FINISHED! Bird of Paradise raglan dress

A number of months ago now, I was offered Stylish Party Dresses from Tuttle Publishing to review and I have finally got around to blogging about my make. Despite loving a lot of the clothes, I settled on V, the raglan dress as my first make from this book.

I initially started making it out of some fabric from Tessuti but I messed up the tracing and cutting of the facing, so that version is still sitting in my unfinished pile.  It's an easy fix but I just haven't got back to it.  I then made it out of this gorgeous linen/cotton blend from Spotlight (Sarah has made some shorts out of so watch out for them!) as a wearable muslin as I had the intention of splurging and buying this gucci silk. Of course I rang today and it's all sold out. Booo :(

So, my gucci dress isn't to be, so let's just talk about this one. Up front it's not a woohoo make.. and that's not just because it's not in the gucci fabric!  I like the fabric, I like the style, but something just doesn't click for me. Maybe it's the length, or the sleeves or something. I like how it's a bit trapeze- y which is probably due in part to the heavy fabric. But, well, I just think I've looked better. And there is a bit of white leaf on the neck which bugs me!

The dress is super easy to put together (once you get the facing traced correctly) and I love a facing - so much easier than binding. It is really long which i was surprised about so hacked a lot off the bottom (maybe too much?).  It doesn't have any pockets so I stuck a patch pocket in between the right and middle of the dress. It's an odd placement but I like it.  You can't see it in these pictures due to my fantastic pattern matching ! :)

In the dress's defense, I wore it to work yesterday and got a heap of compliments and wore it most of the day with my white sneakers on as I had walked from the car park and never bothered to change my shoes and actually really liked it that way. I will definitely wear it to work on really hot days as there is nothing more comfy than a loose shift and the massive patch pocket makes it feel like a bit of a house dress.

I'm loving all the foliage prints out at the moment and finding it hard to resist buying them all. I have a pair of foliage culottes which I'll blog soon. We'll be home be home before Christmas and I have a big backlog of makes to blog so I'd better get on with it!

The winner of Stylish Party Dresses is....

I'm a bit late drawing the winner of this competition as I had hoped to have a fresh make to show you but alas not yet. So without further ado congratulations to House of Lane! I'll be popping the book in the mail to you sooon!

GIVEAWAY! Stylish Party Dresses by Yoshiko Tsukiori

The good folk at Tuttle Publishing provided me with the newly released Stylish Party Dresses by Yoshiko Tsukiori to review (with a spare copy to give away!). Of all the books I've received (apart from She has a Mannish Style - which I already had in the original Japanese), this is the one that has most excited me. Yoshiko Tsukiori will be well known to anyone who has sewn from a Japanese pattern book. She created the extremely popular Stylish Dress Books and the Happy Homemade series.  The styles suit so many people.

This books carries on the same simple style with a twist of quirk that those books do and with the quintessential Tsukiori styling and the addition of some unbelievable wallpaper I find the patterns hard to resist. There are easily a number of dresses (and a jumpsuit) that I will make up from this book.

The book is primarily dresses and comes with full size pattern pieces - which need to be traced and seam allowances added. Which is pretty standard for Japanese books. This is the English translation and the instructions seem to be ok with a diagram to assist. There are also quite a few how to's.  I am currently making up Mini Dress with Raglan Sleeve and haven't had any problems so far (but I've had to take a mini break as our extension work took over). I hope to finish this weekend if I find a place to sew. After I do that I'll be able to report back, but I am confident that they are of the same  standard as the other Yoskiko Tsukiori books.

So here are a few more pictures to whet your appetite for the book. Clearly that liberty jumpsuit has my name ALL over it.

And I am completely fascinated with this one below!

I'll see you soon hopefully with a new dress, but if you are interested in winning this book - and let's face it - who wouldn't! Leave a comment below. I'll randomly pick a winner next Friday 18 September. Good Luck!