I {heart} Japanese Dress Books, part 2
- At December 15, 2010
- By Amy
- In Sew for the Body, Sewing Books
1
For part 1 of this series, click here.
Before I send you off to be inspired and creating from these wonderful books, here’s a few tips I’ve learned while working with these patterns:
- You’ll have to trace your pattern pieces from the pattern sheets included in the back of the books. The pattern sheets I’ve seen have the various pieces overlapping each other so they can get many pattern pieces on a page. In the above photo, all the garments in the book are identified with an English letter. So the letters you see inside of the dark circles refer to those garments. For example, all the pattern pieces for dress F will be marked with and “F” inside a circle. The numbers you see ranging from 7 to 15 are sizes. Trace the line corresponding to your size. It looks overwhelming at first, but once you start tracing a line, it gets easier to follow it around till you’ve traced the whole shape. Remember, you’re tracing the seamline, there are NO SEAM ALLOWANCES on the pattern sheets. You need to add your own.
- They’re also printed on both sides. To help you find the right pieces for your garment, each side of the paper has a list in one corner telling you which garments are printed on that side of the sheet. That makes it much easier to find the pieces you’re looking for. Below is pattern sheet side “A” for a book of skirts. This side is printed with pattern pieces for skirts E, F, G, H, I, L, N P, X and Y. Sometimes they won’t be able to get all the pieces on one side of the sheet, so check all the sides of paper to see if your garment is listed on that side. The bottom of this box also gives the size chart in centimeters. Since it’s a book of skirts, only the waist and hips measurements are listed.
- Above is a typical instruction page. Yep, all you get is one page, but see what I mean by the illustrations? They’re so, well, illustrative, that it’s easy to follow along with a little bit of basic information under your belt. At the top is a list of materials needed. The width and length of fabric are there so you can refer to that for your fabric yardage. The rest of the items refer to interfacing, zippers, buttons, etc. On the top right is the list of step-by-step sewing instructions, but I find it’s easier for me to just follow along with the drawings than to try to decipher Japanese!
- The cutting layout is on the left, and although it might be hard to see in my photograph, some pieces are lightly shaded which means those pieces should also be cut out of interfacing. I also refer to this cutting layout as I’m tracing pattern pieces so I’m sure I’ve traced everything I need to, or if I’m having trouble finding a piece to trace, I can see the general shape of it on this page, then I better know what I’m looking for.
- On the bottom right is a detailed finished drawing labeled with numbers. The numbers refer to the order in which you’ll stitch it up. For this skirt, you’d first connect the top yoke pieces together (1), then stitch the side seams (2), next the zipper (3), then the bottom skirt side seams (4), so you can attach the yoke to the bottom skirt (5), then finish with a waistband facing (6) and a hook & eye closure (7). Piece of cake, right? The drawing also shows you where they expect you to topstitch, and any other details. For any steps that need more clarification, there is a separate line drawing labeled with a corresponding number. In a lot of ways, this is easier to follow than the big sheets of instructions that come with commercial patterns that include 37 steps and take up too much valuable space on your sewing table.
OK, that’s Japanese dress books in a nutshell. I hope you find these posts helpful. If you need additional help, remember part 1 of this series references several other places on the web you can go for help. Please, drop me a comment to let me know what you’ve made from these books and any tips you’ve discovered along the journey. Happy sewing!
Bee's Nest Deb
Don’t forget to tell people that there are no seam allowances on the pattern pieces. I’m completely paranoid that I’ll forget to add seam allowances so I double and triple check my pattern tracings.
I hope to dig into some Japanese patterns the next two weeks while I’m home on winter break.