TKD Inspired Leather Fashion Black Belt

Here is a little known fact about me: I am a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. You'd never know it to look at me, and don't ask me to do any of my forms because I promptly forgot ALL of them the second I passed my test in 2009. If you were to see the video of my test, you would notice that the forms were ALREADY being forgotten mid-test. . .Oh well, I still passed! If you don't believe me see the picture below:

If that doesn't convince you, may I direct your attention to my Dan Certificate:

I also have a plastic card that I am supposed to carry on my person, but as I stopped after the first Dan (level), I'm pretty sure I'm not that much of a threat as to have to procure a card at the scene of a crime.

All right, so. . .obviously my life as a ninja was not going to pan out. However, I really like Eastern influence on Western fashion, and I thought I would make a leather version of a Black Belt to wear with dresses to give a little Asian flair.

Remember those black pants that I used to make my husband's belt? Well, I used them by cutting them into long 1.5" strips. I had to sew all the strips together to a length of about 75" and then fold it over longways so the belt would be double sided. 

Then I stitched in 5 long rows to mimic the look of a TKD belt.

Here are some pictures of Asian influenced fashion from my fashion magazines. There was a picture in Cosmo that had an actual leather belt exactly like the one I made (and where I got the actual idea), but I threw the magazine away before taking a picture of it. That's how much I hate Cosmo.

Okay, so this is what the belt looks like:

You can see it gives a little edge to a pink ruffly dress.

The End!

Prada Inspired: Black Silk and Cream Striped Puffed Wrist Sleeve Blouse

So sometimes when your husband insists on piddling in the yard doing yardwork all Saturday and you've done all your housework, you decide to piddle in the sewing room.

A few nights ago, I watched the Prada Fall/Winter 2013-14 fashion show and was inspired by these sleeves:

Here they are in fur:

Also (and I'm ashamed of this one). but I love these sleeves on this coat of the character "Joyce" on the t.v. show Siberia.

Also, I'd been seeing all these black bodice and light colored puffy sleeved shirts in the New York fashion week show. Of course I can't find any pictures of them now, but most of them would have the bodice in black leather with lighter colored silk sleeves.

My aunt-in-law gave me this polyester silk material and told me she always thought it would make a nice blouse. (I didn't want to make a whole blouse in it because I thought that might look dated, so I updated mine):

I didn't want to make a bodice in leather because I would never wear it because it would need too much maintenance. I did have some silky black shiny polyester, though, so that's what I used. I also wanted to play with a squarish assymetric front/back hem and a bow at the neck. I'm really excited, because this shirt looks exactly how I imagined it!

(The slit in the neck line is also Prada-inspired.)

I'm really proud of how it hangs. It's not feed-sacky, but not clingy either.

I pinned the sleeve back here so you could see the hem better. Also, this is what the front looks like if you just tie the tie once.

I like it tied in a little bow best:

Now some close ups:

The End!