every day life

I bought fabric online this week, for the first time in my life. I know, I’ve been sewing and selling my clothes online for over 2 years now, but I had never purchased fabrics online before. I always went to fabric stores, touch the fabrics as much as I want before I decide to buy it. Fabric shopping is one of the most crucial parts of my creating process, since I come up with so many new ideas for new clothes while I’m staring and touching different fabrics at the shop.

This week, I finally decided to buy fabrics online, since I found a good online shop in Japan, where it offers free shipping for order above 3000 yen (30 dollars). I also felt a bit lazy to go all the way to Nippori fabric district this week, simply because it has been so cold here! It hasn’t snowed yet so I should not complain, but the air is icing cold. I truly miss Summer!

Here is what I bought online:

As a conclusion, I’m pretty satisfied with fabrics I received. The service was great, I received my order within two days, which I think is pretty good. Online fabric shopping will come really handy once the baby is born, when I will have less time to travel & carry around heavy fabrics in train.

One drawback to this experience was that I could not expect how much stretch the fabrics had. Some of my orders were jersey, but #4 pink jersey wasn’t really jersey. It has very minimal stretch, and I was a bit disappointed because I intended to use the fabric to make T-shirt type stuff.

Do you online shop fabrics much? Any tips or advice on how to get what you are really looking for without feeling the fabrics?

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a nice & relaxing Holiday time. My husband and I wend back to my parents’ house on New Year’s Eve and spent two nights there. I would say Japanese New Year Eve is more like Thanksgiving in the U.S. – lot of food and family time.

I came up with some New Year’s resolution for year 2011:

Image via weheartit

1. Bake more.
Since my husband and I moved into a place of our own in August last year, we have had more chance to have friends over. I rarely bake for two of ourselves (we both try to cut down on some sugar:p ), but I love baking for other people, and want to be better at it.

image via weheartit

2. Learn to surf.
I surfed for the first time in Bali last year, and I absolutely loved it. Now we moved closer to the beaches (30 min away, as opposed to 1.5 hour away before we moved), I can’t wait to start surfing once I give birth.

image via weheartit

3. Continue sewing, and don’t waste scraps.
Being a mom and wife, working full time and keeping up with my etsy shop could be a lot, but I would love to continue sewing and crafting. Last year I learned I do better when I’m busy than not busy, and giving myself a small project helps me stay focused. I have some projects that I would like to share here soon!
Also I decided to use scrap fabrics from clothes making more wisely – as you can see in these fabric coasters!

image via weheartit

4. Learn to use camera
I have a nice camera – Nikon DSLR, but I still haven’t figured out how I can use it well. So that’s one of my 2011 New Year resolutions!

What are your resolutions this year?

In year 2010, I made a lot of dresses.

I got obsessed with weird quicky prints like tiger print, bicycle print and crab print.
Also went crazy with back details, such as twisted back, cut out back and back V details.

Shot one lookbook with model Sue.

I started to crochet.

Had a chance to interview bows from BurdaStyle and had Sunni from the cupcake goddess for a guest post.

I participated Tokyo Made Market with Novita in January, and Yokohama craft fair with Novita and Kayo in July. Also participated in BurdaStyle book making as a contributor, and met lovely people at BurdaStyle in person in November when I visited NY.

I got to travel much this year: I had a chance to visit Thailand, Bali, and NY and Philly twice, in April and November.

I got pregnant and expecting in April 2011.

I’m excited to see what the year 2011 will bring! Thank you so much for reading my blog! xoxo
Happy New Year! 🙂