Japanese Fabric – Kayo Horaguchi

Kayo Horaguchi (ホラグチ　カヨ) is Japanese illustrator from Tokyo whose works involve bright colorful graphic motifs of girls, plants and animals. Her works have appeared on fabrics, books, magazines, fashion apparel, accessories, stationery etc. You can read more about her (in English) here. Or  browse through her current gallery here.

image source : Door to Dream by Kayo Horaguchi – see book preview here 

Check out these rainboots!

image source : rakuten

But of course what we are most interested in, is fabric!

I was actually shopping for Echino fabric when Kayo Horaguchi’s collection, which was placed right beside the Echino fabric, caught my eye. I was particularly taken to this one, and I bought 1 meter of each in blue and pink.

Very fantasy-world print with horses, giant toadstools, castles, look out for the hidden animals that are camouflaged within the flowers.

A more girly print with deers, rabbits, cakes, cupcakes, roses…. everytime I see it I discover something new.

Check out the cute little animals on the selvedge! and can you see the hidden horse below the castle?

The fabric repeat is pretty large, in fact it’s quite hard to see where the repeats are. The fabric is pretty thick so it will be great for bags, which is what I bought it for, but I love it too much to bear the the thought of cutting through the illustrations. Now you know why my fabric stash just keeps growing. Usually what spurs me on to cut up a fabric is the promise of  more fabrics but I have not planned any fabric shopping trips (to Japan) yet so this will have to wait. 🙂

One of my sponsors, Luckylantern.com.au carries some of Kayo Horaguchi’s fabrics as well as other Japanese fabrics, you can check out her store!

Next week will be the Balloon dress sew-along week, so no posts on fabrics on Wednesday. But I will resume the week after with Echino fabrics.