First of all, I’m not sure if Pochee is a book or a magazine. If you remember my other Pochee review over here, I used to think that it was a magazine, like Cotton Friend/Cotton Time, but the staff at Kinouniya told me it’s a book. and it does have an ISBN number. Anyway, I’ll just call it a book. A book that is published 4 times a year, one for each season.
During the last Kinokuniya sale (a week ago), I picked up two older copies of Pochee. This book contains mainly adult patterns, accessories and even matching patterns for kids. This book in particular had quite a few patterns that I would actually wear, and I’ve even made something for myself already 🙂
It comes with a free “gift”. Actually just a nicely printed cardboard piece with markings to help you make your seam allowances on straight edges easily. Just fold over the desired length (in cm only) and iron over it to get your crease.
Here are just some of the garments you can make from this book. Many of them are variations of the same pattern piece, which is great since I’m not a big fan of tracing patterns. 🙂
This has got to be my favourite shirt in the book. It is the shirt featured on the front cover.
This is what I made!
This is my second favourite shirt. I will be making this next.
There are a couple of step by step detailed photographs for a couple of the garments that are a little more advanced.
Updated to add completed purple linen shirt! The sleeves were quite hard to iron as they were made of half twisted tubes.
I think maybe a steam iron will do much better with these sleeves 😛 But on the whole it is a really nice shirt to go with jeans. Love it!
There are also some patterns for boys and girls. Note the little picture in the corner. The kids patterns are meant to match Mum’s outfit!
Very sweet little girls. And I love the dresses too. =)
Then there are bags. A pattern for a everyday canvas bag. It even provides you with the different ways to coordinate the fabrics.
Detailed step by step photos are provided for these bags too!
Other than bags, there are also patterns for hair accessories. Best part is, they even show you how to use the hair accessories.
One of my favourite sections. Peeking into the sewing rooms and creations of creative Japanese ladies. I simply love the way they organize their craft and sewing supplies using an assortment of rustic looking cabinets/shelves. I came across these metal shelves with little cubby holes in them while in Japan, and I really really wanted to buy it. But it would have been crazy to bring it back as I was travelling by train with 2 kids and a ton of luggage 🙁
Last photo. Just a glimpse of the standard “how to make” pattern instructions. Unfortunately most of the patterns are like this. The shirt I made was condensed into half a page of instructions. 🙂 On the right column (where the words are), it basically lists materials, completed size, and the steps for making the shirt. Important steps are shown in the diagram.
That’s my book review for this week! I heard that Pochee Spring 2012 is out in bookstores already. Can’t wait to get my hands on it! 🙂
Title : Pochee Vol 9 (Spring 2010)
ISBN : 978-4-529-04820-0
4 Comments
Oh! The purple shirt is just beautiful I love it! I am just dying to make one…. I finally ordered this Pochee last night so it should be here this week, yay! Where did you get the purple fabric? it’s just perfect! I’ve been looking all over the internet for that color. The sleeves don’t look bad, but will probably fix themselves after you wash and dry it – I hardly ever iron anything, I just get it out the dryer while it’s still warm and give it a good shake, or if I’m afraid to put it in the dryer, it gets a good shake before hanging up and I pull it into shape a bit, that takes care of most things 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing these pictures!
I just noticed you said that linen was from Fabric.com … I’ve looked all over that site for the right color but can’t find it, can you remember where you found it? Thanks!!
Hi Alice, it’s European linen fabric. Item Number: CV-173 It’s a medium weight with some body, not too heavy or thick to wear, but I’m not sure if a thinner one would have been better. It was my first time experimenting with linen. It was stiff when it first came but according to google 😉 that’s normal. I actually washed and dried it in the dryer a couple of times to soften it up before sewing. Remember to zigzag the raw edges first though! I didn’t and it was fraying terribly when it came out of the washer 🙂
[…] is a kids special with patterns for kids. Just a couple of weeks ago I reviewed another Pochée book which is about tops that go well with denim. I’ve already made two tops from that! The reason […]