Say hello to my first ever quilting project!

When I watched Big Hero 6 over Thanksgiving in 2014, I fell in love. It was a movie about design and engineering and robots and siblings, and there was great representation for Asians in Gogo Tamago - what was there not to love? The movie so clearly (to me) referenced MIT and the Media Lab, and all the total nerds that worked and studied there were so reminiscent to all of my nerd friends, except obviously we don't have crazy professors.

Well, that's actually pretty debatable.

We don't have any murderous professors set out to destroy fraudulent corporate businessmen, at least.

Plus, all the feels. I sobbed in the theater so many times when I watched it, and I sobbed again the second time I watched it at home. All the sobbing. All the feelings about Tadashi and Baymax and Hiro and my heart still can't handle it.

I've been pretty set on making a Big Hero 6 inspired something for a while now, but I never got around to it. I had it all imagined in my head - a Baymax onesie that was huge and cozy and warm.

The Baymax onesie never happened, and I kind of forgot about the project as I got caught up in the craziness of MIT and stress and work and life... until I came across Angela Clayton's videos on Youtube.

She's amazing and I'm constantly astounded at what she's able to make. I love watching her videos and her explanations of her creations, and she's got a really nice and soothing voice which makes her videos great for unwinding. A few months ago she made a How to Train Your Dragon inspired pyjama set - an elaborate hoodie complete with the spikes and patterns of Toothless, and a pair of shorts to go with it. It was one of her simpler projects - no boning and corsetry involved - and when I watched her vlogs about it, I remembered how I wanted to make a Baymax inspired project a while ago.

So, using her videos and blog posts as a sort of guide for how the pattern pieces should look like and a hoodie that I long-term borrowed (read: stole) from a friend, I drafted up a quick pattern for the base of the hoodie. I used a pair of Forever 21 shorts to draft the pattern for the pyjama shorts, leaving ample space around the sides so the shorts could be loose instead of form fitting.

This is a quick sketch of what the pattern pieces looked like. The hoodie itself is a raglan sleeve, so when the body and sleeve pieces were attached and the side seams hadn't been sewn up yet, it looked like a big cross with a hole in it for the neck!

I cut the pattern pieces out of white fleece that I had picked up at my nearby fabric store earlier this week. The seams were really simple to do up - the four seams to attach the arm pieces to the body pieces, the two seams to sew up the sides, the hems, and the hood attachment.

Unfortunately, since I eyeballed everything and didn't think to measure anything out - I know, I'm so smart - the hood doesn't actually match up to the neckline, so I improv-fixed it by taking in the seams around the neckline and, after attaching the hood, hemmed the rest of the open neckline. I thought it would bother me that it's not like a real hoodie where the ends of the hood meet at the center neckline, but I actually think I like it better - regular hoodies tend to be a bit constricting on my neck, and leaving the neckline open like this counteracts that problem.

So I guess my mishap ended up working in my favor?

The shorts were also really simple. I sewed up the pieces and inserted an elastic into the waistband, and that was that.

For Baymax's actual features, I cut the pieces out of black and gray felt that I had on hand. His face was two black circles and a rectangle for the mouth, and his crest (memory card inserting thing) was a gray circle that I cut apart. I was going to sew the appliques on with my machine, but I didn't have any corresponding bobbin colors and I didn't trust my minimal sewing machine abilities to be able to sew along all the pieces in perfect lines.

I hand stitched all of appliques on. It didn't take as long as I thought, or it didn't feel really long because I was also marathoning Pirates of the Caribbean at the same time. Jack Sparrow can get you through anything.

The shorts were going to stay white, but I decided last minute to cut out Baymax's helmet design out of some red felt and attach it to the corner of the shorts. The pop of red looks really cute, and I had some red thread to hand stitch it on.

Here's the final ensemble! The face is so cute and I'm really happy with the helmet applique on the shorts - they turned out a lot better than I expected they would!

Since the project is made out of fleece, the entire ensemble is ridiculously soft and warm. All in all, I think it was a pretty successful project!

Here's a selfie of me wearing it! I look so tired because it's past midnight, but I feel like I'm wearing a cloud. It's great.

Have you ever tried to make a character hoodie? I've had a love affair with hoodies for pretty much forever even though I barely wear them, and now I think I want to make more. If I do, which character should I try next?

Last year, I bought red and gold fabric and red and gold face paint because I wanted to dress up as Iron Man for Halloween. Last Halloween. I've always liked Iron Man - someone who was more or less a normal human being-turned superhero. I suppose I'm also biased, considering Tony Stark went to MIT, and a product I helped design ended up being shown in Iron Man 3. (I will always show off about this. A product I designed is in a movie. A superhero movie. A movie about an engineer from MIT who becomes a superhero.)

I HAVE PROOF. The tablet the kid uses to charge up the suit is called the Vinci Tablet. I designed the handle. I'm cool. :P

That never happened. I got busy and never ended up making a dress in time... so I made it over the summer. I self-drafted and patterned a dress inspired by Iron Man's armor - so here's some pictures of the process.

I first came up with a sketch for the dress. I wanted it to be mostly red with some gold elements and, after looking at some inspiration on google, I decided to add pleats to mirror the armor plates on the actual armor. I kept the skirt simple mostly because I knew I was going to spend forever on the bodice.

