longingfreesia | Entries tagged with adventures in fashion designing

A little update to mention that I did eventually manage to find an office space in the city that I really liked for my fashion design business. I actually spent some of last month moving all my things to the new office and setting it up (a huge thanks to my sister-in-law for helping me with transporting some of the things over to it!)

It has a main room which is my work room, a smaller room which I can use as a private measurement and fitting room, a small kitchen area and a little storage area where I keep my fabric stock, paperwork and such.
I have a lot more room to work with now. The spare room in our apartment was getting a little cramped with all of my sewing and business stuff in there.

For the last few months I've been looking at office spaces in the city for my small fashion designing business.

I haven't really settled on a place yet, I'm mostly just considering options right now, but I feel the business has outgrown the spare room in our apartment. It would be nice to have some extra space to work with. Plus I could do in-person measurements more, if someone isn't too sure on how to do their own measurements.

I may not seriously start considering it until next year, unless a place I really want comes up. For now, I have a lot of orders to work on for cutewear for the winter season.

With Yuma now having a second job and my small fashion designing business gaining good traction again, I feel like we can finally start saving for and planning the wedding now. We won't really have enough to do anything big, and a big event would mean more stress anyway, so we're hoping to put together at least a little ceremony and reception, joined by our close family and friends.

I've decided I'll be making my own wedding dress and I may have already started drawing up designs for it. Making one, instead of buying one, will probably be a lot cheaper, but also a lot more special.
We're looking at aiming to have the wedding take place sometime next year, but it's very early days yet.

In the meantime, I've got a lot of orders coming in from clients who want cutewear for the winter, so I've been busy concentrating on those recently!

So I've spent the last few days in Heartland visiting my parents and helping Yuma go through some stuff at his old house, since Akari-san wanted him sort through it.

I talked to my parents and finally told them about everything. About Mr. Heartland and about my powers. It was a lot for them to take in, but they both love me and accept me for who I am. I know they also kept the truth about my actual father hidden to protect me, but I feel now this is all out, I'm that much more closer to them, especially my dad. He sacrificed a lot just to make sure mom and I were happy and safe. He stepped up when Heartland didn't. To me, he's more my real dad. He always will be.
I acknowledge I'm related to Heartland by blood, but I'll never consider him a real father.
He's out of my life for good anyway.

With that done, I want to focus on the positives and the future as much as I can.
Yuma and I more or less have the apartment to ourselves now. Haru-san moved back permanently to Heartland and Akari-san only stays when she needs to be in Domino City for her job.
She's still helping us financially, as are my parents from this weekend, until Yuma and I can stand on our own feet.

We now have a spare room in the apartment, so I've turned it into a working space for my fashion design work. It's so much better to have the extra room! It got a little too cluttered trying to work in a space shared by both me and Yuma.
The room also doubles as a guest room, for when Akari-san, or any of our friends stay over.

My small fashion design business is going well too. I've had a lot of custom orders recently for spring and summer wear lately! It's been really exciting working on it.

Overall... it's been a tough and emotional weekend... and last few months, but I really feel positive about the future. About my business, me and Yuma, everything!

Today I would like to announce the launch of my new website for my clothing designs!
It's taken a while to set up, as Akari-san needed to teach me some of the basic coding for it, but now I feel confidant enough to run and update the website when I need to!

[There is a link to a nicely designed website included, which appears to be named 'Little Birds' in English. It has a cute bird motif!]

'Little Birds' is my own small thing I am aiming to build-up while I am still working part-time at Castle & Castle. I am hoping that eventually it will grow into a business that I can run full-time. I will be concentrating mainly on cute themed clothing, but I am also open to do commissions on an individual basis.
The website has examples of outfits I've made, has links to my various social media accounts and also has a small online store where I'll be selling ready-made items!

Thank you so much for taking a look.

