One Yard Wonders sewing book

From the One Yard Wonders book by Rebecca Yaker. This book is okay, just okay. There are a lot of baby and children's patterns, so if you don't have kids, or young enough kids to sew for, a good third of the patterns will be useless to you.

I tried 3 of the patterns: lunch placemats, smock and banana bag.

The front of my smock. It's pretty dowdy, not exactly something you will wear out of the house! Not that I would, I made to use as an apron to protect my good clothes while cooking. The instructions were easy and it turned out quite well. I used a rolled hem on all the edges instead of using binding or narrow hems as the pattern calls for.


I'm not happy with the way the smock closes at the back. The ties are just out of reach for tying them yourself. But you can pull up the shoulders to reach the ties and then tie them, ackwardly, behind your back. I might add velcro or snaps to the back as well since I'm thin enough that the back edges overlap and I could pull it tighter around the body.


I made the Bohemiam Banana bag, and it turned out nicely, but with lots of fiddling and handsewing to get it right! I couldn't find wide decorative ribbon at FabricLand, so I used plain black "carpet binding", and made it longer so it would hang just where I wanted it. If you use the length in the book, it's too short to put over your shoulder. The directions for adding the zipper are truly lacking. It just says to hand sew in the zipper! That's it. The pattern doesn't allow for easily adding the zipper, if you just sew it in, it pulls at the edges or leaves open spaces. I fixed those problems by using some of the strap material to fill in the gaps at either side and minimize the transition between the zipper and strap.


Lastly, I made the placemat with the pocket for cutlery and strap for holding down your napkin. It's a good, easy, basic pattern and I have no complains. Sorry, I didn't get around to taking a picture of it! I used some of the leftover fabric to make a matching cloth napkin.

I borrowed this book from my local library, and that's how I'd suggest you try. I don't think this book is worth the patterns in it, unless you will be using the baby patterns.