Tag Archives: Pattern Magic

Bamboo shoot

18/11/2011 2:31 am \ 47 Comments \

…that is the name of this top; my latest foray into Pattern Magic, by Tomoko Nakamichi.
The folds/tucks on the front of the design are like the new shoots on bamboo, spraying out to each side in graduated offset arcs.
I chose to make this design into a little top with short cap sleeves, a buttoned up back, and a wide loose waist band; necessarily a shortish top because of the constraints of my fabric.  Yup, I was using up scraps, as per usual!  From this linen shirt I made for Craig… (I know it may seem like most of my clothes are made from scraps, and I have to admit a fair whack of them are!  The thing is, I loathe waste with a passion…  and have been known to hoard scraps for years…. hehe.  Some day I will have to round up in one post the projects I have made, purely from scraps)  
Anyhoo;
I like this style of blouse, it brings back strong memories to me of the blouses we used to wear in our winter school uniform, over our plaid wool skirts.  Except our school blouses had a collar and were buttoned up at the front, naturally.  This top is quite loose, so I can leave all the buttons done up except the top one and slip it over my head.  This means only the top button needs doing up behind my neck, which is good, since I discovered that doing up that middle button requires a solid command of yoga…  And about that; I’m thinking it is about time some new moves were introduced into the Yoga repertoire along with saluting the sun, and the down dog and all that; may I suggest “lady doing up her back buttons/zip”?  I think that would be a pretty useful new move, yes?
The  neckline is faced, the side and shoulder seams are flat-felled, and the armhole seam allowances are finished with HongKong seaming.  The buttons are the little shell buttons that I bought in Tokyo, whilst out shopping with Yoshimi, Novita and my daughter Cassie, so I felt it was quite right that I use Japanese buttons for a Japanese designed garment.  Fitting, yes?  The buttonholes on the button band are vertically aligned, whilst the buttonholes on the waist band are horizontally aligned, this is a little feature that I recalled from my old school blouses, and wanted to have it in this blouse too.
The darts/folds were a little tricky.  In the photograph in the book, it doesn’t look as if there is any stitching yet, but just folded in place.  When I first stitched mine in place they didn’t look nearly as nice… so I unpicked and re-stitched and pressed them one by one, slightly inside their seam allowance,  so the stitching is hidden just inside the fold, about 3mm.  This seemed to do the trick, and looks more like the picture in the book.

Details:
Top; based on the “bamboo shoot” design in Pattern Magic, by Tomoko Nakamichi, finished blouse of my own design, white linen
Skirt; skirt “m” from Unique Clothes Any Way You Like, by Natsuno Hiraiwa, pink linen/cotton, details here
Shoes; Bronx, from Zomp shoes

So, with regard to the Pattern Magic series, I have some further comments it might be worth noting here for others wishing to make use of these excellent and very innovative design books… I have made up a few designs from all three books now and in my opinion the third book has by far the easiest projects; being both very easy to fit (they’re all stretch-knit, and really, who can’t fudge fit a stretch?) and also that they are all in the form of complete and finished garments.
A lot of the designs in the first book are in the form of design concepts, a fabric manipulation “idea” that one can take and build on; apply to some nebulous garment, the exact form of which is entirely up to the individual.  I like this flexibility, but it does take extra thought and some dressmaking experience to self-draft those little extras that are needed to get yourself a finished and wearable item.  For example, take the sleeves on my new top here… the Pattern Magic book does have dimensions for a sleeve sloper to get you started.  I discovered in my very early experiments in this book that the sleeve needed tonnes of adjusting to make it work for me.  Eventually abandoned the given sloper and made my own (the one I used here) based on the measurements of my bodice sloper and partly on sleeves in patterns I already had.  I found that the one in the book had a very shallow sleeve cap, that was like a straitjacket on my ginormously hefty arms … Actually I’m joking there.  I’m not hefty by Australian standards at all, but when I am working with Japanese patterns I often feel a bit, er, well huge… by comparison.  Let me put it this way, when I am tracing the designs from Unique Clothes Any Way You Like, by Natsuno Hiraiwa, I use the largest size, whereas in Vogue patterns I am a 10, and even then I always take in several centimetres off the waist.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a complaint about the books!  I love these Japanese pattern books with a passion, they are completely without parallel in the pattern world and I just wish more of our “ordinary” patterns would take note and branch out a bit.  Get out of that rut.  Just thought I would say more about my experiences here in the hope it helps anyone else wishing to make something out of these excellent books.

