Book Review – Straight Line Sewing Dresses by Sato Watanabe

We had a one week school holiday last week, which meant very little time for any sewing or blogging. One thing I look forward to during the March school holidays, is the Kinokuniya book sale! Unfortunately I did not find many newly released books. Or maybe I have ruined my own “real-live” shopping experience by exploring too many yet to release books online. I only have myself to blame for that! 😛

In the end I only bought two books this time (amazing self-control isn’t it?). One is the English version of the Bunka Fashion Series Garment Design Textbook 1 – Fundamentals of Garment Design which I shall review later. The other book is this one – a straight line sewing book by Sato Watanabe. The same designer who created I Am Cute Dresses: 25 Simple Designs to Sew. She has two newly translated books that will be out soon over the next few months, I listed them on my Japanese books in English page and you can check them out if you like!

Back to this book. This is not a new release, in fact, it was first released almost ten years ago in 2005, but the last print in 2010 was actually the 7th print run! Must be a good book to have been reprinted so many times! The book Let’s take a look.

There are 26 designs in all, which includes some overlapping of designs but in varying lengths/sleeve options. There are no patterns included, instead, you have to follow the diagrams to construct the patterns. Easy to do since they are all straight line diagrams. What I like about this book is that some of the patterns don’t really look like they came from straight pieces of fabrics, the designs are also pretty wearable in today’s context, although the fabric choices needs some updating 😛 Just be warned though, the patterns only come in one size. The completed length and dimensions are provided, so that you can gauge if it will fit you or if you need to make adjustments to the given dimensions.

Here’s an example of the how-to-do section. There are very brief text instructions and the steps are presented in detailed diagrams instead.

A close up of the diagrams. Very little shortcuts or cross references here, so it’s pretty to easy to follow, not to mention easy to sew since it’s all straight lines!

Buy now from cdJapan

Title :  直線縫いでダダダッとつくるワンピース
Author :  渡部 サト (Watanabe Sato)
ISBN : 978-4-309-28019-6