I finished the dress! The dress pattern is called Leia, and it is another pattern from Tamanegi Kobo, a Japanese pattern shop. The dress is pretty simple, but sewing the curved lines was quite challenging, so I guess this is not really a project for a beginner. Although the instruction is in Japanese, the diagrams are very clear and I learned some new things about sewing the curved yoke. My ultimate tool was fabric glue, as Yoshimi had used for her Leia dress. It was really fun sewing the curves.
Instead of elastic on waist, I sewed several rows of elastic shirrings because they feel softer. I also added a pair of pockets on the side seams. Miho from Tamanegi Kobo is about my size (okay, I’m smaller!), and she kindly shared some sizing tips to me. She always uses size 36 and reduces it by 98%, I did the same thing with this pattern and it fits nicely! I didn’t even have to shorten the skirt. Oh, by the way, I’m 150 cm/5 ft and 40 kg/88 pound.
The fabric is double gauze from nani IRO by Naomi Ito in pocho dots pattern. I really love the irregular shapes of the dots that adds some twist to the otherwise conventional polka dots. The yoke is actually broken white with white dots, it is very nice but hard to capture with a camera. The last picture shows the white dots a bit clearer.
It’s 35°C today, I had to walk for 20 minutes to Sidra’s school and the dress has proofed to be very comfortable. But of course I didn’t wear that shoes!
Pattern is Leia from Tamanegi Kobo.
Outstanding! So, I had to have it and was delighted to find that the pattern and instructions are now available in English. All that I need to do now is keep my fingers crossed that it looks half as good on me as it does on you! I am not so tiny.
Hi! My name is Sarah, and I am 14 years old. I happen to be 158 cm tall, and weigh 45 kg… I am really interested in this dress, but I can’t really buy the pattern… could you please just give me a little resume of hoe to do it?
thanks, love your blog!
Hi Sarah,
If you click the link for Leia, there is a product page with ‘Add to cart’ button on it. You can just click the buttton and click through to go to your shopping cart/checkout. There’s a form for your information that you have to fill, it’s in English. Then you can pay using your preferred form of payment, I used Paypal.
There’s a bit of English in every page to help you go through, and if you still have trouble you can use the ‘Contact us’ button on top of page to ask them questions.
Here’s their help page: http://tamanegikobo.ocnk.net/help
Hope that helps!
Oh my goodness, this dress. It looks SO good. Totally looks like something you’d get from Urban Outfitters or somewhere similar. Great job!
The dress looks amazing especially with your choice of fabric. You’ve inspired me to buy pattern and I have a question. Did you use the glue just along the edge of the curved section of the yoke where you sew or around the neck as well?? Thank-you.
Hi Selina, the glue is just an alternative way of basting the fabrics, I still then sewed them. For this dress, I only used glue on the curved section because it was hard to pin them. You can also use basting thread instead of glue for conventional basting.
The glue I used was not fabric glue/handicraft glue, it was water-soluble glue. You can refer to the link in my post about how Yoshimi had used the glue for her Leia dress.