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Free tutorial and sewing video – The nani IRO reversible shoulder bag

March 27, 2013

Finally, the tutorial is up! It’s terribly late by my own standards because I was planning to release this on Monday but it’s already Wednesday. I tried to do something different this time and got too ambitious, but I think the results are worth it!

First of all, the tutorial is really more of a how to make, and dimensions are really entirely up to you. This tutorial shows you the basic steps to make this simple, reversible bag with a detachable strap. You can wear it cross body, or double up (like I did in the picture) on the shoulder. Remove the long strap and it will be a tote.

For the detachable strap, I used D rings on the bag’s main body, and for the hook I bought it locally, but it is called a swivel hooks/lobster clasps with a D ring. I’ve linked to one on Amazon (affiliate link) for your reference, but you should check to see if it is the size and color you want, in case you want to vary the width of your strap.

Customize it anyway you want! Lengthen or shorten the straps, size of the bag, remove the D-rings and just make a tote, make it your own!

Last but not least, the gorgeous fabric that inspired it all.
Nani Iro 2013 collection HERRING BONE pencil in white and aqua – canvas.

One more thing. For this project I used the above (which is not quite heavy duty canvas but thicker than normal cotton), as well as an upholstery fabric (which is thick and has some body) for the lining. That’s why I did not use any interfacing. If you have made bags before, you will realize that interfacing is necessary to provide structure to a bag. So I leave it up to you, depending on your fabric choices, whether or not to apply interfacing. For a step by step on how interfacing is applied, you can refer to my previous sew along of the granny bag.

All right then, here’s the tutorial! I am still uploading the youtube video so I will update it here later on once that’s live. Leave me any questions you have in the comments below. Have fun sewing!

Sewing video on youtube

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Japanese Fabrics

nani IRO 2013

March 14, 2013

Browsing through the entire catalogue of nani IRO 2013 is rather painful for me…. Simply because I want to buy everything! It’s also really difficult to try to compose a blog post while I’m really itching to be shopping instead. I’ve got 1 yard in my cart right now and I just hit the “Keep shopping” button, but I stopped to get back to writing this. I’m not telling you which fabric I’m eyeing, and I will checkout my cart before I publish this post, just in case it gets sold out! 😛 Anyway, this blog post will be boring, because I will just be gushing about how much I love every single fabric.

I love nani IRO’s catalogues. They give me soooo many ideas.

Coule you have imagined this fabric to be used on a child’s dress? I find that I kind of get carried away when fabric shopping. Always veering towards the too cute or too pink or pastel stuff for the kids. I would have picked this blue fabric out for a skirt or dress for myself. But look at how adorable it is on the kids!

This is really special. The fabric design is called dear mother’s girlhood. In the fabric’s description, there is a part that says “刺繍タッチを水彩で描き上げ” – Google translate tells me that it means “Raised embroidery touch paint in watercolors” So does it mean there is some embroidery on it? It certainly looks like there is some 3D effect but I can’t figure out if the effect is painted on or embroidered. Can someone who has seen this fabric in real life let me know? I’m really curious!

More ideas on how to use the fabric. The woodblock pocho is a really cute design. There are so many different parts to the fabric that you can play with because of the way the pattern is repeated. You can be sure every single garment you make out of it is unique! 😛 Does this fabric look familiar? That’s because it’s one of the designs for the giveaway! Enter here (if you haven’t done so already)

One of the sweet sweet designs that i will always fall for. I love the one in yellow and blue stripes on the borders most and I can see it being used on a dress. Just can’t decide if I should use the blue on top or below, or maybe even at the waistline!

I browsed through all the different color combination for this and the yellow+navy combination really caught my eye. I just want to hang it up on the wall like this. But then I saw how they used it on skirts (see below) and I changed my mind. Maybe it will look better on a skirt.

The shirts are made from the next design below, called nuance MUJI. Awesome water color blocks. You can make really simple A-line shift dresses out of this to bring out the beauty of the fabric and every single dress will be different depending on how you cut it.

To be honest, when I first saw these two dresses, I didn’t like it very much. Probably because the pink checks remind me of a kindergartener’s uniform. But on the website you can see a close up picture of the border, where the colors blend so beautifully.
My favourite color combination is the one in the middle. The beige checks are not too obvious and I love all the colors used on the border. This will be really nice for a skirt. I’m not too big a fan of having checks all the way through so making an entire dress out of it will be too much. Imagine a solid co-ordinating fabric bodice and this for the skirt!

The last design is called the herring bone pencil. At first glance you can’t tell why it’s called herring bone. But when you see it closeup, you can see the very subtle herring bone pattern on the fabric. Love love love the one with the green stripe!

So that’s my report on the 2013 nani IRO collection. Back to shopping now. Guess which one I’m getting?

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