Customer Reviews

One-Yard Wonders: 101 Sewing Fabric Projects; Look How Much You Can Make with Just One Yard of Fabric!

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I really want to like this book, but I'm still on the fence. I'm not new to sewing (I've been sewing for 20+ years and have a degree in fashion design), but I pre-ordered the book hoping to find some *new* ideas for quick, fun, projects.

I don't need instructions to cover a cork board or line a bookcase with fabric. Most of the other projects are the same old thing: aprons, laptop and CD sleeves, laundry bags, a yoga mat bag, a basic bias skirt, placemats, handbags, a sewing machine cover, pet beds and toys, lunch and trash bags. Over 30 (out of 101) of the projects are for children's items (clothing, toys, etc.). There are some fresh ideas though, I love the origami box and a couple of the women's summer tops are cute.

Overall, if you are new to sewing, you'll probably love this book and it would be a great place to start. It has a great section on basic sewing techniques and the book itself is beautifuly photographed and laid out. I like the spiral bindng and I appreciate that it came with pattern pieces for all but the most basic projects.

If you are not new to sewing, don't expect to find many new ideas here. However, it is a great collection of classic projects all in one place and nicely photographed.

I am an experienced quilter but a beginner for all other types of sewing, so for me the projects in this book are new and fun. I have tried four of them so far: the kid's apron, the wine glass coasters, the bean bag booster seats, and the catch-all/charging station. I have two main problems with the book so far:

1) Many of the projects don't require a full yard of fabric, but except for the wine bag/coasters project, I haven't seen this fact addressed. It would be nice to have the minimum fabric requirement for each project, so that if I'm intentionally purchasing fabric I don't have to buy a full yard unless it's really needed. For instance, I made the charging station with 1/2 yard of fabric.

2) My bigger issue is that there is not enough detail in the written instructions and not enough pictures for 3 of the 4 projects I tried. The wine coasters were easy, but the other three all could have benefited from more information. For instance, the bean bag booster seats have you create a 3-sided box and then sew on a square of fabric for the bottom. The instructions just say to sew them with right sides together, but it is more complicated than that and I had to drag my sewing machine over to my mom's house to get her help figuring it out. Similarly, the apron says to fold over a 3/4" seam along a curved piece of the fabric, which is nearly impossible to do without a million pins and even then it created unwelcome pleats in the fabric. I realize I might be missing a simple technique to get it right, but without extra pictures I don't know how to do it and I ended up improvising a completely different way to attach the neck loop and ties for the apron. Finally, the charging station instructions are confusing for sewing the corners that create the boxy shape for this project. I was able to find the author's blog and check out instructions for a similar project she has there. It's actually not difficult once you see the extended text with photos, but the brief text-only instructions in the book would never have been enough for me, as a beginner, to figure it out.

I realize that they had to condense text and reduce pictures to fit so many projects into an affordable book, but I think they went too far and it would have been better to have fewer projects with more instruction. I still like the book and I am having fun working through projects in it, but I have learned to make a prototype with scrap fabric first. Having access to a more experienced sewing guru is essential for when I get stuck.

I am very new to sewing and found a lot of good info on basic techniques in this book. The projects are really cute and fashionable, and seem to be fairly easy to whip up for the most part. The book itself is spiral bound to lay flat and sturdily constructed. I would definetly recommend it to other.

I was shocked when I received this book and saw all the great ideas and patterns in it. In many books, there are a few usable ideas and mostly, I have been satisfied with that. But this book has so many great projects, I don't know which to start with. For the price, you can't go wrong. You get your money's worth and so much more.

I was not quite sure just what I would think of this book when I first saw. I think I was leery of the title - only because I tend to dislike titles like ' fast, fun easy' or fun & quick'. Don't get me wrong we all need a quick fix at times and more or less instant result can be a very good thing sometimes too...I am just one of those people who stills likes real letters and finds more comfort in slow cloth than quick and easy.

The first thing I noticed about this book is it's quality. It's a nice size, the paper is high quality and the cover spiral binding is very well made - these are things that I so look for in books - and yes, I am a page 'sniffer'. I love the smell of ink on paper - and I can be critical of paper color and paper quality - the latter especially in hard-covered books or those books that are made to get a lot of use. Of course the next thing that I looked at were - what else?! - the patterns. The patterns are divided into sections with titles such as "On The Go" (bags, lunch bags, lap top covers etc), "Household Affairs" (tea cozies,aprons, hot& cold packs), "Outfit Your Small Wonder" (obviously geared to clothing for your own little one). There are patterns for dog couture items, toys for children, great shopping bags and a wealth of small projects that really can be made with just a yard of fabric. Also included are things like sewing fundamentals - good for beginners or as a refresher for those of us with older cloth fixations. A couple of the 'patterns' are more like instructions for doing things like covering a cork board or scale with fabric. No necessarily sewing projects but they can be done with a yard or less of fabric.

Some of these projects are for things that we could all probably figure out how to make. I don't know about you , but there are times when I am thrilled not to have to re-invent the wheel - and enjoy the fruits of what others have made pattern for so that I can save my brain cells for the more involved projects that I barely have to complete as it is. Simple and right in front of me with a "how-to" can be a real time save. have been on a kick to find good looking alternatives to to the now ubiquitous grocery store provided 'green' bag. This book includes two patterns that are good. All in all I really like this book a lot and will highly recommend it. It seems to have something that will please everyone and is one of those books that will be a good resource and reference book - and yes, it does hold a lot of things that could be termed "fast, fun and fabulous" ! Give it a try - I don't think that you will be disappointed.

