A New Kid: Young Image Sewing Magazine

Not exactly new, but relatively new: Young Image pattern magazine focuses on girls, sizes 80-164 cm. I had been tempted to buy an issue for a while, but there’s not much in the way of  peer reviews online about the patterns. I have a tween and these designs looked pretty stylish. She is very particular and style is everything–if you have a tween, then I’m sure you get this. So when the opportunity presented itself, I purchased a single issue.

My daughter wanted a dress-first time in over a year <jaw drop>, so she sat down with all my pattern magazines. She picked one: (y1111) from the Young Image Summer 2011 issue that I had bought a little while back. She made a few changes, as she usually does, and I set to work. As I traced her size, I started to become concerned with sizing. This is an empire waist dress with a 10 gore skirt attached (think Feliz or Elodie on the skirt), so I was most concerned about the bodice and traced the size according to her chest measurements. It has a side zipper, so it is not designed to be an easy fitting or loose dress. That said, the photos in the magazine of the design did not show a tight fitting dress either.

The magazine has nice designs. The patterns are printed on pretty thin paper though. The instructions were mostly clear, but not all that descriptive and some of it seemed to be lost in translation. Evidently the English word “pass” means “yoke”  and to make a strap, one must stitch the strap “double.”  Here’s another that had me scratching my head: “reef the bow through the tunnel and stitch it at the zipper,” which I take to mean: insert or feed the drawstring into the casing, work it through until it comes out the other end of the opening in the casing. Stitch drawstring in place at the zipper. It seems they could have done better translations for clarity and to be helpful to the beginner sewist. The design was pretty straight forward, so I didn’t really need/use the instructions. But if I was new to sewing, I may have been very frustrated.

The pattern pieces weren’t as clear as they could have been either; the only markings were in a foreign language–or just letters like “RVD/FL” and “MV/VM”. Evidently, “MVSTOV/VMSTOFBR” means fold line. Thankfully, I found some help here in this sewing glossary for European pattern sewing. (cause Babylon and Google translate were absolutely no help)

The fit was tight, tight, tight, and so the first fitting was interesting. The bodice (or pass as they were calling it) fit perfectly. What I had not thought about or planned for was the hips. The photo in the magazine does NOT show a fitted style skirt, but that skirt was fitting like a glove. The weird thing—it fit everywhere until an inch or so below her natural waistline.  I fixed the fitting problem with a gusset, which matched well with the 10 gore skirt style anyway.

I think this would not be a problem on a younger child or a really straight up and down, skinny kid. If I sew this again (a big if), I would shorten the gore pieces along the top, so that it would still fit the bodice, but begin its flare sooner. This would make the skirt wider when it reaches the hips. The way it’s drafted, the flaring begins at or below the hips, which the photos in the magazine don’t really illustrate.

The back view:

My daughter loves the dress, which I suppose is the only thing that matters, at least to me. Here she is with her satin sash, which was part of her master design 🙂 I think the dress looks stylish and classy on her.

As far as my review for the magazine and its pattern, I’m not sure I will be purchasing another– At least not today. I have only sewn the one design and will attempt at least one more before giving up. I do think the translation to English could be improved a lot. The pattern pages could be printed on more substantial paper and they should include English markings for clarity. There were no pattern pieces for the straps–not a huge deal for me, but maybe  for a beginner.  Nor were the size/measurements given to cut  out the strap pieces.

The magazine states on its cover: “instructions are understandable” and “suitable for beginners,” but some of the wording is odd. Some basic info is omitted in the instructions for the pattern I sewed up, information such as right sides together or wrong sides facing together. For a beginner, this is not going to be obvious. This pattern in particular has an overlay, which would need to be placed its wrong side facing the right side of main skirt piece. Omitting this info is not good to do, imo, especially if one is claiming that the pattern is “suitable for beginners.” I personally would not recommend this magazine to any beginner.  <<But>> the designs are so trendy and ideal for tweens, so I will be giving it another try and post about it.

Have you sewn up an Young  Image pattern? If so, please do share your experience and insight. It helps to have online reviews before sewing a new pattern. It’s usually where I begin and I wish there were some out there for this magazine.

~Erin

Update:

Changes I made: lengthened to below the knee and did not make the overlay. I made the bodice plain–without the drawstring and slit opening.