Japanese Fabrics – Border prints

On Monday I reviewed two single pattern sets for Girls’ Dresses. Did you notice the fabric? It looked as if there were ribbons sewn on to the bottom skirt hem. But it was actually a printed fabric.

This type of fabric print is called a border print　ボーダープリント (bo-da-pu-ri-n-to) The print repeat runs parallel to the selvedge. Note that in Japanese, it also refers to horizontal stripes. So if you search using the Japanese term don’t be surprised to find lots of stripes in your search results.

There are many interesting things you can do with border prints. You can use different parts of the fabric for the bodice of a dress and another part for the skirt, you can use it in tops, skirts, even pants to create an interesting effect. Some border prints are designed specially (such as heavier weight fabric for bags) so that you can use the different parts to co-ordinate the different parts of a bag. But since this month is Girls’ dresses month, lets look at a few border print fabrics suitable for girls dresses!

I have this fabric in my stash. I can’t even remember how much of it I have because I cannot bear to cut it up. So it stays in the stash 😛

This fabric was featured in Cucito, Spring 2012. It’s really sweet and I like how the bottom border is beige instead of a pink or red. I would love to use this fabric for myself!

Looks like flowers is a very popular theme on border prints. I like this one because the flowers look like they are from a watercolor painting. This was featured in Cucito 2012 Spring too.

Flowers again! But I had to show you this one. It’s so colorful and the flowers look like they are embroidered on. I love the colorful strips near the selvedge. Very folksy and happy fabric! Would be lovely on a girl’s dress!

This one has flowers too but it is a little different, because it has a scallop lace edge. I saw this fabric last year, with the pattern by Yuki Araki. The fabric alone looks more suitable for an adult. It’s cotton lawn and a little thin, but it does look cute on the girl’s dress too.

Something a little less flowery. This one is called piano polka, if I’m not wrong I have seen this in Cucito too.

I know many of you have asked about buying fabrics online from Japan especially the fabrics I have featured on my site. I hope to post a guide soon about how to buy from Rakuten shops that do not ship out of Japan. I am waiting for my fabric order to arrive so I can tell you all about it!

Next week will be the last week of February, so there will be a free pattern+tutorial+video for you to sew-along to. See you back here on Monday!