TiLT - Random Joy

For this week I will have no numbering just a simple list of photos and captions for why I love these things. These are the things that are making my life a lot brighter and fulfilled right now.

Sleeping  kitty in the sun.  Franklin looks so peaceful, hard to tell what a little jerk he is tearing up houseplants and swapping at your heels when you go up the stairs.

Huge umbrellas in Little Tokyo, LA on the pavilion. They were lightly decorated with Sakura blossoms.  It just had this grand effect for something so simple.  I think on a sunny day it would of been nice to sit underneath and eat some mochi ice cream.

Little Tokyo in General was just amazing and I loved it! I'm so glad that I was able to go there and experience it. I wish there was something as cute and together as this in NYC but I'm still happy to go to the KinoKuniya book store.

My first time at a revolving Sushi bar!

So much sushi, in so little time.  We stacked about 10 plates in 15 minutes as soon as we started eating.  It was well worth it and something I will seek out in any city that I visit from now on.

My first love is always meat.

All you can eat Korean BBQ in LA certainly spoiled me. I had gone to them before in Chicago but not like this. It was super cheap too, only $17 a person.  We made 4 orders of at least 3 different types of meat combinations each.

The grill was enormous and stone. I hadn't seen anything like that since I was in Korea.

A warm little fire in the middle of our table at the Cafe was perfect for the cool evening.  Where I ended my LA food adventures with delicious Bpat Bin soo.

This is my absolute most FAVORITE dessert.  Lightly sugared shaved ice with fresh fruit, sweet red beans, and Dduk (mochi).  This was a helping big enough for 3-4 people, I ate most of it.

And with this week's TiLT it concludes my trip to LA photos. I hope you all get to enjoy some good eats this coming weekend and take in the things you love to make life a little more pleasant as we deal with this final cold snap in the OH.

Burday Style - OOTD

 

After having completed some major projects I feel a little bit in a slump.  I have another three lined up that I am brainstorming on but I'm finding it hard to put them into process. I decided I would take this doldrum to explore a few things I have been interested in.  One of which has been sewing using one of the new Burda Style patterns from their online site. The idea of having all these cheap patterns on hand seems great for the avid or recreational seamstress. I went for a $2.50 Pattern called the Linda skirt.  Simple A-line that is always classic, although I have my own pattern for this I thought it would be interesting to test the print at home abilities and their sizing for patterns.

28 pages printed later I have this.

Which will need to look like below after being taped together for it to work.

I begin taping pieces together only where it is necessary.  Working on it row by row and using my pattern weights to hold the pieces together and straight. It shows to cut off the extra slivers of paper between the pattern pieces but I don't want to waste time doing that, so I folded them down and make the edges crisp with a bone folder.

As you can see now everything matches up perfectly.  Luckily the seam allowance of 5/8" is already included so there is a little room for error in the pattern.

Piece by piece I think this actually took longer then the sewing of the skirt itself.  If you got off on one part it would set every part after that off skew by an increasing amount.  There was much cursing and repositioning.  If you do this, please use a low residue tape at first and then you can secure it down later, though I doubt many people would use the same pattern more then once unless they transferred it to butcher block paper.

I think it took me about an hour to get this all completed before you have to now cute it all apart.  Seems a little pointless I know but this is how patterns work. Repetition and a lot of prep time to make sure the end product is done just right.  My only mishap was in the far left bottom where you can see the "burda style" logo is a square that I didn't measure.  It is supposed to be a 4x4" square and if it is not then you need to adjust your pattern or grade it. Apparently my square was too small because the entire pattern was 7" too small. This I did not know till later when I cut out the fabric pieces.

Anyways if you were smart enough to measure the square and not ignore it such as I did after the adjustments was cutting it out.  Each dotted line represented a different size, which is always nice to see the grading changes.

Honestly at this point sewing was the easy thing for me.  It called for a folded waist band and top stitch seam but of course I like to make things more difficult for myself and did a stitch in the ditch seam for the waistband.

I love the clean look of a stitch in the ditch waistband seam. When a skirt can be so simple it's nice to add in that extra touch of tailoring that most likely no one else will see but you know it's quality.

 

My fix of the skirt being too small was adding in 4" panels to each side seam and luckily I had not cut out my waist band so I made the pattern adjustments before cutting that from the fabric.  Adding the panels put in more fullness to my skirt and I clearly am a lot shorter then the model in the photo.  Their skirt hits her right below the knees where my version ended up touching the tops of my ankles.

