After watching Julie & Julia for the nth time, I remember the bottle of red wine given to me by my kind boss that had been sitting in my apartment since new year. I don’t drink but it doesnt mean I can’t indulge myself with its goodness.
So I decided to make Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon for easter.
And we concluded our easter feast with easter-dolled up Chocolate Almond Cake:
Hope youall had a nice easter.
I’ve been craving lately.
I haven’t had this pie for more than a decade. The last time I had this was during an out of town educational trip when I was in high school. So it is literally, more than a decade.
So finally last weekend, I did something drastic: stopped by to my nearest coffee shop (street restaurant) to get the main ingredient – fresh young coconuts. I came home to prepare the pastry, but before proceeding further I indulged myself with coconut juice, then let my brother stepped in to split the coconut to get its meat. Made the coconut filling; then assembled and baked the pie in the afternoon. My pie looked more rustic than store-bought, but thats love.
And by the following morning I am all satisfied. Nothing compares to the salty crust with sweet coconut filling shared with the people I love the most.
I attended a wedding recently and of course I wore a dress that I made. I only have roughly two-weeks to make this dress with 2-3 hours a night to sew. It wasn’t enough – I even ended up using my lunch break to sew in the beaded trim on the bodice! This is very challenging for me to make - specially that I have limited space to cut a 40″ length full circular skirt and made ruche details on the bodice without a mannequin.
I know the picture doesn’t do any justice with the hardwork I made. But since I’ve skipped a couple of “couture touches” with this dress, I have to redo this dress. And when I do, of course there’ll be tons of pictures for you to see.
I am particularly grateful to Mr. Kumar, the salesman from my favorite fabric store, who insisted that I have to buy this lovely georgette ombre fabric. He said “i have to make a gown for a change” – I wonder how he saw this coming.
This is George – one of my not-so-helpful sewing assistant. He’s been part of my family for almost a year now. Sometime last week, for the first time, I heard him sneeze which I found cute and laughable. But I stopped laughing at it and started to get worried when he sneezes often for 3 consecutive days. So I did what I have to do – printed a pattern and rushed to Daiso store to get couple of fleece blanket.
Though the pattern said its a “dog coat” it suit him pretty well. And since the edges of the coat is not sewn, I told George that he has to take his coat off for a while to let me sew it; he kicked my hand. Obviously, he liked it so much that he doesn’t want to take it off! 
Hope this will keep him warm for the rest of Muscat’s cold season.
I have not touch my sewing machine in the past weeks, as I was busy making something else in other part of our house. Here are the few snapshots of what I’ve made:
Yup, I also love to cook. The past few weeks, my family and I have celebrated Christmas, New Year, 3 birthdays and 3 anniversaries. And in the next few weeks, we still have to celebrate 2 more anniversaries and 2 more birthdays.
Hmm, maybe I should start blogging about it too?
I may have been sewing for some years now, yet I still signed up for the online course as there are still alot of techniques that I haven’t learn to do. Like I did boning once before, but this course has showed my much more techniques for boning.
The are, of course, a couple of challenges I faced as a make the dress: first the pattern is too big for me. So I took Novita’s advise of printing the pattern to 96% and cut the size 36. I made the muslin and it’s a perfect fit! And second, there are sewing notions that are not available in this part of the world hence, I replaced: needle punch/cotton batting with felt, spiral steel boning with rigilene boning, casing with bias tape and grossgrain ribbon with nylon taffeta ribbon.
After seeing this article, I’ve sewn ribbons at the back bodice and threadbars (front and back) so my bombshell dress would hang perfectly.
The result: a Perfect Fit Bombshell Dress!
I have to admit: I became lazy in drafting my own patterns. Too lazy to do maths and/or dig into reference books/magazines; instead I go online and buy pdf patterns!
I used the easy short sleeve kimono dress pattern from Pattern Runway with a fabric taken my sister’s inventory. (My sister doesn’t sew, but she often buy fabrics anticipating that I would make something for her.) I lengthened the skirt a bit as I would never wear any skirt/dress above my knees. The button has its own story to tell: I saved this button some years ago, when mom decided to repurpose her old blouse into a dust cloth. I thought its too cute and unique to be thrown away hence I kept it even though back then I didn’t have a clear plan on how to reuse it. Now, it has a new life!
Happy sewing!
While on my short sewing hiatus, I’ve seen alot of blouses/dresses with peter pan collar so I thought why not incorporate that into my wardrobe. So I did:
Worn here with a dark blue version of my very modest pencil skirt
Peter pan collars, by the way, are also seen in Louis Vuitton RTW Fall 2011 collection. I didn’t try to copy the dark or black dresses with white collars as I was afraid as I may not do the dress well and may end up looking like a french maid. That’s why I chose a floral print cotton material and I added some pin tucks to make it look a little less boring (hope you could see that on the first photo).
See you in my next project!
I have one finished project which i will be posting soon, at the meatime, i am happily pinning 
I pin almost anything – inspirations for sewing projects, organizing sewing space/pantry/kitchen, home decor and even wedding. I also signed up Gertie‘s Perfect Bombshell Dress Course .
The course, cost USD 59.00 but I got it at USD 29.99, includes a Burdastyle pattern. I have seen 4 of 15 videos, so far I could say that it is highly informative. I still have 3 more project to finish plus a request from my mom, hence I could only do the bombshell dress later on.
It’s hard to sew when your thougths are well preoccupied with something else. That’s exactly what happened to me in the recent weeks. There was a presistent symptom and I sought medical attention. Though the first test came negative, my physician and I discussed and agreed to go for further test which again came back normal. So what was wrong? Well, it turned out to be a vitamin deficiency due to poor diet….
My physician particularly blames my excess consumption of artificial sugar which, she said, makes my body difficult to absord vitamins. For the past 15 years, I dont eat anything too sweet, too oily and too salty but, I must confess “foods” loaded with artificial sugars are highly addictive. So yes, I have fallen off the wagon on the sweet part of my food regimen.
And here I am, making a transition of going back to my old eating habits.
(Disclaimer: I am not advocating the “no too sweet, too oily and too salty diet” – - its a decision I took which is entirely personal)
