Here are the rest of my tips for tracing pattern pieces from your Japanese sewing books.
Tip #6 - No need to go crazy. For the first pattern or two that I traced, I was really worried about complete accuracy. I ironed the pattern paper (low iron, no steam) and taped my tracing material on to the pattern sheet. I'm still pretty careful, but I find that smoothing out the pattern sheet with my hands and using a spare ruler to hold down my tracing material works just fine. I don't have any pattern weights yet, but that would probably work great, too.
Tip #7 - Take a look at the cutting diagram. I hardly ever do this for English patterns. For the Japanese patterns, it's more to figure out which pieces I need to cut out than anything else. Here's an example of one:
So I can see from this that I need to cut out a back and a front, 2 sleeves, 2 collar pieces, and a long strip - probably some bias tape or neck facing.
Actually finding the pieces can be quite challenging - like "Where's Waldo" but worse. So far, in my experience, once I find one piece on a page (most of my books have come with 1 or 2 huge pages of pattern pieces on both sides - so, at most, you only have to look at 4), the rest of the pieces are on that same page. If your cutting diagram has some long, rectangular strips, you won't necessarily find them on the pattern sheet. You can see from the diagram above that the pattern calls for 2 strips that are 3 cm wide. There's probably a length measurement that I cut off in the photo. We all can cut a rectangle without a pattern piece, so it's probably just as well that they're not included in the pattern sheet. I have only one pattern for a skirt with a waistband that did have the pattern piece - probably more for the button placement than anything else.
Because there's so much overlap of the pieces, you really have to find one line . . .
Then sort of trace it all around with your eyes (and eventually your pen/pencil) to figure out which piece it is and where it starts and ends. You can see that instead of having a big fat letter in the middle of the pattern piece, there's just a relatively small letter pointing to one of the lines. It's pointing at the 130 size line, so if you're not making that size, find the closest line to the size you are making. You can see the 100, 110, 120, and 130 that this pattern came in in the photo above.
One thing these patterns do have in common with English patterns is that they do use a letter to represent the item of clothing that you are making and luckily they are English characters. In this case I was tracing the sleeve for shirt pattern "H".
The other reason to look at the cutting diagram is that all seam allowances are not created equal. I only just realized this recently. See the little "2" near the center bottoms of the sleeves, front, and back? That's telling you to add a 2 cm seam allowance there instead of whatever you've been using. If it's not indicated in the diagram, then you just use your regular seam allowance. You can also see that it's telling me to do something funky with the bottom of the piece on the left. (I haven't quite figured out what to do yet, but it looks like I need to add 3 cm on the left, and cut a little rectangle out of the bottom.)
Tip #8 - Watch out for pieces inside pieces. I recently made a shirt where no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find the back neck facing piece. I finally decided that I would just trace the neck on the back pieces and just cut a few inches below the back line. As I was thinking about how I would do that, it occurred to me that I had seen the exact same thing on the pattern piece for the back. There was the back piece which I traced then inside of that - right where you would sew it - was the back neck facing piece. I know that would make much more sense with a photo. I'll try to add one tonight.
The other tricky thing is that sometimes you can make both a dress and a shirt with the same front and back pattern pieces, so even when you've found the right piece, make sure you're selecting the right length.
Tip #9 - Pay attention to the symbols. There are a few different indicators to tell you where to cut or where to place a button or a pocket. These are on the actual pattern pieces (not in the cutting diagram). I think the symbols are pretty self-explanatory, but you sometimes have to really look to find them. Because there is so much overlap of all the pieces, it can be really hard to see all the different pattern markings. I try to take a look and get an idea where they all are in a certain piece before I lay down my tracing material - just because they're a bit easier to see that way. (I still forget sometimes. Sometimes I even have to whip out the whole big-butt pattern piece while I'm in the middle of sewing because I just know there should have been a mark somewhere that I didn't make.)