I really enjoyed all the different duels I've gotten to do over the last few weeks. I feel like I'm improving and learning a lot with each one. I still haven't had much luck in winning one yet, but the experience is what counts and I'm really having a lot of fun with it.
I've started stopping off by the park or plaza after work as well to see if I can find anyone to duel against, or to watch others duel and that's worked out a few times.

Other than that, I've been making a lot of summer clothes for myself in my free time. The weather has been so hot recently, so I definitely needed some lighter things to wear.

EDIT:

After dueling Futaba-san, she kindly offered to look over my deck over some lunch. She gave me some really great advice for additions and changes, as well as some basic teaching on some things. I might practise a little against Akari-san tonight to get the feel of this, as there is some stuff in here I'm really new too.

I'm still happy to take on any duels from others though. I'm really determined to get better at this!

I can't believe that it'll be the winter holidays in only a month's time. I'm really excited! I really love this time of the year and I'm glad that I'll get to spend more time with Yuma during it.

I've also started work on making a full garment for myself, from start to finish with no help from my mom or anyone. It's a simple design, but I felt doing something not too complicated for this would be a good idea to start off with. I feel with everything I've learned and practised so far, I should be able to make up patterns and sew a simple outfit like this completely on my own.
I'm hoping to have it finished before the winter holidays come around. That's the goal I've set myself!

I arrived home in the evening on Sunday from my trip to Domino City. I really enjoyed my stay and I want to say a huge thank you to Futaba-san and Jouyoku-san for letting me work under them for the last few weeks and teaching me so much in that time. I really learned a lot and I'll continue working to improve my skills in both designing and sewing! I really enjoyed seeing some of my designs come to life, it was amazing.

Yuya. Yuzu. I really hope things look up for the both of you soon.

And Yuma... I'll see you when you visit home for the winter holidays. I wish it was sooner than that, but hopefully it won't be as long until then as it seems.

*Kotori, carrying a bag and a folder, breathes in deeply once she arrives at a door. This is the door to Shiroko's office. Today was the day that she was going to show Shiroko her clothing designs, as well as show her some samples of things she had made.
Taking a moment, she releases the breath, looking determined and raises her hand up to the door to knock.
This could be a really big step for her and she was determined to do everything she could with this chance.*

I wonder why it is that the Duel Academy has such different terms and holidays to most other schools. I'm on summer break now, but Duel Academy holds lessons all summer. I assume it's because of the strange term times in general but still...
...I don't really have much to do this summer. My family are too busy for holidays this year, so I did consider visiting Domino City again. I'd love to see Yuma and his friends I've met there again, but I'd only be able to see them during weekends... and I know some classes are run on Saturdays too.

But it's not just that. I would like to go and be able to speak with Futaba-san, since she seemed interested in my clothing designs. I've been putting a portfolio together and I'd like to show her and get her opinion on it.

For a while now, my mom has been teaching me sewing techniques and I'm at a level now where I can make simple garments on my own from my own designs. I'd love to be able to make things from more complicated designs later on and I'll be working towards learning more.
I've been thinking a lot about how determined Yuma is with improving his dueling and even gaining new goals as he discovers more things and... I'd like to do that with designing and making garments. I've wondered a lot about what I'd like to aim for, especially now I'm in my last year of school, and I'd really like to be a fashion designer.

I had a really interesting idea the other night while I was idly doodling some designs and started drawing up clothing designs based on duel monsters. Specifically I designed a hoodie based on Hope for Yuma, a dress based on Bloom Diva for Yuzu and a tracksuit based on Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon for Yuya. I even designed an outfit for myself based on Gagaga Girl!

It was a fun idea to play around with. It's interesting to think how you can really get the monster designs to be noticeable and recognizable, all the while trying to keep them as items of clothing that can be worn in everyday life, avoiding the issue of them looking like a costume.
I'd love to be able to design and make clothes like this one day.

Profile

Kotori Tsukumo (nee Mizuki)

August 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Syndicate

Style Credit

Base style: Compartmentalize by timeasmymeasure
Theme: Pink Hearts by Musyc

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Aug. 26th, 2025 02:20 pm