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Pattern Magic linked-front dress

28/08/2011 9:20 am \ 44 Comments \

A new dress…!
This is drafted from the Japanese pattern book Pattern Magic, by Tomoko Nakamichi.  Since mine is the Japanese version I don’t know its translated name, but it is the design on p49.  There is a bit of a story behind this thing…
confession time:
This is the second version of this dress I have made; the first was an unmitigated disaster.  I was planning a three quarter length version using white chiffon (polyester-y stuff, so it was cheap, thank heavens) which I decided needed underlining as well as lining, because the seams would have shown through the fabric otherwise.  I won’t bore you with the whole saga, just cut straight to the climax which was me heaving the whole thing in the bin during a bad case of sewing-rage one night.  I don’t want to talk about it because it is still a painful memory… and if you’re wondering… (wails) yeees! I do regret chucking it out!  After only a short bit of mulling it over, I realised how I could have solved the problem I was having and now wish I had not been so hasty, but as fate would have it the bin was picked up by the rubbish truck the very next morning while I was still in the “never want to even look at it again” mood.  Oh well.  C’est la vie.  I suspect I would have had plenty more issues with it to be honest, so maybe all was for the best…
This version is completely different.  I’ve had this teal silk jersey in my stash from about eighteen months ago, and I envisioned a quick, stretchy, Metalicus-like, pull-over dress with a full-ish skirt; no zips, no underling, no lining required.  Far less fuss!
I made a petticoat to go underneath, why?  Partly because the design has an extremely low neckline.  And also; well the dress in indoor or calm weather circumstances looks like the above, but in a stiff breeze like today…

Lol!  And just so you know, stiff breezes are veeeerry common where I live, and especially during spring.  Yaas, just one of the reasons why hairstyles here are very much au naturel…  The design is completely open at the front, and whilst it would be a simple matter to sew up the front skirt seam I decided I like the idea of the contrasting colour to be a strong part of the final look.
Now, I’ve mentioned this before, but it is worth saying again; Pattern Magic is not for the fainthearted who need step-by-step instructions.  You need to have pretty solid sewing knowledge on how to construct and finish a garment before you have a go at these designs.  The designs as they are in the book give no clue about things like facings, closures, tips on construction, even details like sleeves (to sleeve or not to sleeve, that is the question) are often left up to the individual seamstress/seamster.  So for the sake of clarity I will give some details below as to how I finished off this garment… so you can skip this if you want.

Details:
Dress; drafted from Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi, teal silk jersey
Petticoat; my own design, of yellow swimwear fabric (polyester? spandex?)
Sandals; Pedro Miralles, from Soletta shoes

I drafted and cut the front neckline edge facings as part of the fronts, and folded them to the inside of the dress so the shoulder edges sat wrong sides together…
I also drafted and cut the back bodice partly on a horizontal fold, with the fold at the back neckline… so the facing of the back bodice is part of the back bodice also.  It finishes about halfway down the back bodice.  This saved having to finish off the back neckline, and also allowed me to enclose the front shoulder edges within the back shoulder edges in a nice clean close-in seam… see, the neckline has no seaming showing!  (self high five)

I felt pretty chuffed when this bit worked out OK.
I drafted a sleeve using a Tshirt I already had; that green internal stitching you see above is the sleeve set-in.  The only topstitching on this garment are the sleeve hems.  These were simply twice folding in 1cm and topstitching with a zig-zag stitch.  The bobbin thread is black while the topstitching thread is blue; and yah, I’m okay with that.

The petticoat is self-drafted, based partly on Tshirts I already had, as well as pinning and fitting to myself.  The bright yellow stretch fabric I used for the petticoat is actually swimwear fabric; so theoretically, on a hot day I can just flop in the pool in it!   It is a lot thicker than the turquoise silk jersey.  After experimenting with a few finishings for the neckline and armhole edges, I eventually settled for serging the edges to stabilise and then folding to the inside once and topstitching slowly with a wide zig-zag stitch, being careful not to stretch the fabric at all.  All the other seams are overlocked.
The lower hems on both dress and petticoat are not finished because these fabrics will not unravel or fray.  I just cut the fabric as straight and as smoothly as possible.

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Pattern Magic twist top; take 3

14/07/2011 4:51 am \ 27 Comments \

So, I had originally bought this heavy cream knit stuff with the intention of re-creating exactemente the dress on the cover envelope of Vogue 1087 (below, right), and obviously got disenchanted with the idea since it sat in my stash uncut… and I did start to think, do I really need another dress, when my winter lifestyle is more oriented towards separates, and since doing Me-Made June I have identified a need for tops not dresses… Luckily, creamy coloured stretchy stuff is not that sort of demanding fabric that is only going to suit one and one only type of garment, and so I changed tack.  Hehe, actually not a hugely surprising turnabout since this twist top from the Pattern Magic book is a pattern I have made up twice before and adore, and the colour is hardly a break-away for me either, but still!  I’m in love with this new top already…
I’m sure you are wondering what this intriguingly sculptural one-pattern-piece top looks like when it is laid flat…  no?  Well, since I have just brought it up and no doubt piqued your curiosity, I shall now proceed to satisfy it… kind of me, no?  Below is my older, but the same pattern, charcoal top, now washed and worn for about a year now so maybe has got a tiny tad mis-shapen over the last year, but you get the idea….  When it is on those skewiff details pull the top in to hug one’s body beautifully and make for a very flattering silhouette.   The cream jersey I have used to make this new version is quite a bit stiffer than the charcoal, and has less stretch, so getting it on is kind of a struggle.  But once it is on it feels great!  I do love a firm snug top, especially in the winter time.