The most important one is the dashed line. They're pretty big dashes, so you might not notice at first, but this indicates a fold line. If you cut on this line instead of placing the piece on your fabric's fold, that's a pretty much unrecoverable mistake. (I suppose you could sew them together with a small seam.)
The other really useful one is a little tick mark with a circle at the end of it. These are the equivalent of the little arrows you see in most typical patterns written in English. Those little arrows that are such a pain in the butt to cut out. For Japanese sewing, I just cut a little snip into the fabric's seam allowance wherever I see one of the little tick marks then line up my snips instead of lining up the arrows.
Here's an example of what they look like:
This happens to be the top back of a sleeve. You don't have to mark and snip all 8 tick marks. If you look closely, you can see that there are two for each size. You only have to mark and snip the 2 for the size you're making. Don't forget to bring them out to the new line you're drawing with the seam allowance.
These little tick marks can appear anywhere on the pattern pieces, but they're almost always at the center, back, and front of a sleeve - the top curvy part - with corresponding ones on the front and back body pieces - the armpits. The two tick marks usually indicate the back of the sleeve and the single one indicates the front.
Some other common places you'll need to mark are pockets:
(See the lighter colored dashed lines? These are where you'll place your pocket - not fold lines in this case.)
And buttonholes.
(The one on the top is the same for all sizes. The bottom one is slightly different for each size. You'll obviously mark the one you're making.)
The line with arrows on either end is the grainline, just like in most U.S. patterns.
Tip #10 - Label your pattern pieces. So there's not going to be the nice little directions that come with U.S. patterns, like "Cut 1 on fold" or "Cut 2 fabric, cut 2 interfacing" or even "bodice back" or "sleeve", but you can certainly provide those labels yourself - after all you worked so hard to figure it all out. I usually write the name of the book (which I sometimes make up if there's no English name on the book like "Bubble Dress Girl"), the letter of the pattern, the pattern piece, and the size. Here's a sleeve pattern piece all cut out.
I should mention that I don't precut all the pattern pieces. There's really no need to do that. I just trace them then when I get ready to cut the fabric, I just sloppily cut around them enough to free them from the rest of the pattern pieces, then cut them at the same time as I cut the fabric. I know that probably doesn't make much sense. I'll include some pictures when I do a post about cutting the fabric - hopefully tomorrow. Just know that you don't have to neatly cut all the pattern pieces out of your tracing material.
Tip #11 - Keep your patterns organized. You've already done a ton of work and you found some nice, durable tracing material, and the patterns are just so darn cute that you're probably going to want to make the same pattern a bunch of times. Or better yet, combine different pattern pieces to create a completely new design. So you might as well keep them nice and organized. I bought a box of these big envelopes at Staples two years ago when I was doing virtual quilting bees. 
It was nice to have the envelopes on hand back then, but they've also come in really handy for all my pattern pieces. I try to use one envelope per pattern, per size.
Whew! I hope this is all helping. I didn't expect to have so many tips about tracing the pattern pieces. I'm not sure I'll have so many about the rest of the process, but this is probably the hardest - and least fruitful - part.
Don't hesitate to post a comment or shoot me an e-mail if you have any questions.
I feel a little pretentious trying to dole out tips for sewing in Japanese when 1. I don't consider myself an expert seamstress and 2. I don't speak or read Japanese. (My worst fear is that someone who speaks Japanese and sews really well will read this and chuckle at all the mistakes I'm making.) I do have some things that seem to work for me though, so I thought I would try to share.
I was pretty overwhelmed when I cracked open my first Japanese pattern book. Nothing is what you're used to - some of the books even go from what I would consider back to front. There's a lot to figure out - as if sewing in your own language isn't hard enough. The best tip I can give is to pick a pattern that you're really motivated to sew. Yes, it's good to start with something simple, but if you don't love it, you might give up more easily and end up neglecting your beautiful Japanese pattern books and using them for nothing more than pretty pictures.
Okay - enough lecture - here are my tips for tracing the pattern pieces.
