(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with SHINee or SM Entertainment in any way. No patterns/fabrics were gifted, and all opinions are my own. My need to create SHINee cosplay for my girlies stems solely from my love of the group and each of the members ❤️)

Officially a high schooler now!!😭Azriella just turned 15, and it’s blowing my mind! Feels like yesterday I was walking her to her first day of kindergarten! She’s grown up so beautifully and evolved so much over the years!

For her birthday outfit, she wanted something exactly her style: kinda gothy, and very colorful. We spent a lot of time on Pinterest gaining inspiration from Tokyo Streetwear fashion. I clipped about 30 pictures of outfits I liked for various reasons and I went through them, one by one, and analyzed them with her, figuring out what she liked and why she liked them. We all went on a holiday to Crater Lake and there I sketched an outfit that involved a pencil dress.

She hated it. 🥲 Well, I wouldn’t say “hate”, but she didn’t get it and she didn’t like it. While we were there, Key released the first teaser for his new album to be called “Gasoline.” The photo was creepy, retro, and so freaking cool. I was frozen with how excited I was over it.

We got back home, and I did a new sketch involving cropped turtleneck, a pleated skirt (as per her request… we all know how much I love sewing those🙄), a bucket hat and I kept the original idea to have a hybrid Happi/Hanbok coat. She loved it! I was so happy to get the approval so I could start working on it; we only had a month to recreate it.

I had to act quickly because I knew I was gonna have to order fabric online, and it was most likely going to involve some custom designs.

the happi hanbok

Originally she wanted the jacket to have a bunch of patches all over it but I thought about how much it would cost to sufficiently cover it (with good patches) so I thought a collage of artwork mixed with some of my own graphics would look cool. We went on to Pinterest and found about 16 images we loved by seerlight, dana ulama, 野 狗富贵, F7, _RAB_, warakami vaporwave, and Aki Akane (and I painstakingly tried to find the artists’ names but some of them I couldn’t😭). I made a background and a few graphics and placed the images all over. There isn’t a true repeat to the fabric because I moved them around how I wanted for the full two yards of fabric.

I ordered it to be made through Spoonflower, using the cotton twill. When it came, it had a defect in the middle of the yardage, but they graciously sent me replacement yarage to make up for it! There are a lot of times recently when I’ve gone to order custom (dark or black-based) fabric that the colors are super disappointing and dull but this was not that time! It came in and knocked me over with how vivid and gorgeous the colors were! I don’t think I’ve ever had such a major fabric win like that from a custom printer! I approved each panel with Azriella so that it looked exactly how she wanted.

For the pattern, I went back to this drafting, only the website I got the happi coat tutorial from is private now!! I couldn’t reference any of the process but since the silhouette is pretty simple, I figured it out pretty easily. I adjusted all of the numbers, using Azriella’s measurements, factored in a lining (and batting to make it warm and sturdy), and shortened the sleeves to my own liking. I also altered the collar, shortening it like a hanbok and adding white trim and two sets of ties. I feel like every outfit I make for the girls should have pockets and since I was making a pleated skirt, I figured the coat should have the pockets! I drafted and made super deep/wide welt pockets (plus a little side pocket on one side!)
By the time it was all done, I was scheming on keeping it for myself!! I might actually make this into a sellable pdf pattern one day if there’s an interest in it!

the shirt

It started with black and white stripes and evolved when I couldn’t find what I wanted. I found this grid stretch crepe knit fabric from Cali Fabrics and was 😧when it came in… the grid was so big! I was hoping/expecting about a 1” grid but this was double that! I started to panic and 🧠brainstorm🌩️. It happened to be the day the tracklist for Key’s Gasoline just came out that day so I had this massive epiphany: I should make it a tracklist shirt! You see, Key never does anything half-assed and way he presented the tracklist was in three parts, all done in this doodling sketching theme on graph paper. I think he might have drawn some of them himself but I’m not 100% sure so don’t quote me on that! I asked Azriella what her thoughts were on it and she loved the idea (yay!) and I was shaking with excitement!

It took a lot of effort to transform those images into vectors that I could cut with my Cricut cutter! At least a day or two just doing that. Then I had to edit them within the Cricut design app (which I just sorta hate, tbh🥲… I want the controls to be like Adobe and they aren’t), size and place them to cut, and then spend days weeding them!💀 I kept making new ones to fill in spaces too! I tried to keep some of the layout like the originals but ultimately cut them out in small sizes and used my tiny EasyPress to attach them, rather than my big one.

I used my own pattern blocks to make a crop turtleneck and added fingerhole cuffs because she loves them (I do too! Who doesn’t?!)

I secretly even made the underneath of the neckline decorated with decals too!🥰

The fabric/shirt ended up looking a zillion times better with all the little bits added, I’m so in love with the shirt that I honestly can’t stop staring and admiring it when she’s wearing it!! I feel like that about the whole outfit!😭

the skirt

I. hate. pleated. skirts. I love the way they look; my girls love them and ask for them all the time. It’s just a freaking rectangle, why do they always get the best of me?? I think I’m just cursed, and I also think I have yet to find a truly fantastic pattern/tutorial to make one. I did buy a pattern for this one this time, The Ellie and Mac one. I thought I’d add pockets to it but after setting them in, I realized there really wasn’t a way to make it work so I took them out☹️ I had double-checked the direction of the pleats but on the back piece, I had them all going the wrong way. 😭 I found the instructions confusing about trimming the sides… there could have been better verbiage about it. BUT, I’d still say it went better than in the past. I just cannot accept that I can make a fitted woman’s blazer or really any of the crazy things I’ve made over the years and I’m just done in by a pleated skirt…

the bucket hat

I have actually been making a lot of bucket hats with my own pattern that I’ve been tweaking for the last year. I made a set of 4 for us girls for our holiday trips this year to Crater Lake and Lincoln City.

