View from a Village

I'm back! Not that I really went anywhere but I had a small operation, came down with a cold, made it through one week of school holidays and went away for the second. Sounds busy but actually at least two weeks of it involved me feeling sorry for myself and sitting in bed a lot. Now I'm on a drive to get the kitchen wallpapering finished and the hallway spruced up with a coat of paint so we can put the house on the market in a couple weeks. Add in a few handmade Christmas presents and some clothes for me and some for Hazel, including a hat that is needed urgently, and the next month is looking rather busy! I think it'll be ok and even if I can't take proper photos of Christmas presents I can at least put up artistic ones.

I've been working on this cross stitch since the Olympics - I thought I'd get it done by the closing ceremonies but didn't make it, and then it languished as I wrestled with amigurumi and other crochet stuff.

The design comes from a neat little cross stitch book, Cross Stitch Patterns by Misako Murayama, that came with a Gerda Bengtsson book I wanted on Trade Me. As it turns out, it was much more fun that the Bengtsson one so I was quite pleased. It reminds me a bit of the book I had when I was learning to cross stitch as a kid, so it's kind of nostalgic.

Copyright 1976 by Ondorisha Publishers ISBN 0-87040-374-5

The colours came as a bit of a surprise when I started, though it shouldn't have considering I saw all the floss together when I bought it! The book's colours are quite different, much more muted. But I quite like the insane brightness.

When I searched for it online to see if I could learn a bit more about it, or the author, I got a bit of a shock at the prices that were being asked for it - Amazon sellers had it for $45+, Alibris had it from $73-314. Wow. I payed $10 for two books, so essentially $5. I felt quite proud of myself for scoring such a rare book accidentally, although $314 seemed a bit crazy. I mentioned to Heleen that I was doing an embroidery from this particular book, and from my vague description of the patterns "70s, Japanese, colourful" she popped out of the room and returned with her copy, which cost her all of $2 in a second hand book store! Needless to say the $314 seems even more ridiculous now - where do they pull these prices out from? I'll refrain from suggesting a place because I might get unwanted hits on my blog from Google searches ;)

After I took these photos I stupidly left the hoop lying on the spare bed, and Lucy the cat promptly slept on it, put a claw through it, and got it dirty. Luckily none of the damage is permanent, but I'll have to wash it and will probably put it in a smaller hoop to hang on the wall. Cats!

Innocent and Lovely

No, definitely not Hazel at the moment :-/  It's a funny time for her at the moment I think, adjusting to being back home, different weather, different house, different food, different people, starting back at school in a week...I just look through the pattern books and imagine her wearing the innocent clothes and being lovely and not a grumpy little girl who calls me a meanie because I won't let her eat chocolate for breakfast. On the other hand she put a couple of to-dos on my list "Kes Mam" and "Hag Mam", did them, and then checked them off. So maybe she's lovely after all.

Here are some of the clothes in Innocent and lovely girls' wear by Mano Akiko, ISBN 457911194X. They're quite different to the other book, much more like the clothes in Tina Givens' book "Sew Tina!", looser, less structured. Naturally this means Hazel will be less inclined to wear them! Sigh.

I'll get the bad bit out of the way first:

I saw this image on a blog or somewhere and fell in love with the outfit and it's what decided me on this particular book. Well actually, the patterns associated with this image are the bag and the stupid hat. No cute shorts. No cute top. Well actually the top is probably one of the other patterns but the shorts aren't in the book. I'm so annoyed about that. Not that I've been mislead or anything, but I LOVE THOSE SHORTS! Sorry to shout but...you know. Hazel loves them too. I can try and adapt a short pattern that's in the book but that isn't as poofy, or alter the Brookies pattern in Tina's book which is too poofy, but it would be nice to start out with something just right. Let me know if you know of one and I'll be eternally grateful!

This is such a cute top - what do you think my chances are of getting Hazel to wear it? Not high.

Undies! They look rather amusing but I'd like to try the pattern anyways. And another leggings pattern is always welcome.

I'm going to make this, I don't care if Hazel never wears it.

This skirt was also one of the deciding patterns for buying the book and it's actually in it. Love it but Hazel already has stated she hates it. How does she know which ones to hate to annoy me the most and crush my delicate soul? I might try it anyways.

This coat is gorgeous, the curve of the yoke at the front is perfect.

The pants are sweet, I think I could sneak them past Hazel in a different fabric :)

This is all dreaming at the moment as both my sewing machine and overlocker are in for servicing, but I've got great plans I tell you. Of course, we're planning on having our house painted in the next month and I'll have to do some stripping of window frames beforehand, and I'll be doing a bit of teaching again at the end of next month, but there will be sewing, oh yes there will! It's the best chance I've had for ages, with Hazel back at school on the 7th and teaching doesn't start for another 3 weeks.