Tip #1 - Yes, you do have to trace the pattern pieces. Don't even think you're going to cut out the one pattern you want from the paper insert that came with the book and throw away the rest. I'm only saying this because I've done this before. I was very sorry when I did that for the size 3 Oliver & S Jumprope dress and later wanted to make the size 4. Even if you're quite sure you'll never, ever care about that, these pattern inserts are a big spider-webby mess of overlapping pattern pieces that make cutting out even one pattern almost impossible.
Tip #2 - Find some good pattern tracing material. I've tried tissue paper and lightweight interfacing. Both of those just frustrated me. I finally found the solution at one of my local fabric stores, Sew Portland, in this Bosal Create a Pattern. It comes in a 5 yard roll which can cover quite a few patterns. It lays nice and flat and even kind of sticks to your fabric when it comes time to cut. I love the stuff.
Tip #3 - Figure out what size you're going to make. Easy, right? I almost gave up right then and there. I'm used to making a size 4 or 5 for my 4-year-old. What's up with this 110, 120, stuff? Most of the books have a little diagram like this:
in between the photo pages and the how-to-make pages. This one is from one of my Happy Homemade books. Some of the books I've purchased more recently don't have the nice little image of the girl, but this one is especially helpful so you can match the Japanese words to the body parts.
In this case, if my daughter is 120 cm tall with a 62 cm chest and a 53 cm waist and 65 cm hips - or measurements somewhat close to that, I would make the size 120. I haven't played around with mixing sizes, but you could certainly do that the way you would with any other pattern.
To be honest, I haven't really measured since the first pattern I made. Then I had nothing to relate the size to, so I really needed to do this to figure out where to start. If someone could have told me size 100 = size 3, etc., I would have just gone with that. I definitely wouldn't want to be responsible for you making the wrong size, but, so far, in my experience, for my pretty average-sized daughter; 100 = size 3, 110 = size 4, and 120 = size 5/6. I also take into account the photos - just a bit. I've been making the size 120 for everything lately, but one shirt I wanted to make was really baggy in the photos, so I decided to make one size down.
Whew, I guess I could have done a whole post on size alone!
Tip #4 - Relax and Make some Room. Tracing the pattern pieces is probably the most difficult and frustrating part of the whole process. Don't try to do this in the 10 free minutes you have between work and driving one of the kids to soccer practice. Make sure you have plenty of time and do whatever else you need to do to fend off frustration and increase concentration. Grab a glass of wine, kick the kids (and definitely the cat) out of the room - whatever it takes. Also make sure you have plenty of room. You really need to be able to spread out the whole pattern paper. You'll want plenty of light, too.
I'm far from a neat freak, but my sewing desk is usually already pretty free of clutter, so I just put my sewing machine down on the floor, then I have plenty of room for pattern tracing. While I have everything set up, I like to trace 3 or 4 patterns that I know I'm going to make at a time.
Tip #5 - Yes, you have to add seam allowances. I didn't know this at first - or didn't want to know it. The first thing I made just happened to work somehow, but the second thing I made didn't even come close to fitting over my daughter's head. After getting some tips from some readers on how to add seam allowances, I ended up taping two pens together.
Wherever there's a curve, even a slight one, I trace right on my size line with the green pen and the black pen creates the line where I'll eventually cut. Wherever there's a straight line, I just use one of my quilting rulers. I line the 3/8" line up with the line on the pattern then draw a line along the ruler for my cutting line. Your seam allowance can be whatever you want it to be - unless otherwise indicated by the cutting diagram* - as long as you keep it the same throughout. My two pens end up being about 3/8".
Shoot, I'm running out of time. I have a few more tips about pattern tracing I want to share, so check back in tomorrow for those.
*More on this tomorrow.
My new Japanese pattern books arrived last week. I was so excited and surprised to get them. When I ordered them from YesAsia on one of the last days of December, the web-site predicted about 4 weeks. I'm not normally very patient, but I'm trying. Sometimes, I have to be to get what I really want. (The old me would have tried to find a similar pattern at a chain fabric store and never been satisfied.)
