Smock dress – handmade
Tights – Voodoo
Shoes – Marc by Marc Jacobs
This adorable smock dress with frills, frills and more frills is Pattern K of Stylish Dress Book 2. I was inspired by Karen Walker’s girly preppy style to make the dress in this navy, subtly textured crepe fabric. I lined the body of the dress with a dark blue, light knit because the navy fabric is fairly thin. This resulted in my dress sticking outwards and puffy compared to the picture in the book.
The pattern is really easy to make, as long as you have mastered the art of gathering! For a great tip on getting gathering right, check out Flossie Teacake’s gathering tip. The most difficult part was attaching the sleeves, while trying to make sure that the ruffles on the arm lined up with the ruffles across the chest. I have shortened the hem by a good 10cm because I think smock dresses look like moo moos if it covers my knees.
Oh and on a side note – new shoes! Patent leather mary-janes by Marc by Marc Jacobs. I bought them from Zappos. With the Australian dollar so strong, I’ve been doing a fair bit of shoe shopping from US based websites. Stay tuned to see more fancy shoes I’ve splurged on as the packages arrive!
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11 comments
The dress is adorable! I love the ruffles and you look so cute (in a very stylish way) wearing it.
Thanks so much for the link – I’m so pleased you found it useful.
Florence x
Thanks Florence 🙂 I love dressing up in different looks, and “cute” is one of them! Thanks for saying hi x
I’ve been looking for sewing designs that are simple and easy to make, but also wearable and cute. I have stumbled across the Stylish Dress Book series in quite a lot of places.
While I am quite keen on trying out a book from the series, being unable to read or write Japanese I am a bit hesitant about going for it.
Now, I do not intend to come across as shallow, but I have seen a few people who I believe are not Japanese (and by extension, maybe they too do not know how to read/write Japanese) make dresses using the book.
My question is, how do people who can’t read/write Japanese decode the instructions?
Hey Ashe. Good question. From my observations, it seems the people who can’t read/write Japanese who have been able to make stuff out of Japanese sewing books are all quite experienced at dress making. That said, the books are all very well illustrated; far more so than Western patterns. You can easily glance at the pictures and work it out, majority of the time. Even though I can read Japanese, I find myself sometimes only looking at the pictures too!
Your question is really timely, because I’m actually putting together a book of Japanese sewing terms to help English readers to decode these books. The instructions given in Japanese sewing books are really concise and step-by-step, and if you follow them closely, it’s so simple to end up with a professional looking garment. As you say, the designs are so wearable and cute, I’d love to help more people enjoy making clothes out of books like Stylish Dress Book.
Thank you for the speedy response! I look forward to your book! 🙂 And thank you for clearing up my doubts! 🙂
So cute! I was thinking about making a dress like this! Fabric-wise would I be able to use a cotton cloth or does it have to be the slight texture crepe?
I think cotton would be fine, Catherine. I just like crepe because there’s less ironing involved!
[…] sewing books. It remains extremely popular, and I have already made a blouse (pattern A) and a smock dress (pattern K) to great success from this book. The patterns in this book are extremely simple and unstructured, […]
So cute. You look like Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service.
Thank you! Kiki’s Delivery Service is my favourite Ghibli film 😀
[…] is also the author of the popular Stylish Dress Book series. Check out the silk dress and smock dress I made from her […]