Yuki Clothing

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Author Archives: Nicole Nordström


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Jacket to wear over the wedding dress

What does one do when the weather forecast says 15 degrees and rain on the day of the wedding and one simply forgot to buy a jacket? Naturally one makes a jacket. At least that’s what I thought this weekend. Now I’m not so sure any more. To make things easy, I decided to grab the Cordova pattern that I got for free earlier this summer and just make some minor alterations. The mock-up I did in a hurry on Saturday looked pretty decent. However, the actual jacket did not.

Muslin to the left and silk to the right

Muslin to the left and silk to the right

Puffy sleeves aren’t normally my cup of tea but I remember thinking that it could ‘kind of work’. That was in muslin… In silk it just looks ridiculous. I can’t wear this! That thing just reminds me of Nadine from Twin Peaks and the woman was bat-shit crazy. If I can’t fix this power puff madness asap, I need to rent something because this is simply not wearable.

Nadine


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Wedding Dress – Hemming silk and chiffon..

wedding_dress_hem

I’d be lying big time if I said that hemming is fun. To me it’s more like a necessary evil. About half way through, I was contemplating attacking the hem with a stapler. Even though it would’ve worked, I’m glad I sticked to the good ol’ hand-sewing. But now, 9m of hem later, the dress is finally completely finished! Now all I need to worry about is saying ‘yes’ at the right moment :)

Oh, and I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learnt about hemming silk and silk chiffon. The silk was pretty easy to work with and I was able to make a seam that’s as good as invisible on both sides. The chiffon however, is a different story. The fabric slides around like crazy and it’s extremely hard to sew a ~2mm hem using the first method. The approached I used was to first press a crease ~2-3mm below the skirt’s length. Then cut off any excess fabric but leave a ~2mm seam allowance below the crease. Using your fingers and the needle, fold the crease upwards and you’ll get a 2mm hem. When sewing, first let the needles slide through the ‘front fabric’ and continue downwards through the hem. The thread will then force the hem in place by wrapping around it. See pictures below for a more visual explanation :)

Using this type of stitch, the seam is invisible from both sides.

Using this type of stitch, the seam is invisible from both sides.

This type of stitch works well with chiffon since it keeps the fabric in place better than the first one. On the downside, it's not invisible on both sides.

This type of stitch works well with chiffon since it keeps the fabric in place better than the first one. On the downside, it’s not invisible on both sides.

 

This is how both types of hem look like on the face side.

This is how both types of hem look like from the face side.


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Yukiclothing.com is finally up and running (again)

After much fiddling around with different settings the last couple of days, yukiclothing.com is finally up and running again! And this time it is set to be my primary domain which means you will be directed here if you visit my wordpress site. Hopefully these changes will have a positive effect on how Google index the blog :)

It recently came to my attention that readers who aren’t logged in to wordpress are shown some random ads here and there. I’ve taken care of that issue as well so please enjoy YukiClothing – now free of ads!


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Wedding Dress – Almost Finished!

Almost finished!

Almost finished!

Again, quite a lot has happened since my last wedding dress update. Researching and buying my new sewing machine took a considerable amount of time but I’ve still managed to do quite a bit of work on the dress.

  • Hand sewed the rest of the neckline
  • Fixed some seams in the draping in the front that I wasn’t satisfied with
  • Attaching the last two layers of the skirt
  • Hand sewed the two upper skirt layers to the zipper
  • Closed each skirt with a french seam below the zipper
  • Made the waistband and attached it to the dress with a few stitches here and there.
  • Cut off some excess fabric at the bottom
Detailed view of the inside of the neckline. Notice the two seams needed to keep it in check.

Detailed view of the inside of the neckline. Notice the two seams needed to keep it in check.

To finish the neckline, I basically had to hand sew it twice. The first seam was needed to force the silk chiffon to simply stay in place. Since I wanted the “zig-zag” pattern to be prominent, I had to stretch the fabric around the edge before securing it. The tension then caused the neckline to tilt out from the body. The tilting was fixed by stretching the fabric even further and then securing it with the second seam.

Attaching the last to layers and sewing them to the zipper wasn’t very hard, only time-consuming :) One interesting detail worth mentioning was the french seam below the zipper. It was a bit tricky and required a bit of hand sewing closest to the zipper but the result was pretty nice. Think I’m gonna post a guide on that when I can prepare some clear how-to pictures.

Now all that’s left to do is hand sewing the bottom hem. Just 9m to go, then it’s completely finished :D

Last but not least, the back of the dress!

Last but not least, the back of the dress!


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Hen night

Last weekend, my friends dressed me up and dragged me out for an amazing hen night :) For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s a picture of me as a… ninja princess!

I was given a quest worthy of a real hero! The local park was infested with evil balloons that threatened the peaceful life of the citizens.  Equipped with my epic wooden sword of righteousness, I was to head out and take out the evildoers. It was a tough quest but in the end I stood victorious and the city lived to see another morning.

Damn I’m so inconspicuous with my tiara :D