Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Salme camisole

I've kept a beautiful silk satin in my stash for long and long years. This impulsively bought fabric was about 110cm x 110cm square piece having its center (90cm x 90cm) printed with pastel color blocks. It was obviously made for a silk satin scarf, but unsewn.

Because it was so small and so square, it didn't make any garment until recently(I really didn't need more scarves at all). Every time I saw it I felt depressed, because I couldn't feel good to see my past purposeless purchases...


However, everybody, good things do happen sometimes!


I made a Salmepatterns' Double Layer Camisole with this tiny fabric in the last weekend, because I had a sudden whim of a spaghetti strap cami and because I also had no other suitable fabric than this silk for the purpose. And I'm really really happy with what I got! Although my cami couldn't get two layers because of the shortage of fabric resource, I was really impressed by the good combination of this pattern and smooth silk, and I thought that it might be worth mentioning about it here to the outer space. I'd love to try the genuine double layered version in near future too.


Regarding to the sizing of the pattern, I cut size 8 with the intension for getting close fitting but I got a relatively loose garment. It seems to me that the pattern runs a bit larger side to my liking and to the measurements. I had a small gaping at the front neck and had to narrow the front neckline by 4cm too. It didn't stop me from loving this pattern at all though! I hope the info helps some of you a bit. Oh, patterns from Salmepatterns don't include seam allowances, just in case.


Ciao!
yoshimi


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pattern: Double Layer Camisole from Salmepatterns
single layer, with a large self facing

fabric: silk satin


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Monday, July 21, 2014

yukata dress


Hello!!

First of all, thank you for the kind inquiries some of you made privately or publicly to ask if I was doing OK recently, I'm doing very fine! Actually I've been doing much better in this summer than usual but haven't been knocked out by the heat, I mean, not yet. I hope you're fine too.

I've got a Yukata fabric and made a dress from it.



Japanese Yukata is a casual summer kimono and is usually made of cotton. Yukata fabrics are narrow and long, same as traditional Kimono fabrics, and are usually sold as a roll of 12-13meters to serve one garment. I bought a roll which was sold very very cheap because of its imperfection. In other words, the fabric had a smidge of lightest sunburn at the both edges of the roll (not at the edges of the fabric surface!) from a longer storage. I couldn't see any problem with its quality as a fashion fabric.

Although I was happy to find it for an affordable price, I have to say that I also felt a bit sad because this pretty fabric was treated as a defective product even though it had only an almost unnoticeable imperfection. It was sold for about 1/5 of full price, I guess. We are sometime (maybe, often) too avaricious on newness and perfection on general merchandise, I think. Some people buy only magazines that are completely new and have never opened by any others because they believe in newness is the best commercial value of all. I wonder... But hey, I anyway got it and tried to make the most of its charm by making it into a summer dress. I love myself because I can sew and could use it! I could make it into a yukata, but I made a simple dress because I don't wear yukatas very often.


This weekend, my daughter and I visited Tokyo and stayed at a hotel which had a pretty garden with lots of greens. We enjoyed the stay very much! DD took photographs for me and the dress in the garden promenade. See the endless row of wind bells for entertaining the guests in the garden! They sounded so charming. Sounded like tiny fairies chatting everywhere in the garden. Now I'm well spellbound and I can survive this summer by the power of tiny green fairies.



I love you all! Have a great day!

Love,
yoshimi

 


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pattern: 847deux* from Annee-Patterns
fabric: yukata cotton, plain woven, flower prints over indigo shibori-dyed, light, coarse density, smooth surface, relatively firm, 37cm wide. used approx. 6m long.
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