Upcycled Shirt/Apron and an Ergonomic Oven Glove!

Having large selection of Japanese Pattern Books means that there are quite a few that I haven't sewn from.

 

'Cotton Friend' is a more unusual Japanese Pattern Book in that it resembles a magazine rather than book format. I would have loved to subscribe to a Japanese pattern magazine like this, but I can safely say that won't happen unless I get around to doing a Japanese language course!

 

 

 

Sometimes, patterns stand out & are put on the mental, never-ending to-do list. This apron pattern from 2010 is one that I always thought was a clever use of fabric. It came to mind when I found the perfect shirt fabric for an apron and oven glove set that I wanted to gift to a friend. Lack of understanding Japanese is usually no barrier to sewing from Japanese patterns and this magazine is exactly the same with excellent diagrams.

 

 

 

I cut the apron from the back of the shirt, utilising the shirt yoke as a detail for the top of the apron. I adapted the pattern by using less shirt fabric than the pattern suggested because I didn't want the apron to wrap around so much.

 

 

My clever daughter came up with the simple idea of adding a button to the apron to hold the matching oven gloves as she thought it would be easier to find the oven gloves when they were needed!

 

 

 

 

When looking for a ribbon for the hanging loop, I found a perfectly coordinating (more like camouflaged) ribbon from Jane Means - the beautiful Whitby Striped Ribbon . It picks up all the colours in the paisley fabric - a design from Portabellopixie.

Perhaps I should have titled this post 'Spot the Ribbon'!!

 

 

Oven gloves always seemed badly designed and uncomfortable to use. I thought a lot about the design and having sewn the mitten pattern in the Oliver + S book 'Little Things to Sew' I decided to adapt it to create a thumb section for these double oven gloves.

 

 

The two major changes involved in using the Oliver+S pattern were lengthening the thumb portion of the pattern and adding a lining. Because of the thumb design, there is only a small amount of padding/wadding needed in the palm section of the pattern.

Adding binding helps the glove come together easily.

 

 

These oven gloves turned out very well. I could do with one of these myself and the only improvement I can think of is to move the thumb section more towards the centre so that it can fit both the right or left hand easily.

I'm not sure if a bottle of wine would have been more appreciated as a house-warming gift, but my friend seemed delighted with the set.

 

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A 'Drapey' Japanese Bubble Dress

When I read about Japanese Pattern Sewalongs there is often a related increase in my sewing, and it was no different when Celina from petitapetitfamily.com and Mie from sewinglikemad.com wrote about their year long sewjapan series back in January.

This is the Japanese pattern book I chose as the dress on the cover is one of my favourites and sewn (& blogged) many times - a sweet version in ladybird corduroy & a pair of bubble dresses for twins.

This time I chose a drapey, pre-pleated fabric from my local fabric shop, though I had doubts if it would hold the 'bubble' effect of the fabric.

When it was sewn up, the fabric gave an a-line shape to the dress. My daughter who had wanted a more fitted dress was happier with this.

This bubble dress is easy to sew, and the Japanese instructions are easy to follow because of the detailed diagrams. My one issue with this pattern is the joining of the lining and the outer fabric which leaves an exposed seam.

As usual, I prefer a clean finish with all seams hidden, something that is particularly important for children's clothes.

For this version I cut the back pattern piece in two, rather than placing it on the fabric fold. (I listed the sewing instruction steps in this post). This allows the dress hem to be pulled out through the back seam and sewn so that it is hidden when the dress is finished . I then sewed an exposed zip and attached the lining at the same time to finish the dress.

The finish is so clean that the dress could almost be worn inside out.

The 'bubble' effect allows for the imagination of an active 9 year old!

We felt the solid colour of the fabric needed something else, so settled on adding ribbons to one of the shoulder seams. We decided that this brown stitched ribbon from janemeans.com would work. These can be left untied or tied in bows. Interestingly, after this was sewn, Burdastyle included a girls dress pattern in the March magazine which had wide ribbon on both shoulders!

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