I'm a fairly experienced sewer, but haven't been sewing much the past few years until I got a pattern book last year and dived back in. Having a large stash of fabric in single yards this book appealed to me and I got it. I picked out several simple projects that didn't need extra materials and did them with ease. When I got my hands on a lot of coupons I got the extra materials needed for several projects and I've been going whole hog on the weekends and it's been great fun.

However, the book has flaws. It's geared towards the beginning sewer, but it does this sort of "cute" thing where instead of having length and width, dimension are "wide" and "tall." Tall always being parallel to the selvage. This might be alright except in those instances where the "tall" dimension is shorter than the width. This could confuse anyone, especially a beginner. And that might might be alright, but a beginner moving on to other patterns books and the like will have to adjust to the normal "width" and "length." I really can't approve of something that goes off the standard language of sewing patterns, uniformity and universality is a good thing. It means anyone can come to it and understand it because they know it from elsewhere.

There's also the issue that some of these patterns were not properly vetted. There are errors and an inexperienced sewer will not know how to adjust things to make them work, especially since the photograph of the project in some instances will not match what you do even when following the instructions exactly. The most striking error is in the "Collapsible Shopping Tote." The fabric is folded in half, the pattern laid on the fold and cut out...twice, but the pattern piece is more than half the length of one yard, making it impossible to cut out two. (It's like being given a yard of string and being told to cut two two feet pieces out of it.) I know how to get around this, but someone with less experience might not.

As others have noted the instructions themselves are not as thorough as they should be for a beginner. In other words you have a book ostensibly good for a beginner that really requires more experience to fill in the gaps in the instructions, and for an experienced sewer there are not a lot of patterns that are new and exciting. Reducing the number of patterns and doubling the length of instructions and illustrations would have yielded a better book.

And a final caveat: they may all call for one yard of fabric, but there are precious few that do not call for many other materials from fusible interfacing, to elastic, snaps, ribbons, bias tape. etc. It truly would be a wonder if ALL you needed was one yard of fabric.

Having said all that the book has been useful to me. There are many projects that I can follow or adapt to make useful things I probably wouldn't have thought to make without the inspiration.

This book is terribly disappointing. So far I have tried 3 projects and each of them have had at least one problem.

Ballet-neck dress: The hole for the neck casing ends up being too low and I had to make a new hole at the top.
Folklore Bag: The top band is wider than the bag base, so they do not fit together properly. The band has to be made smaller. The bag turns out smaller than the picture makes it look.
Flouncy Bag: The lining does not fit the base. It should have been made wider than the base in order to fit after the side seams were done. Also it is MUCH smaller than the picture makes it look.

There are 2 other BIG problems with this book.
First, the directions are not very good. There is a lot of guess work involved because things are not stated clearly.
Second, the pictures are VERY misleading. Both bags look very large in the pictures, but are in fact quite small. They look like large totes. The folklore bag must have been photographed on a child size chair, or they made it bigger for the pictures. I am certain the flouncy bag was made larger for the pictures, because the proportions are entirely different.

I wonder if any of these patterns were even tested. So far I have had nothing but problems and disappointment with this book. I have done quite a bit of sewing, so I have been able to make adjustments to the projects I have done, but have still been mostly disappointed by the finished products (the dress did end up being cute). I doubt that a beginner would have much luck at all.

I am not a beginner sewer. I'd classify myself as intermediate in the world of sewing. This book does have some nice little projects (along with some useless ones) that you can make with one yard of fabric. Anyone, beginner or expert, needs a few little de-stashing ideas. However, many of these (or super similar) projects can be found for free on the internet. But you wouldn't have them neatly stowed away in book form.
Here is where the book needs help- the instructions. There aren't many. I can fill in the holes, but as a beginner I would not have been able to. So, they took a book full of easy projects and made them difficult for beginners. Maybe the focus should have been "50 good projects with thorough instructions."

I am an intermediate level sewer, and I am in *love* with this book!

I received One Yard Wonders for Christmas and have been sewing nearly every day since. The ideas are fresh and inspiring, and packs a huge bang for your buck. 101 step-by-step tutorials, plus pattern pieces for all projects for $15? Vogue charges $30 one pattern - this book is a steal!

If you are really new to sewing, I agree with some reviewers that this book could add a little more detail. But I don't think it would stop anyone from finishing any of the projects, it might just take a beginner a little bit of time to figure out the steps. It is probably not appropriate for advanced sewers, but then again, I don't think a pro seamstress would be interested in this title, anyway. As one who has sewn for many years but never tackled difficult projects, this book not only gives ready-made ideas, but gives enough inspiration for me to take the projects and modify them. I'm no seamstress, but in less than two hours I was able to take the cute sundress pattern and adapt it to make an adorable retro apron. So the book is not only giving me great projects to make, but helping me to become more of a designer than pattern-follower. Plus, I don't have a ton of patience (or time!) for big projects, I love that all of these ideas can be completed in a few hours or less.

I think most of all, the book has opened my eyes to the amazing number of things a person can do with just one yard. I used to think of my fabric stash as nearly useless - now my old fabrics are getting used up faster than I can replace them!

Thank goodness for Amazon and all the people who take the time to give reviews! I've already purchased the book from a local book store because I was drawn to the amazing fabrics and fun projects. I finally picked a few projects to start on, so I'm hoping they turn out. I was amazed to see the amount of ERRORS posted on the book publisher's website. Thank you to the person who posted the corrections here on Amazon. I doubt I would have thought to look for corrections to a book and probably would have given up sewing due to frustration. At least now I'm aware of where to find the correct measurement!