Ok, I'm going to try transferring the data from this old laptop to my new desktop with the ethernet cable instead of the 9-pin FireWire cable that I don't have (can I tell you how annoyed I was to find my FireWire cable isn't 9-pin and I couldn't get stuck into my new computer straight away?) If I never blog again you'll know it didn't work. :P

I'm back!

The good times in the snow are all over and we're back to green and luscious Auckland in the middle of a hot summer. It's taking some getting used to! I'd have more photos to show you but they're on a DVD and my laptop's disk reader has finally died after hinting at it for a couple years so I'm now pondering a new computer or fixing this old one! Either option is expensive.

Hazel and I came back with 4 pieces of luggage, most of which were her Christmas presents, but they did contain quite a lot of fabric and lots of books - some of which were craft-related! "Oh how surprising" you say.

I thought I'd show you a few bits and pieces from them all, especially the Japanese books and the delightful "All You Can Sew For Children" books I and II which date from 1972 and 1973. I stole them from mum and had a great time going through having flashbacks to clothes she'd made for me from them. Some of the photos of clothes are wonderful (in an unintentionally hilarious way sometimes) and I'm hoping to make a few of them up and see how they translate to modern sensibilities.

I bought the Japanese books from Yes Asia and they were meant to take a month to arrive but they actually beat me home (and no I suppose they weren't in my luggage then were they...) in less than 2 weeks! On the left: Innocent and lovely girls' wear by Mano Akiko, ISBN 457911194X, and on the right: Dressy Little Girl -From one piece dress to coat (Onnanoko no oshare fuku) by Araki Yuki, ISBN 4529045269 / 9784529045261.



These are the Yes Asia translations, I think I've seen them called different names elsewhere, so if you were looking for them I'd go on the ISBN. Dressy Little Girl is probably the most accessible of the two and I discovered I already have an earlier book by the same author.

The buttons down the back of this are gorgeous.

Oh my goodness I love this navy knit dress but Hazel hates high necks so I'd have to adapt it and the buttons wouldn't be as lovely. She'd like the skirt though.

The top is from the same pattern as above. The skirt has these cute little kick pleats at the back.


This is such a cute jacket, but I was just thinking it would make a great dressing gown too.


I'll take a few photos from the other book tomorrow!

Sewing from a Japanese craft book: Step-by-step

Since I'm about to make the 'Lola Dress' for Hazel from a Japanese craft book I thought that I'd document the process for anyone out there who is wanting to give it a go themselves. I should preface this by saying that I'm not especially brave, or an incredibly experienced seamstress, or a whizz at diagrams, nor do I read a skerrick of Japanese. So if I can do it so can you!  If you click through to the pictures on Flickr you'll find lots of notes that get specific about various parts of the pattern.

Well first off you need your book. Mine is Clothes for Girls, ISBN 4529044378 / 9784529044370 and I'm making Dress O

On the page opposite it says (in English) that the instructions are on p.58

So here we have the technical drawing of the dress, as well as the pattern layout which doubles as the list of pattern pieces you need.  The two books I have come with giant fold-out pieces of paper with all the pattern pieces on them a la Burda Style or Ottobre.

Eeep! I hear you say. Oh yeah, I still feel that way when I open them out. Nothing like lots of lines and Japanese characters to freak your brain out :)  If you'd like to understand the characters better I highly recommend the .pdf from Batty Chan which explains heaps.  But do not panic!  The little legend at the top of sheet B tells me that the pieces for O are in here somewhere

so I look for the English characters and eventually I see them.  It seems that patterns G, I and O are fairly similar and on on the same pieces so that's what I focus in on.   They're circled in red.  Often they'll be roughly grouped together and in a slightly different colour than other pieces.  It still takes some looking though!  You know what pieces you need from the pattern layout diagram, and how many.

Here are the front and back a bit closer up. You can see that it's really quite easy to distinguish the various pieces once you know where they are. If you use Burda or Ottobre you'll be a pro at this already!  In this picture I've noted some of the common symbols. Click over to Flickr to see them and more in note form.

Here are my pattern pieces, minus the collar, front band and cuffs because I misplaced them!  You can see I've done them with newsprint. Not ideal but I could just see the lines through it.  I used to have a big roll of Swedish tracing paper and if I'd known that Spotlight was going to stop carrying it I'd have bought 10!  Anyways, newsprint was what I had at the time and it did the job.

Like Burda and Ottobre, there aren't seam allowances included on these patterns so you'll need to leave space around the pieces to add that.  We'll cover that in the next post but generally it's 1 to 1.5cm and up to 3cm for hems.  You can see it added in on mine.  Remember to include all the little markings from the pattern, sometimes there can be quite a few depending on what you're making.  I've also marked on the grain and where the pieces are cut on the fold (using more standard notation). I also include the letter and the size its for.

Man's shirt to little girl's dress

Wheee! I'm so excited with how this came out.