Azy really likes the look and originally I was going to do a black one with a colorful brocade on top, mimicking the little headpieces often worn with girls’ hanbok. HOWEVER, considering the direction we were going with the jacket fabric, I thought we should change gears. I reeeeeally thought about what contrast fabric the top should have. I stared at my fabric wall and pulled a lot of fabrics and put them all back. I just thought it would look better all in black but that sounded so boring and normal so I thought why not add more Gasoline decals to it in black? It came out looking soooo cool… it’s a little surprise when the light hits it! Even my yeti girl made an appearance on the hat. I also added a little pocket just cuz😂.

the mochi bag

I knew she needed to have an accessory. In all of the images on Tokyo Streetwear or, basically, anywhere I’ve seen Tokyo fashion, there’s always a fabulous bag. I wanted to make a “How to Scary and Cute” bag for her but we needed to find the perfect fabric which we (ahem, SHE) happened to find at Joann’s.
Can we double back to the “How to be Scary and Cute”? I mean seriously, that has basically been my motto since high school so I have so many feelings about how Key used this for part of this comeback and that my kiddos identify with that too.💕

I used my own pattern, the mochi bag and I made a new teen sizing that is sort of like a Medium between the other two sizes. For this one, I made this one with the decal spanning the length of the front, but I added white behind it so it showed up a little clearer. I also moved the pocket to the back and lined the inside completely, adding in a pocket there as well!

the mask

We still wear masks. Yep, we’re all up to date with our vaccinations but we just feel more peace of mind knowing we’re not gonna get each other sick at this point. Since this was gonna be an outfit for her first day of high school, I really wanted to make her a mask to compliment the outfit!

I pulled some yellow twill from my scraps bin and I made a yellow checkerboard print with a little “She Is” inspired Jonghyun decal on the side! I am really falling hard for this tone on tone effect and I don’t see myself getting tired of it any time soon so consider yourselves warned!

the photoshoot

My sweet, sweet girl has been battling eczema since she was a baby. There are some years where she hasn’t a problem with it at all… and then there are years like this past one where it feels like she’s constantly battling flare-ups. I think for the past three photoshoots of hers, she’s been in some stage of flare-up, the last being pretty bad. She’s managing herself quite nicely right now… a flare-up was coming, but we got her on a dedicated skincare routine using Cerave and she got refills of her medication.

Why am I bringing this up? Because she’s so beautiful and it breaks my heart that she doesn’t see it because of her eczema and the pain of bullying from years ago. I will go on gushing rants about how freaking gorgeous she is in full detail and I think, after this photoshoot, she had a little bit of a breakthrough with how she sees herself. This photoshoot was too short for me- we were chasing the light and I could have spent all day just staring at her through my lens.

We put some makeup on (which is by far her least favorite part), but honestly, she doesn’t even need much! I typically do a little eyeliner, a little blush, and lip gloss and that’s it! Her eyelashes are insane. They are so thick and full without any mascara and it blows my mind because I’m here trying to stretch what I have to any length whatsoever!😂🥲I did do something I used to do to myself a lot in the past and did two different eyeshadows plus some fun shading too! I asked her if she wanted to wear her black Doc Martens or the shawol-colored ones I had gotten (a tad too small) which happen to be the same size. Before I could finish my sentence, I interrupted myself and exclaimed “OR ONE OF EACH!😱🤩” and she chose one of each.

OH! And it was time to touch up the highlights in her hair… she was rocking some rose gold for a little bit but it faded so we went with blue!! I’m so madly in love with it! I keep telling her how pretty she is and how much she’s transformed in the past few years! She’s so painfully shy that it makes me so proud to see her coming out of her shell and believing in herself more! She’s had a sense of what she wants her fashion to be and has been steadfast in it for a couple of years now… I just keep telling her to have confidence in herself! If she believes that she is badass and awesome, she can pull off any fashion! It’s all about confidence! It’s the most important accessory any of us can wear when we get dressed!

So we wandered around Portland during golden hour, hitting up our usual spots, (plus some new ones!) and it was so much fun! We went out a little too late so we were losing daylight rapidly throughout (plus we were trying to get to the shops before they closed for the night!), but we got a lot of great shots so it worked out pretty well!

So that’s it for Azriella’s Gasoline Streetwear outfit! I can’t believe this is the 13th anniversary of my taking my first seat in front of a sewing machine! I’ve had a ton of highs and lows, teaching myself through blogs, critical thinking, and lots of trial and error. Because I’ve never had anyone formally train me, I’ve made tons of discoveries on what works and what doesn’t and it fills me with a lot of pride knowing that I got to this point on my own. I sometimes think about how gutsy I was with the things I did when I started out and how that early seamstress me would have never imagined that this is where I’d be now! Can you believe it’s been 10 years since I started Sew Chibi Designs and that it’s been that long since I made Azriella’s Rainbow Dash Dress?! Blows my mind!

I’m so thankful that my kiddos still love wearing what I make and that I have Jon to forever bounce ideas off of and support me in all of my creative processes, wholeheartedly.
Happy birthday to my muse! Without you, none of this would have even been imaginable. I love you so much, Azriella!!!💕💕

hugs + stitches,
Kat