My books arrived on the 18th - over a week ahead of schedule. Amazingly no one was home when I got home from work and saw the package sitting on the counter. I wasn't quite sure if it was the books or some fabric I had ordered recently, but I grabbed the package and raced up to my craft room sanctuary to open it up.
I turned on my kerosene heater and sank into my cozy chair.
(sans dog) And spent the next hour or so going over and over the books just drooling and thinking about what I would make.
These are the two books I bought.
I'm so happy with them. I've already made one thing and have another underway. I'm dying to share them, but I'm so obsessed now that I want to make some pants to go with the shirt I made for the full effect.
I thought it would be nice to share some of the things I've learned along the way with sewing from Japanese patterns. I'm definitely not an expert, and I'm probably doing a gazillion things wrong, but check back in tomorrow. I'm going to share some tips for the first step - tracing the pattern pieces.
After I finished up my last batch of clothing, I thought I might try to finish up some other projects that have been laying around for quite a while. I have at least 5 quilt tops and at least 5 pillows-to-be. The pillows are sandwiched and ready to quilt, so I thought that would be pretty easy to tackle. I did the first one with my usual stippling, but I got kind of bored with that and thought I should branch out into some different types of quilting.
I did a bit of googling and came across a pretty cool site that I had seen before, The Free Motion Quilting Project. I'm sure you've probably heard of it before, but she has like a gazillion different types of quilting each with a handy-dandy uTube video to help you figure out how to do it. How generous is that?!
I wanted to try a whole bunch of them, but I didn't want to just practice and then throw my practice piece away. I mean, what if I liked how it came out? So before I knew it, another project was born (without finishing a single UFO). I can't seem to find it again now, but I remember seeing some cute, simple pillows on the Oh, Fransson blog. They were just made up of four solid squares with different quilting in each one.
I decided to do the same thing.
I think I would have liked it better if I had just made 4 squares, but I made them too small to make even a very small pillow, so I added the border. It worked out okay because it gave me two more quilt patterns to try.
Here are the different quilting patterns I tried with the links to The Free Motion Quilting Project web site for that pattern.
Top Left - Angles and Circles
Top Right - Paisley
Bottom Left - Pebbles
Bottom Right - Desert Sand
Left & Right Borders - Echo Rainbow
Bottom and Top Borders - Rain Forest Leaf
My favorite one to actually sew was Rain Forest Leaf, but the one I like the look of best is the pebbles. I can't quite get my head around how any of these might fit into a quilt with lots of prints. I like the way stippling makes all the different fabrics seem to melt together, and I feel like some of the other patterns I tried will either take away from the printed fabrics or the printed fabrics would hide the cool quilting designs. I guess the trick is to find the right combination.
But I'm over my little dalliance with quilting and ready to get back to sewing clothes again. So much for those UFO's!
I did get a photo of Addie in the latest shirt I made for her. I made her model it with the scarf because, as my husband pointed out, without that, it looks a little like Sam Adams' shirt - yeah - the beer guy. He's kind of right. Arggh.
We're going out of town this weekend for a mini family getaway. Even though I travelled by myself a lot last year, looking back, we figured out that we didn't spend a single weekend away the entire year last year. One of the six of us always seemed to have some kind of commitment. One of our, up-until-now-unwritten New Year's resolutions is to try to do some fun weekend activities - commitments be damned. We're not going far, but everyone is excited. The kids are excited to stay in a hotel - with a pool. My husband and I are excited to get away from home and all of its demands. If we're here, there's always some task to be done. Whether we do it or not is a different story, but the feeling like you should be doing it is still there. If you're out of town, you don't have to see it or think about it. A few hours of work/school and we're on our way!
I have to admit that I will miss my sewing machine just a bit, but I plan to visit a fabric store and bring some knitting.
I finished this outfit last night.
It's another one from this Japanese book.
