Woot! This was a long time coming but I finally did it! The holidays happened, New Year’s, then my birthday, and it’s been crazy! After receiving some beautiful fabric from Modes4u, I was finally able to create a beautiful dress (and accessories!) and make them picture perfect.
I’ve known about this lovely kawaii shop for several years now, and have purchased fabric from them before. They always seem to have the cutest prints available from textile manufacturers that are otherwise not carried in the US. Especially from companies like Kokka and Lecien (I think they’re my favorites, ’cause I mention them a lot).
Fairy Tale Fabric, you guys! Prints with Alice in Wonderland, mermaids, dragons and unicorns . . . they even carry Cosmo Tex fabric, and that’s another Japanese textile company that has some of the best prints for cute Lolita fashion.
Not only do they carry cute prints, but the fabric quality is exceptional. I had never used oxford weave fabric before I got my hands on some Japanese fabric. They carry your standard even weave quilting cotton too, but the oxford gives dresses a durable texture without adding weight to the hand. So if you’re looking through their (thousands!) of fabric, don’t be deterred if you see that it’s an “oxford”. I made this dress, a head bow, and even a little matching bag out of it.
All of that out of JUST 2 meters of fabric!
Modes4u was actually kind enough to send me two different prints of fabric. The first one that’s pictured above is a Unicorn print that you can still find in a periwinkle colorway!
I also received this beautiful quilting cotton with dragons and castles on it, to make a second coordinate out of. This is your more standard quilting fabric, but it also has a slight stretch to it! I bet this one’s going to make a super comfy dress!
You can make all kinds of things with fabrics like these. I like to make dresses for a living, so that’s what I made. But the accessories to go with the dress were a breeze to make. For the bag, I used a free pattern from Blue Calla called The Clematis. You can make totes, aprons, head bows (obviously!), reusable shopping bags (a necessity these days, with plastic bag bans happening all over the US now), skirts, doll clothes, et al.
They literally have thousands of different prints of fabrics, but they also have a ton of other cute things too! I’m personally a fiend for stationery and have purchased several letter sets over the years.
So check them out and see how many cute things you find! There’s free international shipping for orders over $70 too!
