Sewing a Beret from an Otome no Sewing Pattern

Remember that thing that I said I’d do like 15 months ago? Sew something from a pattern from Otome no Sewing? Yeah, that finally happened! This won’t be a fully instructional DIY post by the way, just to keep your expectations in check. I will break up what I did and how with my observations on what it was like making something from OnS for the first time, both as a Japanese language speaker and with some help from Google Translate’s camera translation function, as well as any other general comments. And there will be pictures of questionable quality given that my sewing took place mostly in the evenings.

Selection and Prep

Without repeating too much of what I said in last year’s post, my logic with selecting the beret from OnS vol 15 was mostly driven by practical reasons. Firstly: I needed a pink beret and nowhere had the shade that I was after. Secondly: I would be sewing by hand, so a smaller project would be more doable. And thirdly: I had made a soft hat before (twice, actually, since I later made one for a friend), so this should feel more familiar as a process. It all just made sense and had me excited to do the project.

Guided by the description of fabrics in the materials section of the pattern, I ended up shopping online and ordering some samples first. Given that my main gripe with other available berets was colour, ordering samples was crucial to ensuring that what I saw on screen was what I would receive. Also, for an amateur seamstress like myself, being able to feel the fabrics would help me establish whether they would work for what I wanted and for what the pattern demanded. There was nothing suitable in my local fabric shops and it took a while to find the best thing possible from online retailers (mostly because I began by looking through deadstock and sustainable options first, where the obstacle of finding the right colour ruled out nearly everything).

Eventually I found three fabrics that I liked in the shades that I liked: a baby pink cotton canvas to serve as the base of the beret; a shell pink linen-look polyester suiting fabric for the outer part of the beret; and some sort of very flowy pink Swiss dot chiffon for the ribbon.

Armed with that, it was time to sew – eventually…

The Making

I started out with the part that made the most sense: the decorative ribbon. After all, how hard could it be to sew a rectangle, right? I’ve done that before!

Turns out that it was pretty difficult, though mostly through my own choices. I had decided to make it out of this extremely lightweight material, which is lovely and the texture would make it pop – but it was also slippery AF. Later in the process it became clear that despite following the measurements listed in the pattern, just one strip of it would not make for this plush bow that was shown on the pictures in the magazine – so I ended up making another one, treating that almost like waist ties for a beret rather than one ribbon bow. But that was pretty much towards the end of the whole process, when I first started, I trusted that the pattern had given me the correct measurements.

After that I… procrastinated for over a year.

Mainly because the next steps of the pattern confused me, but in hindsight, I was probably just scared of messing stuff up. Still, determined to actually get this finished, I cracked on, telling myself that I don’t need to do more than 10 minutes of sewing at a time.

Seeing how every single one of my fabrics was prone to fraying, I cut them out with pinking shears instead of fabric scissors. Was it a good decision? Eh, six and two threes, as they say. It helped a little with some of the initial handling, but because handsewing means so much handling, it wasn’t entirely foolproof. I did my best to transfer the marks for where the ribbon would be threaded through, basted the two fabrics together (more on that in a bit) and proceeded to sew over the course of several evenings accompanied by catching up on that year’s season of The Great British Sewing Bee. And pressing my seams after each step like a good girl! I’m an amateur and all the pros out there have instilled the importance of pressing your seams in me, which I can see how it makes a difference, but oof, it can be tricky with just a regular ironing board and iron on something this small, curvy, and fiddly.

My logic for basting the cotton canvas and the suiting fabric was mainly to save myself some time. The suiting fabric doesn’t have a lot of body, all the structure comes from the canvas, so since the two would be one on top of another anyway, why not cut to the chase and sew them together at the same time? Well, you can do that. However, isn’t what the OnS instructions tell you to do – because what the instructions want you to do is sew the outer part and the lining separately and then join them, so that all your raw seams are nicely encased. By the time I realised that, I was pretty much done with the top of the beret and really could not be bothered to make it ‘properly’. I’m the only one wearing this and I don’t care. But if you want yours to look nice on the inside as well as the outside, do what OnS says and now what I did.