There was a bit of fiddling and unripping required, and the bodice is a bit short at the front, but it looks so cute on her.  Well it would look cuter if she hadn't been so grumpy and unwilling to model! I'm not sure if she'll be that keen to wear it or not, but in this case I don't care - it was the challenge that I was interested in!  Check out the look in this one, 4 going on 14.

The belt is made from a light pink and white striped fabric.  We had picked out a blue print to make the belt from but in the end she decided she wanted this one. I might try and get her to have a blue one as well.  I think the contrasting colours will be the only thing that saves it from looking like a school uniform which is ironic considering she doesn't have to wear one when she starts (sadly).

The back has a yoke because the shirt did, it really adds to it and in fact I think I like the back more than the front for the lovely way it fits.  The grumpiness comes through in spades in this one, clenched fists and all. I'm such a mean mummy!

Good things about repurposing a shirt:

• Not having to do buttonholes or front facings.
• Not having to do hems
• Not having to do yokes

Not good things about repurposing a shirt:

• Not having enough fabric
• Unpicking pockets and labels

As usual I'm bowled over by the great fit of the Japanese pattern books, I mean, look at the shoulders and arms on this!  Beautiful.  Can't wait to make the Lola dress with the pattern and see how it turns out.  I had to bring the bodice of this dress in about 1.5cm on each side at the waist and it's still very loose-fitting so I think the original pattern will be fairly roomy.

Translated Nani Iro patterns

Oh joy, oh rapture, caloo calay! The Fabric Bar blog, along with Kiki, are offering English translations of the free Nani Iro patterns. So far they appear to have a Collared Dress, a Child's dress and Children's Pants. How gorgeous do they look made up in some Nani Iro from The Fabric Bar's shop? If you have any issues with the .pdfs on the site Amy will email you the files.

How to get ahold of those Japanese Sewing Books

I'm not even sure if this is something people worry about, but I can tell you that I spent an inordinate amount of time searching around for Japanese Sewing books here in NZ before realising that my only option was to order online. Then I spent an inordinate amount of time researching that! I don't like to just click and order, I need to agonise over something for ages and find out every single option, ignoring the law of diminishing returns, until I nearly collapse from the sheer volume of information. You should have seen me ordering a few bits of wool felt last month!

In the end I got mine from Yes Asia as they had the cheapest prices by far (free shipping!) - although as I discovered that's because they're as slow as a wet week in getting it to you! But they did come after a month or so, and really for those prices it was worth it. The site comes up regularly as a good place to buy them so it's not a fly-by-nighter by any means. As an English-speaker it's not the easiest site to navigate, although I notice that in the year since I got my books it's become heaps better. For craft books the categories you want are

Books in Japanese » Hobby/ Lifestyle/ Culture » Lifestyle » Home Arts. The direct link is here. Please note that this is the global site, if you want shipping to North America only then you want this link here. The books are listed by publication date (generally). I found the easiest way to find them was to look on other sites for books people have reviewed or provided photos of pages, and then go looking for them on Yes Asia because you can't look inside and they don't provide reviews of the books - in English anyways. You can do a Google search, check out Etsy sellers, or visit sites like Crafting Japanese, Angry Chicken, or Molly Chicken. Crafting Japanese has a big long list of lots of blogs who mention these books.

Damn, now I want to order some more books! How about this one - imagine the amount of time I'd need to waste before committing to buying a book that was both a Japanese craft book AND about wool felt? Welcome to the Felt Bakery

Japanese Sewing Book giveaway

I've had this Japanese sewing pattern book hanging around for a year or so now and I'm never going to use it so I thought give it away to someone who will!

I can't remember the name of it in English now, something like "Cotton Clothes", I'll see if I can find it translated somewhere. As with all these kinds of books, the instructions are in Japanese, but if you have sewing experience then they're not hard to decipher and they tend to be pretty simple patterns to begin with. From what I can figure from the measuring guide the sizes are small (bust 76cm, hips 84cm), M (82,88) and L (90,94) and the styles lend themselves to slimmer-figured women which is why I've never made anything from it. I love the way they look but most of them would make me look like the back end of a bus with the biggest bust ever! I love the clothes around at the moment but they so don't suit curvy women, can't wait until fashion swings back my way! Photos open to bigger versions if you click on them.

If you're interested in the book leave a comment with a way to contact you and of course there will be international shipping. And if you'd like an extra entry just blog about the give away and let me know in a separate comment (this seems to be the in thing for give-aways at the moment and who am I to buck the trend?). I will leave it open for a week and will draw on morning of Saturday the 9th NZ time.

My in-laws arrive for my graduation tomorrow and I'm losing my desk and regular internet connection for a few days, hence the blogging vacation. Hopefully my old laptop will hold up to a few wireless connections but I'll probably be playing hostess with the mostess and that doesn't really lend itself to surreptitious blogging. Ok, back to the cleaning frenzy!