Book Review – Clean and Natural

I’m back from vacation! It was really great to get away for one whole week, not having to check my email from work was really stress relieving 🙂 and the cool temperatures of Adelaide was a welcome change from the searing hot weather we’ve been having for the past month. We stayed in a lovely seaside 2 bedroom apartment and really did nothing but hang out at the beach, BBQ, catching up on sleep and just a little bit of sight seeing. My kind of holiday!

After being separated from my blog and books and sewing machine for one week, I am really itching to sew again, and there are a couple of things on my list that I have to get done before school starts again in July. However, I was notified by my friends that Kinokuniya is having a sale (again) and of course I had to go check it out. I picked up only 2 books this time. Amazing restraint? 😛

I first spotted this book when I did the New Releases post in March earlier this year. It is one of the few book covers that I liked, and the title sounded promising. But without a “look inside” or customer images available at that time, I decided not buy it online. Luckily I spotted this book and got to browse through it at the bookstore.

Here are some pictures of what’s inside the book. Please forgive the blur images as I had to take them with my mobile phone. My camera battery is completely flat after the trip and I forgot to charge it!

There are 26 garments featured in all, for sizes S,M,L and LL. The stars below each item denotes the level of difficulty. Please note that despite featuring 26 different garments, some of them are actually slight variations of each other, either in fabric options or in terms of  length. Some of the patterns are actually used for more than 1 garment, so the total number of patterns you actually get is less than 26. For example, there are two fabric variations for the ribbon skirt, tapered pants, and kimono pullover.

Let’s look at some of my favourite projects in this book!

Flared pullover. In a lovely lace fabric, this airy breezy piece is perfect for summer!

Dress with balloon sleeves.

Key neck pullover – I love this one!

Frill collar pullover

Crew neck robe

Key neck robe  with a fabric belt. This is basically the long dress and longer sleeve version of the key neck pullover.

Tapered linen pants

Kimono sleeves pullover

Ribbon skirt in linen

All in one – the only 3 star project in this book!

Tartan tunic

Hooded coat

Long flared coat

The general look and feel of this book is once again very clean cut, simple lines and silhouettes, as in most Japanese sewing books. It also has its fair share of long baggy shapeless pieces that I am not so fond of :P, but also lots of wearable pieces like the skirts and tapered pants. I also like the pullover tops for the easy sewing and easy wearing. They will be perfect paired with jeans.

Now for the technical bits – the size chart (units in cm)

Terms indicated in the leftmost column – Height / Bust / Waist / Hip

The format for the instructions is pretty much standard – Materials, Cutting Layout, Sewing steps in point form as well as indicated in the overall graphic.

The steps are individually illustrated using graphics.

Close up of diagrams

1 large 2-sided pattern sheet included.

Title : Clean and Natural いつもの服、きれいな服
Author : 大川友美
ISBN No :  978-4-579-11483-2