Just another reminder to check your pattern lengths against you body before you commit to your final fabric.

 

Skirt - DIY from Linda pattern on Burda Style with Ikea upholestry fabric

Pop Killer Geisha T-shirt - Pop Killer in LA Little Tokyo

Green Cardigan- Express

Gold Chunky platforms - BCBGeneration

City Sights

Looking around at all the structures in Downtown LA it was kind of amazing.  Their old signs on their buildings and the shapes of their architecture.  It's a mix of broken down and new all over the place.  I was very fond of the fire escapes.  I would never climb them but they make for some pretty additions to the buildings.  Clean lines and repetition remind me of smocking in garments.  Because doesn't it just always come down to clothes for me?

This was a back area at the end of Santee Alley.  Another example of how amongst the hold they injected something new.

This food stand in the middle of nowhere as we were walking towards the bus stop.  It just screamed local and lovely to me.  Advertising plain as day with no gimmicks just the way I like it.

This sign was just charming to me. It looks like something someone would of done in printmaking for a t-shirt where you fill in the board with your own quirky comment or quote.

This was the outside of the Koreatown Mall.  It made me miss Korea tons!  Super modern and clean with stores inside bartering in only Korean goods with a grocery located on the first floor.

Even their advertisements were like an implant from Korea, sporting their flower boys and random English text to promote god knows what

In the middle of it all was this park with an enormous pond (ok maybe small lake).  We took a short respite here while we figured our barrings to the next destination. Better place then most to sit at while lost and heading to dinner.

I still never get used to seeing the Palm Trees everywhere.  Especially since it was cooler weather while I was there.  We were lucky there was no rain and just sun everyday except for our last.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Well no, not really.  I already left and came back last week from LA.  I had a mini Vacay with my friend Claire. It was amazing.  Last time I went to LA not so great but that was because my friend I was visiting had just moved there himself and couldn't tell us where to go at all and we were in Santa Monica without a car.

This time I got to see:
Santee Alley
Little Tokyo
Korea town
and a whole lot of Downtown by public transit

I'll just give you a little day by day like I did with Pittsburgh because I don't want to overload with a long post of pictures.

Today is Santee Alley!  It was like a combination of China Town and Little Mexico tons of street vendors selling amazing different Mexican street foods and assorted fashion goods from things that fell off the truck, cheap sunglasses, belt buckles, perfumes, makeup that was mislabeled and CLOTHES!  oh the clothes!  It was like everything I have been on Nasty Gal and Tobi but 1/4 of their prices.  Had I known what I would be walking into I would of researched a bit more to pick out some key pieces.

The main alley was about 4-5 blocks long and completely bursting with people shopping and vendors.  Even for a Thursday it was bustling and the music was blaring terribly inappropriate lyrics for raps songs.  I was a bit surprised by that given that there were so many children with their parents (ha).

Sexy Heels?  Yah they are! 

Mannequin butts as far as the eye could see!

 On the way to Santee Alley is the Fashion district of LA.  Walked past tons of showrooms and manufacturers.  It is very different then the NYC Fashion district, you had a mix of the upscale and the smaller fashion lines.  Also it went from bargain bin fabrics like this store to very swanky Mood and Vogue Fabric type stores.

 I seriously could of wandered those stores alone all day.  If only I had budgeted my money for this!  Happily for my friend it is enough to make me want to come back for frequent visits.  I just wanted to dive right in and take advantage of all that discounted fabric and trimmings.

 We also came across this store which I wish had been open.  I can only imagine what kind of things the "Craft Depot" would have in an area next to Santee Alley and the Fashion District.  It was also amazing to me while in Downtown LA how much Korean I saw around there.  I know in my head that Koreans make a large percentage of the population but I was prepared to really see them all over the place and their businesses.  While I was in Santa Monica I saw almost none of that but downtown it was everywhere.  It also got me into some funny mishaps where I am so used to automatically giving every Korean elder respects that I was doing it all the time and they would perk up (apparently not a lot of LA kids bother to pay respects to elders unless they know them closely). 

Collectively I got a lot of new clothes in LA so I look forward to some new OOTD the next coming weeks as well!  Until then have a great weekend my friends!  I've got 3 major personal projects that I am in the works to start so that will also kickstart some other new posts.

Cheers!