Thursday, March 29, 2007

Japanese craft book madness

I like so many of you crafty bloggers out there, have developed an insatiable appetite for Japanese craft books. Their spare and whimsical style appeals so much to me. Everything appears so playful and fun in their craft book land....and once you start acquiring, they breed like rabbits.

Now, I can't read or speak Japanese, but the step-by-step instructions are well-illustrated and measurements are in actual roman numbers. So if you have previous sewing experienced, its easy peasy, mostly.

Here's my current favourite - ISBN 9784579111336 - newly acquired from my local Kinokuniya, and it doesn't disappoint at all.


Its about 180-pages thick, complete with included patterns. There's plenty of inspiring projects here for book bags...


...dress and shoe bag...


...more girl's dresses...


...fairy costume for dress-up parties...


...stamped fabric crafts...


...softies...


...lunch box bags and much more.


There are pages on crocheted hair baubles, felt animal faces, aprons, a bib, a sun hat, boy's fancy dress costumes and childrens formal wear. There's also a small section on cooking, but sadly I can only but drool at the photos of bento boxes and their scrummy yummy contents.

I'm going to attempt to make a little dress/smock for the bub's winter wardrobe, either from this book or the one below, which I'll show the insides of for another post.

For other information sources on japanese craft books (in English, of course), check out craftlog's link and these flickr groups.


How cute is this cover!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing those pics! Looks like a really charming book indeed. I just can't get enough of japanese craft books.