Welcome to my kawaii clothing and sewing blog! For my latest sewing project I decided to sew Butterick pattern 6134. At the time I started sewing this shirt pattern it was snowing outside my little New York studio. I wanted to sew some cute Japanime Japanese inspired clothing, but I also wanted to be warm. For that reason I opted for this lovely medium weight blue wool fabric to sew a kawaii top using Butterick 6134. I love to dress kawaii and wear beautiful handmade clothing, but I equally like to be warm! With freshly made hot chocolate in hand and a purpose in mind, I rolled up my sleeves and dived in.
This pretty blue wool fabric was actually a left over scrap from a very pretty 2 piece suit I had sewed the previous season. For that reason, you’ll see in the photos as I lay out my fabric for cutting, that there’s an interesting shape to my fabric piece. I’m a huge fan of finding news ways to use up fabric scraps! I frequently re-purpose my sewing fabrics scraps to make tops, belts or bows. If you already own the Butterick 6134 pattern, take a look at top option A. Shirt A is the top you’ll see me sew here and you should note that I did not use the overlay fabric that’s mentioned in the instructions.
Butterick Pattern 6134 Review
MY review of Butterick 6134 top A without the lace. It’s easy to add the overlaying lace if you want too. This blue fabric wool was nice enough that I didn’t want to cover it, and I chose the shirt A pattern because I loved the slightly Japanese look that the structured top had in the drawing. It was just what I was looking for to fit my kawaii blog.
Can we have a moment of silence and shared sisterly pity that I’m laying my sewing pattern out on my bedspread for cutting? Ha! Sad day. This is one of my New York apartment problems. Of course I have an actual sewing table that I love, but if I were to clear it off and get it ready for cutting, I could’ve just cut all of my sewing pattern pieces out already. So even though I don’t recommend it, I did lay out my fabric on my bed and pinned my sewing pieces for cutting. Most of my arrows for the fabric layout are pointing, for the most part, in the direction they should be. For the sake of using up this quality piece of scrap fabric, I did bend the cutting lines sightly. As they say in The Pirates of the Caribbean, “they’re more like guidelines anyway”.
Cutting The Pattern Out
For ease of cutting and understanding the directions I would give the pattern Butterick 6134 a 5 of 5 star review. The layout instructions are easy to follow and no lining is required for this shirt pattern. They kept the pattern simple and this would be a great basic top to add to anyone’s work wardrobe. I myself was greatly looking forward to adding this shirt to my pre-existing dress pants for a 2-piece set. Also, there just aren’t that many pieces! When you want a simple sewing project you’ve got to love that.The only extra fabric pieces you’ll need to cut are for the neckband. You’ll need two pieces of cut interfacing to give the neckband some body and stiffness.
Don’t skip the interfacing. A lot of sewers I find get lazy when it comes to their sewn interfacings. They’ll either substitute the interfacing fabric for something that doesn’t work as well, which creates a lame folding neckline, or worse, they’ll skip it all together. If you are an interfacing skipper – first of all tsk tsk tsk. Secondly, the neckline of this shirt will not have the high neck look you’re going for if you skip sewing in the interfacing. If you’re going to bother sewing a shirt pattern and doing all of that custom tailoring work, take the extra few minutes to do it right.
Do you think your siblings rib on you? Well just wait til your grandma sees that sloppy neckline. It only took me once…to never do it again.
Sewing Butterick Pattern 6134
What you see below covers the first few sewing steps of Butterick sewing pattern 6134. Putting the top front and back pieces together was a piece of cake. All of the pieces you see below I sewed together in about 30 minutes. I’m an experienced sewer so I didn’t pin any of these pieces together, I just free handed them through the machine. If you’re an experienced seamstress, feel free to skip pinning your pieces(it’ll save you quite a bit of time). If you’re a new or beginner sewer, then yes, you should pin your pieces. The front two fabric pieces that curve over the bust may give you trouble if you’ve not done this before. That’s the two seams in the very front right over the bust and down the front of the abdomen. If you’re working with a very stiff fabric and find that your pieces don’t quite aline, fill free to use a clipping technique on the shorter piece of the two (just over the bust section)to get them to lay nicely together.
