Lotta Jansdotter Everyday Style: Key Pieces to Sew + Accessories, Styling, and Inspiration

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There is a cohesive theme to the whole book--in other words, the projects contribute to a unified style. If you like that style, you will like all the projects. In many sewing books the projects are grouped into chapters for clothes and accessories, for bags, for the home, for babies, and for children. Often a third of the book is of no interest to me because I don't have kids and only occasionally make something as a gift for a new mom or a child. It seems to me that many books are padded with silly useless projects just to balance the size of each chapter. When Yumiko, founder of a Japanese lifestyle brand, approached me at a trunk show, she saw a shared aesthetic and licensed my designs for a postcard collection in Tokyo. These cards launched a career-long relationship with Japan.

Photographed by Jenny Hallengren over the course of a year in her life in New York, Tennessee, India, and Sweden and organized by season, Jansdotter shares her sources of inspiration and how she and her friends mix and match her key pieces while working, playing, resting, and traveling. Lotta Jansdotter Everyday Style brings Jansdotter’s infectious and sought-after sense of style to new followers and longtime devotees alike.

When Jansdotter wears one of her signature clothing looks, fans frequently ask, “Did you make that?” Lotta’s answer is, “Yes, and so can you!” With that in mind, she has created her second book of easy-to-sew pieces that can be layered to create a variety of looks. Waitressing part time in a middle eastern restaurant in San Francisco didn’t simply help pay my rent, it fueled me.It was here I learned more about customer service and the everyday running of a small business. And I also met my accountant, many dear friends, andmy benefactor, a property manager who let me have a small studio space in his building. Opening a studio shop in downtown San Francisco allowed me to spend time with customers, a much-loved interaction that would eventually blossom into workshops. If I find a heavier weight fabric appropriate for spring/fall and suitable for all the gathering at the yoke I can imagine making it again, with the 3/4 length sleeves and slightly shorter than this version. The line art of the garments look hand drawn rather than the perfectly smooth line art when computer drawn. I would have really liked to have a not hand drawn line art illustration of each of the garments. They are accompanied by fabric swatch photos and brief comments about the design.

An inspiring guide to creating a flexible, seven-piece wardrobe with modern Scandinavian elegance from style icon Lotta Jansdotter. Were the instructions easy to follow? There are no finished measurements provided and required fabric amount is only given for narrow width fabric ~ 115 cm, for the different versions. You need to jump around in the book to find the size table, sewing instructions, pattern layout diagrams and the guide to find the pattern pieces on the pattern sheets. But this reflection is not simply about reminiscing. It’s about resetting. A small voice in me has become louder of late. I want and need to be closer to my process. I want to experiment, to explore, to discover. I want to create limited collections, special editions, one-off artwork. I will be forging intimate connections with other artisans and makers and returning to small scale production where I can control the sustainability and ethics of production.Over the years, I have written and published many more books about printing, decorating and sewing. I love creating the world inside these books, aiming to inspire readers and help them imagine new projects through my visual language of photographs, styling and patterns. Lotta Jansdotter Everyday Style is the first sewing book that didn’t sit on my shelf for months before I made something from it. It not only gave me patterns to use, it gave me inspiration to use the patterns. If you like Lotta Jansdotter’s style then this book may have the same effect on you too. I’m going to make the pants from the book this week. We’ll see how I do. As for the sizing, unless you're really skinny and tall (or in the case of the pants, short with no curves at all), you'll likely need to draft your own patterns to get a decent fit. It looks like each was drafted for the book with only the model in mind. And even the extra-large size for each isn't that big--if you're over a size twelve or have any hips or a somewhat larger bust, definitely plan on altering and remaking all your own patterns for the clothing. Highly recommend buying a lot of muslin to really figure things out before you cut into the real fabric.