It is officially fall! The crisp morning air should make its appearance soon and what better way to embrace it than by treating ourselves with a cozy flannel top. For my blog today I’ll show you how you can take the Summer Kimono into fall and I’ll also give you some tips for working with flannel.

You will need your printed and cut kimono pattern pieces. You can chose any of the styles, I went with the curved hem because it’s my favorite. 🙂 Now grab your Grandpa Cardi pattern and print just the pocket piece. It’s on page 22-23.

Sew your pockets according to the instructions. I opted for the band pocket but you can certainly use the non banded option too. Remember to press the bottom of the pocket too! You’ll now stitch them on to your two front pieces. Placement it’s a matter of personal preference so I’ll show you where I stitched mine on but you can certainly move them higher or lower. I placed the pocket about 4 inches from the center and about 2 inches from the bottom (remember the bottom is not hemmed yet). Sew the pockets on the front pieces.

You will now start assembling your kimono according to the instructions. Something very important to keep in mind, especially if you are sewing sizes L and up is that most flannel fabrics are 42-44 inches wide. Your fabric may not be wide enough to cut the entire length of the sleeve so in this case you have a few options. You can either do what I did and just shortened the sleeves length by 2.5 inches or so and either add the sleeve band (as per the pattern) or just hem it. The other option would be to attach additional fabric to the selvage and cut the pattern pieces as they are. You could use the same fabric as the main one or even coordinating/contrasting fabric for a colorblock look. Get creative!

TIP: When sewing a curved hem on woven fabrics I like to first serge the raw edge, making sure I don’t cut any of it with my serger knife.  This will basically give me the 1/4 inch mark and make the fabric more stable. Press the 1/4 inch hem, and then press again another 1/4 inches and sew in place. Wasn’t that easy? That’s the magic of serging the raw edge first.

I know a lot of you have asked in the Facebook group is the Summer Kimono can be made with flannel fabric so now you know it can…and it’s pretty cozy on top of that! As always, don’t forget to show off your creations and tag me if you have any questions!

Alex