Book Review: Pattern Magic Vol 1 and 2

I’ve been meaning to post about these books forever: Pattern Magic Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, which I purchased from the always wonderful Kinokuniya in San Francisco.

I’ve been working a lot on pattern making lately, and I can’t tell you how inspiring these books are. They’re laid out like many other Japanese mooks, with large clear shots of the finished garments and a section of detailed, heavily illustrated instructions. The designs are complex and sculputral and very very Japanese. Looking at the photos, it’s sometimes difficult to imagine how a piece of two dimensional fabric was used to create such three dimensional sculpture.

Then you come to the layouts and instructions, which you can study to understand the process. It really tests your spatial abilities, but more than that, it’s a great lesson in constructing 3D shapes from fabric.

Ok, it’s a bit intimidating at first, but the copious illustrations mean you really don’t need to understand Japanese to figure out what’s going on. It’s not for the novice, but if you want to dig into pattern construction, these books are an incredible resource. I really enjoyed studying the images, trying to figure out how it was done, then examining the diagrams. But maybe I’m just nerdy like that.