Details:
Top; the twist top from Pattern Magic, by Tomoko Nakamichi, heavy cream knit stuff from Knitwit
Skirt; skirt “d” from Unique Clothes Any Way You Like, by Natsuno Hiraiwa, silver grey crepe, details here, and to see this skirt styled in 6 different ways go here
Tights; Kolotex
Shoes; Django and Juliette, from Zomp shoes

(below; a spectator…)

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Pattern Magic, revisited

29/05/2011 8:17 am \ 36 Comments \

This is my second attempt at this pattern; the design from page 10 of Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi; my first was here.  I loved the design, but unfortunately that first dress was kinda disastrous.  Firstly, I didn’t love the fabric I had used, which was a super-cheapy thick-ish polyester selected for its colour only from the remnants table.  On top of the doubtful quality of the fabric and the fact that it didn’t drape very well, my finishing off of that dress was of equally doubtful quality…  I didn’t have enough of the blue to cut facings, and used instead a tobacco coloured fabric, a too-thin and also-nasty scrap of polyester.  And I didn’t fit the dress properly to myself, and allowed too much seam allowance around the armscye, but sewed a normal width seam allowance, resulting that the dress dug into my armpits in a painful and irritating way, and to unpick the stitching plus understitching around the armscye just seemed all too difficult, since I had sewn them up scrupulously well, and combined with the nasty fabric quality… (deep breath)  I guess in hindsight I was treating the dress like a muslin, which is how it turned out as I wore it precisely two times.  I know, I’m embarrassed by my wastefulness, too…  I can only hope that someone at the Salvos with smaller arms than me saw something good in that thing…
Enough with the saga of sewing failure…
The good news is that I still loved the design enough to really want to have a go at a better one, using nice fabric.  Et voila!

side views (one is more interesting than the other…)

Details:
Dress; drafted from the Japanese pattern book Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi, in slightly nubbly, charcoal-marle polyester/wool suiting
Petticoat; (honestly can’t really remember the pattern I used for this), black satin, another picture here
Top and tights; Metalicus
Boots; Andrea and Joen, from Uggies in Dunsborough

back view

Dressmaking details:
There is only one front piece and one back piece, but the shape of the pieces is such that the bodice area is on-grain, but the skirt section is on the bias.  Resulting in that lovely ripply drape. 
This time I carefully measured the bodice area, armscye and the hip area against an old favourite Burda 8511; and made the necessary fitting adjustments to the armscye.  The fabric is a rather nice thin and very drape-y, but still a bit nubbly wool/polyester mix suiting fabric in charcoal marle.  For the cord casing around the “hole” I made bias tape from the same fabric.  The cord is a 120cm brown/black bootlace.
I cut the facing pieces from the same fabric so that the fabric selvedge edge forms the lower edge of the facing.  These pieces are not interfaced; I think the fact they are cut on the cross-grain, while the bodice is on-grain will provide enough stability to this area, and I love the softness of the finished bodice.  The neckline and armscyes are under-stitched and not topstitched.  The other raw edges inside the dress are overlocked to finish, and the hem is hand-stitched.

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Girl-y, with a bit of black

05/05/2011 10:04 am \ 12 Comments \

My sister in law S’s birthday today, so I took her out for afternoon tea; cake and a chin-wag.  Girly stuff. We would have liked to squeeze in a bit of shopping too, but we both had had a jam-full day… hopefully next time.
So far I’ve just worn this very girly pink lace dress with light soft neutrals for spring and summer, and I wanted to see how it stood up to being mixed with darks, for the cooler months.  I think it works OK with charcoal and black, what do you think?  I think the trick to mixing a powder-pink very delicate spider-webby lace like this with strong darks is to keep the touches of charcoal/black equally as light, delicate and feminine as possible, because a dress like this could easily be overwhelmed by strong colours.  So I picked my strappiest black sandals, a very light and little charcoal cardigan, and my necklace of graduated polished iron-ore balls, a noir twist on the more traditional ladylike pearls.

