Before I start sewing my project I make sure I have all my pieces together. I cannot tell you how many times I've misplaced a piece and have to stop everything to cut it out again. It's a major pain since I don't have a dedicated sewing/cutting area. Sometimes it means moving everything out of the way just to cut and then moving everything back. YIKES!
I also iron my fusible interfacing to my fabric before I start. Then I sew a few lines on some of my leftover scrap fabric to make sure the tension is right. I do some stay stitching on the shoulders and armholes just in case. And I always have at least two bobbins wound. Now with all that done I'm ready to start.
Here are some more translated words from my directions:
ギャザ : gather
裏 : wrong side
表 : right side
ステッチ : stitch
バイアス布 : bias fabric
切り込む : clip
And the picture in case you can't see the characters.
Ok, now to the sewing. To accomplish this, all you need to is decipher the drawings. Most of the steps are easy to understand. It's the detailed drawings which can get a bit tricky, like in my directions: page 2 and page 3. But once you've figured it all out, you just sew in that order and you're done.
An example of my sewing order:
1. Sew the gathered front pieces to the yokes.
2. Sew the front to the back pieces at the shoulder.
3. Sew the side seams.
4. Fold up and sew the hem.
5. Fold and sew the front edges of the dress.
6. Sew the facings on the back and front pieces.
7. Make 2 button loops.
8. Sew the waistband area.
9. Sew the cuffs and sleeves.
10. Sew the sleeves into the armholes.
11. Sew the belt.
12. Sew the buttonholes and the buttons in the cuffs and the make the belt loops.
For those of you who are curious, I've gone into more details of the tricky steps on my dress here on my blog.
My next post will be the finished dress.
12 comments:
Thanks for all the tips. My biggest question though is about size. Americans have such a bigger frame and when I was in India...well, my shoulders were just too big. Are the patterns really designed for smaller framed people? I'm still tempted to try.
Opps, I think I should have said, English Americans....those of European decent. Does that make more sense?
Well they're too small for me all over! :) I resize the patterns. And I always make a muslin so then I can see if I need to make any other adjustments. Here is where I learned how to resize patterns.
Thanks for that link Korallin. Can you share where you get your big sheets of template plastic...I can't find it. Thanks again.
Do you mean the swedish tracing paper? I've never bought that before but I'm thinking about getting some from NearSea Naturals.
You are a treasure of info. Thanks so much.
You are the best !! Thank you so much, I was getting so frustrated with my japanese books !
You are the best, thank you so much for the info ! I was getting so frustrated with my Japanese sewing pattern books... :) !!
Thank you Korallin!
I've only recently become addicted to these Japanese pattern books and I thought I was slowly going insane trying to decipher them.
I wish I'd found your blog before I started as I've recently made both an enormous Japanese 'tent' dress and cut yet another item out without the seam allowance :(
Anyway, thanks to your blog, things are looking up!
Help! I can not figure out how to add seam allowance, I have many books going to waste......hutogirls@yahoo.com
The post on seam allowances is here.
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