Sew-Along 2 – The Balloon Dress

I’m finally going to make this dress!

It’s funny because the dress was the reason why I bought this book. Instead, I have made other dresses from it but never got around to making this one. I really like the purple fabric in the picture, but it’s so hard to find the same shade.

According to the materials list, it is a cotton fabric (90cm wide). There are no other specifics with regards to the fabric in the book. Even the fabric resources did not mention the source for dress A. I imagined it will be really nice in a linen because it will add to the body of the dress. One of my friends made it in a light blue linen. Very pretty! There are also pictures of the same dress on our flickr group by Sew2Pro and An from Straightgrain. An made it in a couple of beautiful Japanese fabrics like this one in Nani Iro fabric.

Materials needed (based on the how-to-make above),
For sizes 100/110/120/130,

1. Cotton fabric (90cm width) – 2.2m/2.6m/2.9m/3.1m
2. 1 x 1cm diameter button

**Important point to note – the dress is made up of two layers, with the inside layer being shorter and narrower than the outer layer. If you like, the inner layer can be made out of plain cotton or just a co-ordinating fabric as it will not be seen. That will reduce the amount of surface fabric needed. Also, as the fabric used in the book is only 90cm wide, the cutting diagram actually showed the fabric being cut cross-grain instead of along the grain. It could be due to how wide the outer dress needs to be to create the balloon effect. If you have a print that is direction specific, you might need to consider cutting it straight-grain (parallel to the selvedge). Or if you have a fabric which is wider  (for example if you are using linen it is usually much wider), you could cut along the grain and use less fabric.

NEW COMMENT ON FABRIC REQUIREMENT – added 12th Aug 2012

I made the balloon dress today using the yellow gauze fabric which was 110cm wide, turns out that if I cut the cloth along the grain (parallel to the selvedge), the fabric was barely enough width wise for size 120cm. If I was making the 130cm size instead, I would have needed to cut it cross-grain like the cutting diagram below, since the width was not wide enough. And that will mean I will need at least 2m of cloth if I am only using it for the outer layer. So it’s a good idea to stick to the fabric requirements. Better to be safe than sorry! 🙂

So these are the two fabrics I have shortlisted. Both are Japanese double gauze fabrics. The top one is a light blue with what looks like pink and green polka dots. But can you see the pears and strawberries? Super cute! I bought it in Hokkaido where they had a section for summer fabrics, on the selvedge it says “Happy Baby Printed in Japan”. The one below was purchased in Singapore. There are not many choices for double gauze fabrics here. Interesting thing to note, in Japan the double gauze fabrics are labelled – “W-gauze”. Is it because it sounds like “double”?

So this is the book that the pattern is from. I reviewed it previously but for those of you what want to buy it before the sew-along (or even after), the ISBN number is 978-4-579-11289-0. It is easier to search  by ISBN number for online sources since everybody translates the title differently.

For the sew-along, it will be held over 3 days as well. I know some of you sew real quick so you can always wait till the last day and do all of it at one shot! 🙂 It will be held on from 27-29 August so hopefully that gives you some time to get hold of the book. Even if you miss it, the instructions are always here on the blog for you to refer to later.

ETA : Great news! This book is now available in English and the title is called Linen, Wool, Cotton Kids

Buy now from Amazon (affiliate link)

Links to the sew-along

Go to Day 1 of Balloon Dress Sew-Along
Go to Day 2 of Balloon Dress Sew-Along
Go to Day 3 of Balloon Dress Sew-Along

So just to summarize the above,

Japanese Sewing Books – The Balloon Dress Sew-Along
Date : 27,28,29 August 2012
Book : おしゃれが好きな女の子の服
ISBN no : 978-4-579-11289-0
Materials needed : 1. Cotton fabric (90cm width) – 2.2m/2.6m/2.9m/3.1m
(see special note** above on fabric requirement)
2. 1 x 1cm diameter button

If you have a blog and you are sewing along, grab the buttons below and put them on your blog!

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