I used a pretty heavy white linen for the shirt. It really hangs nicely and seems like it will hold up pretty well. The sleeves each have 3 little pintucks that don't really show in the photo. Addie's still asleep, and it's still dark out, but I hope to get some photos of her wearing it this weekend.
The shorts are just some fabric from JoAnn Fabrics marked as bottom weights. They're mostly cotton with a bit of Lycra. I think Addie will like the bit of stretch. It's not exactly shorts weather here right now (we got what seems like a foot of snow yesterday), but I was thinking she might be able to wear them with tights if it's not too cold.
The purse was really fun to make - also from the book. It's a surprise for Addie, so she can use it if we do any shopping this weekend.
It was the last one I had planned and precut last weekend, so now I have a clean slate to decide what to work on next. Well, not really. I should work on my dozens of unfinished projects. Maybe I will. And my craft room could use a straightening. Then I'll have clean slate. I never used to be a neat freak, but I'm starting to get quite obsessive about having my craft room clean.
Have a great weekend!
I guess it's really more of a jumper.
It's from this Japanese Pattern book.
(ISBN: 978-4-529-04767-8)
I had a small list of patterns that I was going to trace while I had my desk cleared off and the big piece of paper unfolded. This wasn't even on the list, but it just seemed like it would be fun to make. It jumped to the front of the queue. It's funny how that happens.
It was fun to make. I liked the elastic at the neck and the slightly gathered pockets. The seam binding for the seams on either side of the front that turns into the neck finishing went more smoothly than I expected. Addie was excited about pockets but wants me to make them go all the way to the hem of the dress next time. Hmmm. We'll see. (See the Twizzlers? Yes, I had to bribe her to do the photo thing.)
It's a good pattern for showcasing a big and/or busy print that might be overwhelming in a whole dress - or that you might just not have enough of. In my case, it was the solid red that I barely had enough of, but I think you could probably get away with a quarter yard (but not a fat quarter - that's probably obvious) of the fabric for the middle - maybe a third just to be safe. I'd love to do the same dress with a Heather Ross print for the middle piece. It would really showcase some of the fairy story prints and would be less painful to to my wallet to only have to buy a bit.
The solid red is a really cool, drape-y, almost stretchy linen that I got at Alewive's. I kept trying to use up the rest of it in various patterns I was making, but I just couldn't make it stretch - until now.
I made the Oliver & S hat a while ago, but I'd never had a chance to photograph it, so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone. (Oops, I'm told the more animal-friendly way to say that is feed two birds with one seed.)
Are you expecting snow in your area? We are, but it's hard to tell if it will amount to much. The kids are already contemplating a snow day.
Looking back, I actually didn't even list this as a resolution for 2011. Perhaps it was so ingrained in me by the end of 2010 that I didn't think it required a written resolution. 2011 was the second year where I did a 365 photography project. Most of you have probably heard of this, but it's simple - you just take a picture every day for the entire year. Well, and then there's the choosing which one you like best for the day, processing it, and publishing it. Publishing it is definitely optional, but I like to do that - really more for myself than anything. (You can get to mine from the little 365 link on my blog header if you're interested.)
It's that second set of steps that tend to get away from me which can overwhelm me into not wanting to do the first step. The actual photo taking is - or can be - such a small thing that it's hard to find an excuse not to do it, but honestly, it gets to be kind of like brushing your teeth. It's so easy and quick, but you might already be in bed, and you do it all the time, and no matter how minor, sometimes you just don't feel like doing it. Sometimes you forget where you left your toothbrush/camera or just don't like the toothpaste/photo ops that you have.
The first year, I did the project, I hardly missed any days - maybe 15 altogether. This year, I'd be surprised if I did half. I sort of cheated and filled in the missing days with other photos I'd taking around the same time. I'm okay with that. (Don't worry, I haven't missed that many days of brushing my teeth.)