That is roughly the point where I realised that one bit of the decorative ribbon would not be enough. If I understand the pattern correctly, it wanted me to loop just this one length on the inside, with the open ends dangling to tie off as you wish, but it would’ve made for a comically small bow. So a quick break followed to make another chiffon rectangle. When I had two, I added a very basic gathering stitch to one end of each and sewed them to the inside of the beret, threading through the holes on either side that I cut out. I was very careful to only sew the ribbons to the canvas layer and not the outer one to avoid having any visible stitches, but also because the canvas lining is a much stronger fabric that could withstand the sort of pulling and extra weight.

With that done, I proceeded to do the same for the headband: cut with pinking shears, baste the two fabrics together, ironed them in half to make fitting easier for myself, pin (including pinning the ribbon ties out of the way), sew. I’m not sure whether I did something odd during the cutting here or whether I should’ve adjusted the headband to my own head’s measurement, but this part proved to be simultaneously too small and too big? I think making the seam allowance on the headband a little bit larger would’ve made sewing it on easier. At times I had to really ease the fabric to fold in on itself in a way that allowed me to catch every layer with my needle, which a slightly larger seam allowance probably would’ve helped with. But then once finished, the beret actually sits a little bit large on my head, even accounting for hair. That is something that I plan on fixing later with some combs sewn into the sides. I’m still mentioning it here because maybe if you know a bit more about sewing than I do, you will know how to avoid this happening should you be making this for yourself.

The last part (other than removing all of those basting stitches) turned out to be one that I did not anticipate being a problem: tying the bow. Turns out that it’s very difficult to tie a nice bow on a beret like this when it is on your head, since you can’t very easily see what you’re doing, and doing it on a flat surface doesn’t yield the best results either. I was rescued by a gift of a mannequin head (unoriginally dubbed Miss Mannie Quinn, shoutout to Brad Mondo here), which allowed me to see what I’m doing and do it nicely. Because of how slippery the ribbon fabric is and because I don’t plan on ever having the ribbons be tied anywhere else but at the top of the head, I basted the finished bow onto the beret to keep it in place and make sure that it sits nicely (otherwise it would’ve all fallen to the centre and limped there).

The Beret

And this is what the finished beret looks like: on Miss Mannie Quinn, laid flat, and worn by me. As already said, since it is slightly too big on me, for now I’m making do with pinning or clipping it in place, but in time I will get round to sewing some comb clips to the inside. But other than this, the whole project turned out to be exactly what I wanted. The process of sewing was pretty relaxing and kind of got me into a bit of a crafting kick that I am still on as I’m writing this (let’s see how long this lasts). Whilst I can see exactly how much quicker this would’ve been to do on a sewing machine, given so many curved seams and fiddly parts, I feel that it was much easier to do by hand.

There were several moments where I found myself wishing that Otome no Sewing would give me more detailed instructions, either in the form of more pictures or a detailed step-by-step written guide. Google Translate’s camera feature fares alright with the sewing terms, though doesn’t pick up on all of those, and I started off by writing the English translations in pencil next to the original, so that I could follow. But at some point I simply had to have faith that I understood the meaning correctly and use my own judgement to figure out what made sense to do here. Which in the end turned out to be fine with a hat, since it was pretty straightforward to see how the pattern pieces were supposed to join up together, but for a more involved project I think I would’ve preferred more guidance as a beginner. You probably could do it, but maybe have a person on standby in case any questions do crop up.

Will I make any more from Otome no Sewing? I’m not sure. I haven’t bought any more volumes, so whilst in last year’s post I earmarked a few other things that I’d like to make, I think that I’d rather try sewing my first garment from a pattern that comes in English. Maybe by the time this happens, I will conquer my respectful fear of sewing machines because as relaxing as handsewing can be, I think I’d rather speedrun through like the long, straight seams, you know? If I do end up making any more lolita bits, though, I will be sure to document the process and my thoughts as best I can to share them with you here.