It was comfortable one to wear, but unfortunately I got a small hole…

Throwing away my favorite cardigan because of this tiny hole was something wrong to me and I couldn’t do it.
So I put vintage lace on top of it to cover a hole.

Some close shot of what I added.

This make over save my cardigan, save earth and save my money to buy new one!
Killing 3 birds by one stone!!!!

Season for boots

Summer is over.
In some how, I could survive my crazy summer schedule! Hooley!
I need to wake up 6:30 am and start my work from 8:30 am, Mon-Sat in 8 weeks of July and August.
Before I started, I thought there is no way I could survive this work schedule since I've never woke up before 8 am.
But as a result, I made it!
No being late or absent. Perfect attendance!

Now fall is coming around the corner.
That means good season for boots is coming.
In Japan, we can find so called "Boots Keeper".
Like this, http://www.koncent.jp/?pid=10705017
Those are for keeping boots standing and eliminate odor.

I was looking for those kind of product here in U.S. but I couldn't find similar one.
Maybe they are called in different name, that's why I couldn't find...
And bunch of news papers are used for the substitute for that.
However, taking out and putting back those newspapers into the boots are troublesome for me each time.

So I come up with the idea that I should make my version of "Boots Keeper".
Here is my version of it.

To keep the boots stand, a plastic bottle is in the cover which is made of vintage fablic and ribbon.
To eliminate odor, charcoal is inside of the plastic bottle.

A different size of plastic bottle is used for each pair of boots to fit it's width and hight.
I color coordinate ribbons to remind me of the size of it.

How neat!

Good-bye to newspapers!