Sewing Issey Miyake Pattern 2438
Hello my wonderful blog readers, I just finished sewing a dress from the Issey Miyake Vogue pattern 2438. After Miyake’s death this year pattern sellers started listing his patterns more, so I got to see some interesting and new-to-me patterns, often pretty expensive but I bought a few including an older one, 1736 that I’m pretty intimidated by (tailored jacket, stripes matching). But 2438 I felt confident and curious about! Also look the pattern came with a Vogue Designer Original tag that used to be available to buy at pattern counters but I’ve never seen one before in person.
“Close-fitting, mock-wrap, pullover dress, below mid-knee or above ankle, has no side seams and front/back snap tape (front tape forms one-way pleat). B: Shoulder straps. Note: Uneven snapping creates drape effect, lengths are given before drape effect is created.” I love those weird pattern descriptions, they really had to think about how to describe this dress. I also LOVE the pattern images. She’s in the scrub brush in her dress, going hiking. She is wearing 3 braids. Whoever directed the pattern shoot is so smart. The pattern instructions say this is from 2000 making it I think one of the later Issey patterns I’ve worked on. (2486 is from 1990, not sure about 2485, maybe I should look.)
To prepare to sew this I read this wonderful blog post from 2016 from a woman who mentioned wearing this as a maternity dress, how amazing! Some reviewers on PatternReview mentioned the importance of sewing this out of a relatively light weight stretch fabric since the fabric triples over on itself on the folds on front and back. So I used a blue ponte knit from Fabscrap.
Soooo classic Issey pattern, either it’s 1000 pieces or it’s 1-3 rectangles. This one like the coat of 2485 is a rectangle. (50” by 62” rectangle). The important part is the style lines for the snap tape application which I drew on. …….. can you see my mistake yet? I did not. Next I sewed the rectangle’s edges and then blind hemmed the top edge.
Then I dyed the snap tape to match, thought that would look neater and more intentional than plain white. Snap tape is kind of pricey!? like $6 per half yard but I bought like 2 yards only for them to all come in half-yard long strips… irritating since all the snaps need to line up even though the lines are not parallel, so I ended up using shorter lengths of snap tape than the pattern called for. Which was fine because I’m short.
OK, then I thread traced the lines onto the other side for tape application. That is when I realized my mistake :) which happens to be the mistake I make every single time I have ever made any Issey Miyake piece. Every time!!! I do it backwards. Basically all the Issey patterns are asymmetrical unlike any normal pattern so it matters which side of the pattern piece is facing up, because that will be the outside of the piece. So if you scroll up you’ll see my pattern pieces are all lying face up, and that meant that I should have treated that side of the fabric as the outside, instead of sewing it as the inside and then thread-tracing. Or I should have laid them face down. Every time!! I somehow do this. That’s why one of my shirts has the buttons on the wrong side of the collar and one of the skirts I made has the button placket on the wrong side (haven’t blogged that one). I probably reversed something on the fur coat too and didn’t notice because I was too busy being lost in the fur-sewing. I even thought about it before and didn’t realize it would be backwards. So there I was, having neatly drawn on all the snap tape lines and even thread traced it, and then I had to rip it out and redraw the lines based on the seamline and pattern pieces. I only noticed because my lines didn’t seem to be the same as the pattern illustration in the instructions.
Then I put it on and spent a full hour snapping the tape in different orientations. Give a girl some snap tape on a dress and she will never be bored. For a while I considered leaving it at “Gown” length but I was not gonna wear it like that.
So like a month later I blind hemmed the bottom, (good job on all the blind hemming Patricia sometimes that goes really nicely), then I added an asymmetrical snap with the remaining 2 strips of snap tape. I even put snaps on the interior of the dress to hold the snap tape in so that it could be removed in honor of the snap tape nature of the dress.
OK, there it is snapped 2 ways. Sometimes looking at it it looks sort of “towel” ish since I didn’t do the version with a real neckline just the strapless one, maybe I’ll do the neckline one a different day, it could be really pretty in a sheer stretch fabric (but so hard to sew the snaps on precisely). Feedback is welcome unless you think it looks like a towel, I’d really like to not think that. yay, fabulous Issey Miyake project completed, another one in the works. Next time… I will confirm the correct orientation of the fabric to pattern pieces. Well, probably not. Only the brilliant Miyake and his patternmakers could make a rectangle confusing to sew. Bye, till next time.
