smock

When I was very small I used to love flipping through my aunt's dress pattern books. This is one of my favorites.



It's called "Stitch House: Infant wear by direct cutting" was printed in 1984, was translated from Japanese and is most likely out of print. The back cover reads:

"This simplicity is unrivaled, Mom's sort of excited. You just leave markings directly on the fabric, cut parts apart with scissors and machine them together, that's all. Whether you intend to or not, any of these can be finished in a day. That's direct cutting."

Yes, mom's sort of excited alright. Why I heart this book:
-Cute retro Japanese drawings
-Japlish scattered through out the book. One page reads 'It's all right that you're naughty, but give some thoughts to clothes I made myself. Mom.'
-The clothes are really easy to make and you don't even have to make a pattern.

I used to love this book so much that the first page bears my squiggly childish hand writing stating ownership. Now the book has been passed on to me and I make things for Mari from it.

Soo.. I thought I'd share some of the designs with you all. It's really good for beginners or people who don't have much time. Perfect for mommy crafting. And I needed some motivation to keep updating my blog. So from now on every week I'll try to post a project I made from this book ok?

This week:


I was inspired by a picture of the darling snack smocks on moving hands blog and decided I must make a smock for Mari. I remembered the little smock pattern in the Stitch house book and dug it up. I then simplified it a bit so I could use some of my old t-shirts. Here's the finished product:






This is the original pattern:




Here's my modifications:
-I used old t-shirts, so I just cut straight from armpit to arm pit and discarded the top bit resulting in a tube of fabric with a raw edge on top and a hemmed bottom. I cut the back opening straight up the back of the tube, turning the tube in to one long rectangle. I then turned the top edge down and stitched it in place to create a long tunnel along the top edge, cut out the sleeves according to the pattern and threaded a ribbon though the tunnel running along the top edge.
-Using an old t-shirt means no hemming involved.
-T-shirts don't unravel so I didn't hem the sleeves either.
-No pockets because Mari doesn't use them yet, but they could easily be made using the left over sleeve bits.

So yeah, very very simple. I managed to make one in about ten minutes while Mari was busy pulling books off the shelves!

(*disclaimer bit: I'm posting stuff from the Stitch House book because I assume that this book is out of print and I think the patterns are too good to keep to myself. An internet search for this book turned up nothing, but if you are the author/publisher / or anyone else who owns or worked on this publication and you want me to pull this down or anything mail me and I will do so immediately.)