Wednesday, January 30, 2013

What I'm reading: I Am Cute Dresses

One of my favorite places to pick up sewing books is my local library. I'm lucky to live in a large college town, which also has a great city library. There are quite a few sewing books, so I can usually find something I want to browse. Some books I use for detailed instruction, some I just look at the pictures and maybe make some sketches/note ideas for later. Right now, I'm doing the latter for this book, I Am Cute Dresses, by Sato Watanabe.

Source: Amazon

This book was originally published in Japan. The first half of the book features 25 different dress designs. The last half gives instructions for cutting and assembling. There are no patterns included, just dimensions and illustrations of the general shapes. The dimensions were originally written in metric and then converted when the book was published in America, so keep that in mind if you happen to be creating anything from it.

Most of the dresses featured are simple, boxy silhouettes, and are over-sized. Almost every time I finish a new garment, I show it off to my husband and he tells me it looks too big. So, the large shapes in this book probably won't make it into my project list. I'm also cheap when it comes to fabric, so if I have to buy three yards of material just to make a baggy dress, I'd rather buy one yard and make a shirt! There were a few details I liked in some dresses, and those are the ones I've noted for later. One dress showed an asymmetrical top with buttons on one side. As a mother nursing a baby, dresses can be hard to wear unless there's some way to whip out a snack for AB. I can't exactly pull UP a whole dress, so being able to pull down/button down a neckline is important.

If you like intentionally roomy designs, then I'd say you'll find a few things to love in this book. For me, it's mostly a pass, but like always I'm trying to learn something no matter what!

No comments:

Post a Comment

I would love to hear from you! Please feel free to comment below.

Newsletter sign up

.