Wednesday 30 December 2015

Front placket dress and a summer cardi

This is the front-placket dress from the lovely Japanese book Fu-Ko Basics: Girls' Clothes I Want to Make, and I would have given up on it pretty quickly were it not for this fabulous tutorial that Sanae put together (thank you! thank you!). There's nothing especially complicated about the dress, but the diagrams for constructing the placket are not very clear, and I suspect that even if the book were in English I'd find this particular pattern hopelessly confusing. With the tutorial, though, it's very do-able and I enjoyed seeing the dress come together. R insists that this is actually a tunic, and perhaps she's right - it did turn out on the short side. It's pictured in the book worn with leggings, a pattern for which is also included, so I tried them out and lo and behold, I seem to have found the perfect pattern for R's skinny legs. I used a lovely light linen from Kim Anh for the tunic and cotton/elastane jersey from my stash for the leggings, pictured below.

I found some beautiful (if overpriced) cotton knit at Spotlight - I don't know what it is, but it's not stretchy enough to be a jersey and not thick enough to be sweatshirt knit - which worked beautifully for this little short-sleeved cardigan. I used pattern F from A Sunny Spot, which is a bolero-length cardigan with buttons down the front, but I made mine waist-length with just two metal snaps at the top. It's comfy, easy to wear and goes with lots of R's clothes, so I imagine it'll get a lot of use. I'm less sure about the dress/tunic, because much as I love it, I suspect it might not be R's cup of tea.


All in all, a satisfying little outfit to sew, even if it's not exactly leggings weather around here. Next up, another dress from Fu-ko Basics - and it isn't blue!

8 comments:

  1. This is a brilliant outfit! I especially love the cardigan but it all goes so well together.

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    1. Thanks Masha. So many of R's clothes don't quite work together, so I've resolved to try to make more 'outfits' in future!

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  2. So pretty!! I love all the blues. The cross-grain placket is genius, just the right amount of detail to make the dress special.

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    1. Thanks Inder! You have no idea how long I agonised over which way to do the stripes - horizontal on the dress/vertical on the placket, or the other way round...

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  3. This dress is defeinitely on my to-sew list, once I've found the right fabric. I really like the cross-grain detail on your placket. Looking forward to another dress from the same book. Love that book.

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    1. Thanks Jing, it is a lovely book. I bought two new books and a magazine at the same time, so I now have heaps of new patterns I want to sew.

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  4. Wow, these are absolutely perfect! Love that front placket! And that cardigan is amazing! So much to love!

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    1. Thank you Rachel! The cardigan is definitely one I'll make again.

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