This was the first sketch I made and worked off of! The skirt actually ended up not being a circle skirt - it was a rectangle that I box pleated at a few points.

I had to self-draft a pattern out of tissue paper because I didn't have any patterns premade to fit my body (and also because I'm too cheap to pay for patterns). I gave myself a lot of allowances on the sides because I know from prior experience that I have a tendency to make things too small.

And so, the fabric manipulating commenced.

I spent literally years pleating. Well, not literally, but like, at least a couple hours.

Here I have laid out some of my (janky made out of wrapping paper) pattern pieces onto my pleated fabric.

I totally forgot to photograph some steps, but here's the front of the bodice coming together!

And a close up of the side pleats.

The dress came together in a few nights, although I had some trouble with the zipper (I hate zippers but I hate buttons more, so I opted for a zipper) and because the pattern wasn't perfect, I had some weird fabric bunching around my sides. I decided it wasn't a huge deal to me - The dress was only going to be worn for Halloween anyway. The one thing that was a little sad for me was that the pleats, when pressed down, aren't super visible - I don't know if it would've worked out better if I had made them deeper.

Also, the skirt on the dress differs from the original sketch because I ended up opting for a box pleated skirt - I thought the pleats on the skirt would look more cohesive with the pleats on the bodice.

I also painted on the Iron Man crest on my chest. It's a little higher than where it's supposed to be (canonically), but whatever. It gets the point across.

I was originally planning to also paint my arm to look like the armor, but I decided it was going to be too hazardous since I was working in the library (hence the books behind me). I didn't want to chance getting red face paint everywhere. I opted for wearing my brass rat (which I wear all the time anyway) because Tony wears his.

All in all, it was a super fun project and it was my first time trying to pleat anything or self-draft something that was more complex than like, a t-shirt dress!

What do you think? Do you think I got the idea across? Also, did you dress up for halloween?

As promised from a couple posts back, here's my blog post about the striped dress I made, shown here:

I've worn it a grand total of zero times.

In my defense (does this really need defending? Everyone has stuff they've bought and not worn... right?) it was an XXL which means it basically swallows me when I put it on. The plan when I bought it was that I was going to chop the bottom off... but then I never went to the beach afterwards and so never had the opportunity.

Oops.

So when I "rediscovered" the dress, I couldn't really justify getting rid of it - there was an excess of material, I had never worn it, blah blah blah... and stripes. I swear, stripes will be my downfall.

lol so big and so wide and so long

Time to chop it up!

I decided I wanted to make it a crop top and skirt combo (I've been really into that kind of thing recently, even though it is infinitely too cold right now to be wearing skirts and baring midriffs) so I cut it at a crop-top length, hemmed it, cut the shoulder straps to make it shorter (this part is super sketch looking actually because I was too lazy to properly figure out how to make the strap width match up soooo....) and decided I liked it oversized.

The skirt I cut shorter, hemmed, folded over the top, and threaded a wide elastic through it (this part was a pain in the butt because I HAVE NO SAFETY PINS. WHY CECILE. WHY HAVE YOU NOT INVESTED IN SAFETY PINS).

Super simple, super easy, and now I have two new pieces and more extra fabric that will probably eventually turn into another crop top!

yay for clothes that don't swallow me! you can see the extra fabric in the background.. I'm super good at cleaning up before taking photos for this blog

Have any of you ever tried "refashioning" or "upcycling" your clothes?

Also, let me know if any of you want an OOTD/OOTW post at some point! I'll try bullying my roommates into taking photos for me ;)

The other day I was in the fabric store and I found the cutest print fabric and immediately thought of making an apron for my super adorable roommate Emma!

Isn't she mad cute? I kind of love her <3

I found this inspiration picture online that I decided to model my apron off of:

Inspo pic! If you can help me credit it, that'd be great - I don't remember where I found it anymore :(

I didn't have a pattern (or a printer to print the pattern with!) so I kind of just made it up as I went. To make the skirt flouncy, I decided to make a circle skirt to Emma's measurements. For the top, I literally cut out a heart and attached it to the waistband. I made the pocket with the extra circle that was cut out from the circle skirt. All in all, it was a pretty simple project and the result was pretty cute! (I omitted the lining. I'm a lazy piece of shit and lining is way too much effort for me. Also, I have no fabric for lining. That's a good excuse, right?)

Emma modeling the finished apron!

Striking a model pose

The apron in action!

Also, since I got two yards of fabric, I had plenty extra to make myself a circle skirt out of it too. Printed skirts for the win!

Two of my favorite clothing pieces are my convertible dresses that I bought off of Ideeli, despite the fact that neither of those pieces are currently in the same country as me (I travel and leave things when they don't fit in my suitcase, and unfortunately those get left behind at my parents' house). I think that the dress is ingenious - one clothing piece, infinite ways of wearing? Sign me up!

Originally my first whim of the week was going to be about a romper that I made, but over the weekend my wallet got stolen (read about it in the next Coffee Buzz!) so I decided to write about a quick pouch/wallet hybrid that I whipped up to put my replacement cards and cash in. I needed it because I didn't have time to go shopping for a new wallet, and because I didn't want to fork over the money for a new one (I usually buy my replacement wallets in little flea markets in Shanghai when I go home, where each wallet is usually less than $10).