Book Review – Female Magazine

Today’s review is about a magazine and not a book, but there are so many patterns included (and more) that it could be even better than a book!

Female magazine is a magazine published by Boutique-sha, same publisher as Cucito. This is the Summer 2012 edition.

The first part of the magazine covers dresses.

A whole range of retro dresses, in interesting choice of fabrics. You can’t see the details here but the top and bottom right dresses are made from ローンリップル (lawn ripple). A ripple-y lightweight lawn fabric that looks it doesn’t need much ironing 🙂

Doesn’t the yellow dress look familiar? It was on the cover of Cucito Summer 2012!

Then there are some tops.

I thought this was meant to double up as a skirt but I might be wrong. See how the advertisers make themselves useful by advertising and giving free patterns as well. These two tops were obviously sponsored, because in the picture below,

in the cute Manga style instructions, see the sewing machine setting? Got to use a Bernina for this! (disclaimer : they are not sponsoring me to mention that, although I wish they would! ;P)

More summer-y tops.

Almost all the clothes here have fabric sources listed, and they are all linked to either physical or online fabric stores. I like that, because sometimes it’s hard to create the same effect with a different fabric. Just knowing the brand or fabric type can make a difference to the end result.

Now we move on to  bottoms.

For the price of this magazine (800Yen in Japan and SG$11.33 here which is approx US$9), you really get your money’s worth of patterns. Look at the number of bottoms. From straight pants to wide pants to culottes.  As for the Sarrouel pants (Sarouel seems to be the correct spelling), erm…. I can only say, it’s good to learn a new word because I can’t quite understand these pants! ;P

Sheer skirt! Simple to make but nice. I like the sheer black fabric.

This is cute, but I think you need long legs + cute stockings to carry it off.

Another cute skirt　ボリユームスカート which literally means Volume skirt. There are little pockets at the sides which stick out and add to the “Volume” of the skirt?

Yukata. Quite the staple pattern in all Summer editions of sewing magazines. What caught my eye though is the panda fabric used for the obi (sash).

Other than dresses, tops and bottoms, there are bag patterns too. Most magazines are featuring Marine style clothes and accessories for Summer season this year. This magazine included. I didn’t feature the marine style clothes because there were too many pictures to upload but here are the bags.

Now for the other interesting bits in the magazine.

Other than the usual fabric and sewing machine advertisers, there are new products to discover. Like this one.

It’s a crescent shaped plastic looking device on a stand. Turns out to be a bracelet maker. Use your leftover strips of fabric to make a bracelet.

Another informative advertisement. This one by fujix, which is a thread manfacturer. The two pages shows you the different types of thread that should be used for different projects. Even color matching when using prints is something to consider.

There is also an interesting section called Design Grandprix, where readers submit the designs and the top 3 winners get their design featured in the magazine. Patterns of the top three winners are included!

One more example of advertising+project combination. Learn how to sew knits with a babylock machine.

Babylock with jet-air threading. If only they didn’t cost an arm and a leg over here.