This year, I also got quite discouraged with my camera. It's a Nikon D70 that I've had for well over 6 years (7?, 8?), and I loved it for a long time, but I never seem to be able to get my pictures quite the way I like them. In my first year of doing a 365 project, I learned so much about my camera. I learned about aperture and shutter speed and metering and different lenses and ISO. For a long time, I always shot in manual mode. Lately I've been shooting in aperture priority mode. Nonetheless, I still don't love many of my photos. They seem dark and grainy. (I've given up on using an ISO higher than 400.) When I pull the photos in to my blog, they seem even worse.
Recently, I've begun to shift the blame away from the camera and on to my blog. I'm wondering if they've somehow reduced the quality of the photos. It definitely seems worse lately, and I think the photos look a bit better on flickr than on my blog. I'm also blaming the lack of natural light in my house. We have good amount of windows, but we live in a pretty densely populated neighborhood with nearby houses blocking the light at most hours of the day.
Much as I hate to admit it, it might just be the operator.
I'm sorry to sound so negative. In spite of all that, I would highly recommend doing a 365 project. I think I will do it for the rest of my life. I will keep trying to improve and maybe someday buy a new camera. I have loved being able to go back through my photos for the past two years. I know I would have taken plenty of photos no matter what, but I never would have organized them in such a way - or to be honest - organized them at all. I also never would have taken pictures of our everyday life. Those of the ones that are not the most artistic, but are such a great record of our lives. One of these days, I'll put them all into a book. Blurb is my favorite source for that.
I just finished going through all my 2011 365 photos, putting them up on my 365 blog, and creating monthly mosaics. Even with some frustration, impatience, and complaining, I'm so happy to have them here. (I made my husband go through each and every one.)
Here are some of my favorites for the year.
1. 27xExcited, 2. 01UncooperativeModel, 3. 22WoodenSpools, 4. 23NewHat, 5. 6CakoCupcake, 6. 30AtTheLake, 7. 4NewPencils, 8. 28Sunset, 9. 27GoodConversation, 10. 20xEmu8-8, 11. 6Baseball, 12. 3Poppies, 13. 31xFirstSummerGrillNight, 14. Catch2, 15. 9SeppeltsfieldBarrels, 16. Catch, 17. 20WakingUp, 18. 11GameDay, 19. 10Mum, 20. 6Tween, 21. 5Pears, 22. 24PreEasterCleaning, 23. 17SunnyCraftRoom, 24. 12SeasonBegins
I haven't made any New Year's Resolutions for 2012 yet (I'm kind of waiting for them to hit me), but I did review my 2011 resolutions. Here's one that I failed at miserably:
"Make a homemade meal once a week. It always amazes me that I can be a mother of four and hardly ever cook (confession #1). My husband does almost all of the cooking. He's an amazing cook. He especially excels at meals like Thanksgiving and Christmas, but on regular days, it's still usually chicken nuggets, mac & cheese, etc. He does make sure we all get our veggies, so there's those, too. I've already started in on this one. Last weekend, I made a meatball recipe from The Pioneer Woman blog. It'll be such an event for me that I'll probably blog about it, but I'll also be keeping a list of recipes I've made here. I'm hoping to try something new every week, but I'm not going so far as to make that a resolution."
Looking back at my blog, I made one meal, and that was it. I'm sure I must have made a few more throughout the year but nothing blogworthy. I must get the urge to make a nice homemade meal every January because I made quiche this weekend.
I used this recipe for Carmelized Onion quiche. I ended up overcooking the onions, so it wasn't a big success. The crust was pretty good though. I made an extra crust to keep in the freezer. I'm hoping to start doing a bit of investment cooking - just on a very small scale.
A full two days later, I am still smelling like onions. Lovely.
Even though we seem to slowly be getting back up to speed with kids activities (dance and baseball this weekend) and had a big birthday to celebrate, it was a nice, relaxed weekend. I got in a bit of sewing and even some knitting and a walk. Oh, and I'm working on some sourdough bread. I'm one day away from actually making the bread after having started last weekend. Talk about slow food!