And for Perth readers, Janet very kindly left me a note yesterday to say that Pattern Magic 1 and 2 in English are available at Subiaco Books.  Thank you so much for your comment, Janet!  
I will add that I have also seen the English version in Dymocks in Melbourne, so maybe they are in the odd Dymocks store elsewhere too…   It made me smile to have a look through it, as I have only the Japanese version myself.  All those mysterious and very intriguing Japanese notes and instructions dotted everywhere throughout the book, which seemed to promise in the artistry of the script all the secrets of sculptural pattern manipulation and Japanese couture that I felt if only I could divine their meaning I would gain some sort of sartorial enlightenment and rise up to a new higher plane of sewing mastery…  Well naturally upon reading the English version I was highly disappointed to find out actually translated to things like “back”, “dart”, “fold” and “cut 2” and so on and so forth.  Absolutely no earth shattering to be had…  Laugh!  
But seriously I still recommend this series to the serious seamstress.  The garments are not all conventionally wearable, but that is not the point.  I think of them as like sewing textbooks, akin to a musician practising scales to improve technique.   Working through the Pattern Magic books is sure to increase your pattern manipulation and adaption skills, as well as understanding the ways in which interesting sculptural details can be incorporated into a garment.
Also thank you to everyone who has left a link to the pattern for Pippa Middleton’s bridesmaids dress.    

Details:
Dress; modified Simplicity 3745, pink lace and pink border lace, sewing details of dress and petticoat together here
Petticoat (underneath); Burda 8071, pink silk satin
Cardigan; Country Road
Sandals; Micam by Joanne Mercer, from Hobbs shoes
Necklace; iron ore orbs, souvenir from Egypt
Bag; Louis Vuitton
Nail varnish; Blackest Black, Revlon

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Father’s Day on the beach

05/09/2010 5:21 am \ 7 Comments \

Self Stitched September day 5:
The weather has been absolutely glorious, so after the obligatory Father’s Day breakfast in bed, packed up the dog and the husband (not necessarily in that order!) and headed to the beach for a stroll.  I’ve mentioned before how the dog morphs into a frolicsome puppy when faced with sand and surf and after this morning we had a very tired, happy and sandy dog to hose down, ahhh, a delightful morning!
Today I’m wearing my top drafted from the Pattern Magic book (by Nakamichi Tomoko, really should get onto some more designs from that book!), made out of charcoal jersey knit.  When I first assessed my wardrobe for this Self-Stitched September I was worried I wouldn’t have enough warm garments, but if the weather continues this way I may not end up even wearing some of the warmer winter options I have in there…! which will be nice!
My shorts are made from Burda 7723, these have an old-fashioned snugly wide waistband sitting high at the natural waistline and I modified the pattern by making the legs about 5cm longer and flaring them a little more to get even more of an old-fashioned forties look to them; these are made from a thick charcoal gabardine that used to be a puff-skirt my daughter bought in Paris about three years ago (to see it go here)

Details:
Top; from Pattern Magic, by Nakamichi Tomoko, charcoal jersey knit
Shorts; Burda 7723, charcoal gabardine
Thongs (flipflops); Mountain Design
Sunnies; RayBan

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Smudgy colours on the beach

02/09/2010 6:07 am \ 9 Comments \

I often gravitate to the comfort of the drab families of colours like shades of olive, subdued purples, rusty browns and mustards and dirty greys, perhaps the drabber the colours the better they suit me… and yes, this favourite little skirt had to make an appearance before too long!  It wouldn’t take much going back over this blog to find me wearing this olive corduroy skirt yet again, to see how I styled it in 6 different ways see here…
The top, however is getting its first outing today.  This is the first version I made of the Pattern Magic, page 50 pattern, designed by Nakamichi Tomoko, made up in a very thin cotton jersey in a yummy drab berry or purply putty sort of a colour (I showed it first on Bessie here).  It’s been too cold up until now to wear it at all but with the spring sunshine warming up this place fast fast fast I’m not concerned today about the need to reach for the trench coat to cover up… and maybe it’s time to think of shopping for bathers soon??  daring thought…  
From a more depressing angle, the thought of that awful first sight of a pale post-winter self in a bathing suit in the harsh fluorescent light of the changing room … shudder… not looking forward to it…

Details:
Top; drafted from Pattern Magic, by Nakamichi Tomoko, grey/putty cotton jersey
Skirt; Vogue 7303, olive corduroy
Tights; Metalicus
Boots Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

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Pattern Magic, page 13, sleeve 2

10/07/2010 4:08 am \ 8 Comments \

OK.  I know this is a bizarr-o looking sleeve.  Luckily Bessie is an uncomplaining model.  Trust me, this isn’t the strangest looking thing in this book, but I still consider the drafting exercises in Pattern Magic by Nakamichi Tomoko to be a terrific learning tool for the self-taught seamstress, aka me.
I did remember to take two progress pictures of the paper pattern making process but then got caught up in the whole measuring, cutting, re-arranging, taping side of things and forgot to take any more pictures, sorry.
And the piece of lurid yellow fabric I used for this toile is calico; the victim of one of my old dyeing experiments, this one involving curry powder…

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