Kokka fabric | The Sew Convert

I am missing Paris. The people watching cafes, Berthillon ice cream, colorful carousels, fountains, museums and beautiful gardens. Blame it on this camisole named A Day in Paris.

The camisole is based on the F3 pattern from Japanese sewing book ‘Feminine Wardrobe’ (Photo below).

The border print fabric is from Kokka’s Trefle Collection and the baby pink polka dot Japanese fabric is from Malin Textile in Chinatown. Here are some close up photos of the border print which depict elements of the Parisian lifestyle. Below the graphics is a row of common French phrases.

I cut a medium and added white lace to the ruffle piece. Having done the refashioned ruffle blouse, this is indeed an easy blouse to sew. There were 2 pieces (front yoke and front bodice) which were cut from the pattern, while the rest had to be drawn and cut. I also hand stitched three matching buttons as embellishment at the edge of the tie ribbon which is an adorable addition to the simple blouse.

The back yoke with two rows of elastic was pretty cute too. Je l’aime!

I have expressed a couple of times my desire to sew a bow blouse from burdastyle’s Ute sewing pattern. When I bought the Japanese sewing book ‘Les couleurs francaises’ and saw project W (below), I immediately checked out the yardage requirement and was pleased that it only took 2 meters of fabric (Ute required 3 yards!) to create. Hence, I changed my mind.

The blouse used a fabric with scalloped edge and I happened to have a metre of that in my stash. That was not sufficient but after studying the pattern, I realised I could still use the scallop edge fabric if I were to combine it with some matching off white cotton linen and use the latter for the bow collar, the sleeves and the back of the blouse. That was exactly what I did.

Here’s a close up view of the scallop edge and you can see why this blouse is named goldilocks. This lovely cotton linen fabric from Kokka depicts the story of Goldilocks & the three bears. I love border print fabrics like this one, which makes the blouse look so unique and fresh.

This blouse was a little more complicated to make than the last but still the diagrams were a dream to work with and I managed to cut the fabric and sew the blouse in a day. I just realised while posting this blog that the model in the book tied her bow much lower. I will give that look a try when I wear this out next time.

Like the last blouse, this one had quite a lot of ease. Again, I cut a size 11 but this time, I didn’t take in the side seams as I thought it looked fine and rather tunic like. A very relaxed Japanese design. It’s definitely growing on me 🙂