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Hacking the Ladies Qipao to a 2 piece set

For this year, in the spirit of reducing my cluttered wardrobe with pieces that can only be worn once, I’ve decided make a more versatile and multitasking outfit, by using the same pattern, but hacked into a 2pc set. I’ll wear them both together…

January 3, 2023

Buying Guide – Buying Japanese Fabrics from Rakuten.co.jp – Part 1

As promised, here is the updated guide to how I buy Japanese fabrics from Rakuten’s Japanese site – www.rakuten.co.jp. Why the rewrite? Firstly, at least half of the original post is no longer valid. The interface of the global Rakuten has changed such that…

September 26, 2015

Using Japanese Sewing Books

I stumbled upon a few archived pages from the early months of JapaneseSewingBooks.com and I realized that they are not linked anywhere else in the blog and are in fact buried deep in the archives. So I decided to consolidate all the links to…

October 4, 2013

Where to buy – online sources for Japanese Sewing Books

I get a lot of questions about where to buy Japanese sewing books and magazines, so I decided to compile a list here.  This list is only for online shops as I think it will be more useful for now compared to a list…

October 3, 2013

How to make – Quantity of fabric and materials

In order to locate the fabric quantity, you have to first locate the how-to-make page of the garment you are making. Refer to this page – Next, right under the title of the garment, you will see this. Here’s a close up view I’ve…

June 17, 2013

Browse Japanese Craft Books online

Today’s link is not for a free pattern, but an amazing discovery. It’s not a new thing but I had no idea it existed till last week! It’s a really useful website for me because firstly, it is from my favourite Japanese sewing books…

April 16, 2012

Fabric names translated from Japanese

I come across many comments while surfing for Japanese Sewing Books, that Japanese patterns are very pretty, the photos in the books are gorgeous, but the results always look shapeless and sometimes pajama like? Not true. First of all, there are books with properly…

March 28, 2012

Understanding the instructions – working example

It’s been a quiet week on the blog, because we are celebrating Chinese New Year over here in Singapore. Only two days of public holidays but many people have taken leave because there is so much partying to do. 🙂 Will be back in…

January 27, 2012

Understanding a typical Japanese sewing pattern

After posting the dictionary of sewing terms, I shall now go through an example of a typical pattern you can find in the sewing books. Most pattern books follow a similar structure such as this one. You will usually find something like the above,…

January 17, 2012