Baking Soda

I'm blonde today! But I'll only be blonde for this post, because this gorgeous canary yellow is NOT going to be the final product of hair dying. It may look good on some people (in rare instances), but for me, canary yellow is not the way to go. I had enough of experimenting with bad yellow hair when I was 15. No, you'll all see the final product of this home bleaching and dying tomorrow ;) Today though, I'm wearing an incredible vintage dress that I got in Tokyo (the label is "Baking Soda" - it's just too cute!), and an amazing new 60s style leather bag c/o oasap.com! Wearing: Dress - "Baking Soda" - Vintage store in Tokyo Bag - OASAP Necklace/Pocketwatch - wholesale-dress Belt - Vintage Tights - wholesale-dress Shoes - wholesale-dress Hat - markets in Osaka Have an amazing day all! Annika xxx

"Sew" crazy! (So I made another dress)

  Well, I love my sewing machine. I sure do. I'm so loving being able to make my own clothes, AND so I made another dress. And I thought I'd share it with you all, again. I actually managed to make it fit properly this time! To make it, I half used a pattern (a vintage 1960s dress pattern for the top) and half used my own pattern (for the pleated skirt), then joined them both up, and used buttons on the back. Check it out!

 

I'm pretty happy with it. I'm just soooo excited now because there are SO many possibilities, so many dresses to be made, now that I know that I can successfully make one! I'm thinking crazy detailed giraffe or safari print fabric in a 50s style dress, open back with bows and a scalloped peter pan collar..... I can make anything I want! I think I'm going to become the crazy dress lady. I will! And I sure am excited about it! 

Wearing:

Dress - handmade

Bag - wholesale-dress.net

Necklace/pocketwatch - wholesale-dress.net

Belt - vintage

Socks - tutuanna

Shoes - yesstyle.com

New philosophy - you can NEVER have too many dresses. Especially not if you're making them yourself. *Hooray for continuing justification of my endless obsession with clothes!*

I love you all! Have a super day!

Annika xxx

I ♥ Polkadots - DIY heart cutout shift dress

 

 

Good morning/evening/night/what ever time it is in whatever part of the world you are in!

Please enjoy my heart-cutout dress tutorial down below! And if you think it's pretty okay, then you can hype me on lookbook, too!

This is how you can make your own cutout heart dress.

Love,

Annika xxx

Vest to Dress DIY

I am realising that this blog is slowly but surely morphing from a fashion blog to a DIY sewing blog. I don't think I mind at all. And I can do both at once! Here's a real quick picture of the dress I made this morning from a vest (it was way too big, or I wouldn't have chopped it up) that I got $1 from Lifeline the other day, and the cream/white fabric was from there too, I got about 2 metres for $2! Pretty good!

hmm.. I really need to iron it too...

Wearing:

Dress - Handmade, materials from Lifeline

Shoes - Yesstyle.com

Bag - Wholesale-dress.net

Stockings - Wholesale-dress.net

Belt - vintage

Have a lovely day everybody!

Annika xxxx

Grandma's Style

GUESS WHAT.

Something completely incredible happened the other day.

I went over to my Grandma's for dinner, and showed her the dress I made. We were talking about how I should buy some vintage patterns to use, when she went "Oh! I think I might have some old patterns somewhere. Let me just go look."

And then.... and then....!!

She pulled out THESE!!!

About 40 or so AMAZING VINTAGE PATTERNS, some dating all the way back to 1950!!!!!!!!! Far flippin' out. I was so so happy, and hugged my lovely Granny about a million times.

AND THEN! EVEN MORE THEN!

I was still getting over the shock of being the new owner of these amazingly incredible vintage patterns, when my Grandma suddenly remembered about all these old buttons and vintage cotton that she owned as well.

LOOK AT THEM! Aren't these buttons amazing?? How cute are the little elephant ones? And the thread is so nice, and pure cotton too (which my Grandma thinks you can't buy anymore!)

And she gave them all to me! I am one very, very lucky girl.

I'm off to make another dress now with this super sweet kitschy bright orange dog-print fabric, which I also got from Spotlight, but I'm going to use one of those old dress patterns this time. Wish me luck!

Annika xxx

DIY Vintage Style Dress (& free pleated skirt pattern!)

I blogged about my new handmade dress very briefly the other day, and didn't really get to finish that thought because, well, I'd spent my whole day making a dress and forgot to do anything else important, and then suddenly was very busy and had to do ALL these things. So anyway, here's a proper blog post about my new dress (WHICH I MADE MYSELF, YAAAY!)

 Triangle keyhole cut out on the back... which was necessary because I couldn't get the dress on otherwise due to tightness around the top part. I think I shall cover it up with a big bow though ;)

Wearing:

Dress - handmade, fabric from Spotlight, vintage mustard thread.

Belt - Vintage

Green Blazer - Vintage

Shoes - Yesstyle.com

Tights - Forever 21

Bag - Wholesale-dress

Floral Headband - Handmade, given to me as a gift

Owl necklace- Wholesale-dress

This is how I made it.

The original plan was just to make a skirt, so I started off with this:

 The two big parts are identical in size, and will make the front and back of the skirt. The smaller piece is for the waistband.

I then hemmed the bottom of each big piece of fabric an inch (on the 33in side).

Then I added pleats. I didn't take a picture of this step with this skirt, but I did with ANOTHER skirt I made (so that is why the fabric in these pictures has suddenly morphed). You make pleats like this:

fold fabric together and pin

 sew along the pleat

 remove pins and repeat along the whole length of fabric

I then sewed the skirt together on both ends (along the 18in end) the wrong way around, then turned it inside out.

For the waistband, I folded the fabric in half lengthways (the wrong way around), and sewed along the edge.

I then attached the waistband to the front of the skirt by pinning and then sewing the pieces together.

I had some leftover fabric then, so I decided to make a top part and if it worked out, to sew it to the skirt. I can't really tell you what I did here, because I just made it up as I went along, and forgot to take pictures!! Also, it really didn't work out so well, because I forgot that I have breasts, and didn't leave any room for them. So the dress is very, very tight around the bust, and I wouldn't recommend using this pattern to anyone. But basically, for the top part I used a pattern something like this:

And sewed it together everywhere except the neck and armholes. I them hemmed the neck and armholes. Then I just kind of attached it to the waistband of the skirt, and hey ho, I had a dress!

And then I added a peter pan collar too :) The steps for this are too long for this blog post! But I will write a separate blog post JUST on how to make peter pan collars and attach them to dresses. In detail. I will! I promise. Watch this space.

Annika xxx