Happy Year of the Rabbit! I didn’t expect to but I have a couple of hours of free time today and decided to upload some photos of the festivity.
Day 1
As per our family’s yearly tradition, everyone gathered at my uncle’s (mum’s eldest brother) place for a potluck lunch feast. Hubby and I couldn’t resist posing in front of my uncle’s neighbor sparkling silver ferrari for a pic. My lil princess ran in and held my hand at the last minute which is why the photo turned out this way.
I wore the Mademoiselle dress but had a really hard time getting my relatives to believe that I made that dress or my lil princess’ reversible retro dress or my son’s robot shirt or my dad’s Peacock Jakob shirt. It was actually rather funny but that became quite an ice breaker and I had to convince them that it was my new found hobby. One that I grew really fond of.
I didn’t have a chance to snap photos of the robot shirt and the Peacock Jakob beforehand so I took the opportunity to document them yesterday. Here are the kids with their cousin. The boys kept making cheeky faces! Boys will be boys…
My lil prince is wearing the Robot shirt which I made last week using burda magazine’s 5/2010 Boy’s shirt with Mandarin collar downloaded from the burdastyle website. I gotta let you know that I am so glad I just completed the JJ Blouse and shirts because the steps given in the boy’s shirt instructions didn’t help at all. There was also no information on sizing either. This is probably the last time I will be downloading a burda magazine pattern online. In the end, I ditched the instruction sheet and relied totally on what I’ve learnt making the shirts to sew this garment. When I finished sewing it, my son asked me to add some buttons for him just because he liked them. I agreed though I knew he wouldn’t be able to button up so instead of a traditional buttonhole, I sewed two buttons, one on each side of the shirt and looped them together with a knotted elastic band. A fun buttons and knot combo! 
As for dad, he was *ahem* too preoccupied to pose for any photos as you can see below.
But I managed to snap a closer view of the shirt he was wearing without disturbing his social activity. The fabric is Alexander Henry’s cotton lawn in Regent Peacock and the sewing pattern is burdastyle’s Jakob. Just like hubby’s shirt, all seams are finished with french seams and rolled hems.
Day 2
Today’s lunch was Henghua mee suan which my aunt (dad’s older sister) cooked for the lot of us at her place. It has to be the most delicious noodles on earth and something my hubby looks forward to every year:) My kids are wearing fusion traditional today. Actually, they were supposed to be wearing traditional costumes but my son preferred wearing the traditional top with jeans. He spent half an hour lamenting that the blue top is ugly and he wanted to wear only red tops as red is his favorite color. Hubby and I finally convinced him by pronouncing a mandarin collar day in which all four of us would be wearing clothes with mandarin collars today.
My lil princess wasn’t easy to handle either. She would only wear skirts so I had no choice but to layer her traditional outfit with a tutu, much to her delight.
And here’s hubby and I with our mandarin collar outfits. The Alexander Henry Jakob and “In the Mood for Love” cheongsam.
I’ve learnt a few lessons from sewing some of our own new year outfits this year and thought I need to put them down just for next year’s reference sake
1. Dad has requested for pockets on his shirts as he has a habit of placing his pen and some notes in there.
2. Red shirts for lil prince but best to have him select the fabrics himself. Save ourselves from all that whining.
3. Hubby has suggested that I sew lil prince and him some dad and son shirts so they could wear the same print out. That sounds like fun and I would really wanna try creating them.
4. Mum is still really fussy as I have yet to see her wearing the Liberty JJ blouse. The Lunar new year celebrations is for 15 days so let see if she does.
5. More skirts and dresses for lil princess. No pants. Tutus make her smile.
6. Dad and hubby loved the cotton lawns and commented on how comfy these are.
7. For some weird reason, lil prince is into family fashion themes. Figure something to minimize potential issues.
Looks like I’ll need to start planning and sewing for the year of the dragon a little earlier:)
The Sew Convert 