I feel that the only semi-tricky part of sewing this top is making sure you put the shoulders in correctly. The notches on the shoulder pieces and neckbands are pretty much the only really markings on the whole pattern that I found I legitimately needed. When your pining the shoulder pieces for sewing, do this to make the layout a bit more obvious. Start with the right sides facing outwards so that you can see what it will look like once it’s sewn. Match up the smallest armhole band (the one that will be located right underneath the arm) at the bottom first, and you’ll find that it’s easier to see how the shoulder works. If you’re a new sewer and that’s still giving you a bite of a problem then do this. Put the shirt on, right side out as if you were really wearing it, and slip the shoulder piece over your arm and into position. Does it look right? Is it working? Great! Then put in one of two push pins to hold that position, take it off, and then pin your pieces together legitimately. Easy!
The below photo shows what mine looked like before hemming after I finished sewing the shoulder pieces and neckband in place. This is also post understitching.
For the zipper, as seen in the photo below, you can use a regular zipper and just pin it and sew it in place. I hate regular zippers because I think they look awful. I used an invisible zipper, which is pretty much all I sew with these days unless it’s a jacket, sleeping bag or some other sewing piece that’s not my usual M.O. I won’t go over how to sew in a zipper here, because it’s better seen on YouTube anyways. I will tell you the best trick to install an invisible zipper I ever learned in the sewing room though. Iron your zipper flat before you pin it and sew it. Don’t worry about putting the iron directly on the zipper either. As long as the iron keeps moving the whole time, your zipper shouldn’t melt. I’ve been ironing my zippers on the hottest iron setting for years now, and I still haven’t melted one. They’re more resilient than you think I assure you.
After I sewed my navy zipper into the back of my top, I used a 5/8 inch basting stitch to mark my hem at the arms. You can just measure this if you want. I don’t like to measure things, I prefer to waste my thread and make the machine form an outline for me. 🙂 After that it’s just a slim turn, and then and another turn in on top of that one. Once again when I hemmed my sleeves I did not pin them. I just followed my basting and stitched my sleeve hem on the sewing machine, folding as I went with a free hand. To finish the garment I did a 5/8 basting, turned it in and pressed it with an iron set on the silk/wool setting, and then turned that up a whole inch. I sometimes take wide hems than recommended on sewing patterns because I’m a bit short wasted and busty, so less fabric at the bottom typically suits my body shape better.
Where to get supplies and materials
I purchased this beautiful wool fabric from this fabric store, which also is where you can buy the Butterick 6134 pattern. I also really like this online fabric store for suiting fabrics in particular. When I originally wanted a blue wool pant suit, I desperately wanted this dark yet very rich and bright navy blue color, and they only place I found it that it wasn’t out of my price range, was at this fabric store. I’m so happy now that I actually have a three piece pant suit to mix and match as I wish. I feel so glamorous. It’s eye bat worthy and very kawaii. I’ve already worn my fun two piece blue pant set to work too, just with the pant and shirt. The hard work was worth every compliment!
If you have trouble finding this sewing pattern, be sure to look here on eBay. I frequently find cheaper patterns on eBay because someone is getting rid of one, or is selling one because they just never got around to creating it. I don’t recommend fabric on eBay though. Stay away from that. I’ve only had bad experiences ordering fabric on eBay. The only exception has been why I found random people selling their grandmother’s fabrics or large boxes they found in a house closing or some similar circumstance.
How do I make this a kawaii Japanime look?
With this Japanese pant suit look, I didn’t have to do much. Making this American outfit look kawaii was super easy. The kawaii high neck top already has an Japanese inspired cut, all I had to do was supply the fun colorful makeup and kawaii anime side hair buns. Keep it kawaii ladies! Come back and visit my blog for more kawaii and fun things from Japanese cooking to kawaii sewing and anime reviews! I cover all of the cute things I love every day here at the Life kawaii.
