1 March 2012

Koi Embroidered Obi - Part one!

I have always admired the embroidery on obi because they are always very vibrant and interesting.

BUT they are very expensive and I can't bear the idea of buying something that I am too scared to wear so for the past few months I had the idea of embroidering my own one.

Nothing too complicated or I will never wear it outside the house but something that is striking enough for me to showoff.  However what sort of embroidery should I do?

I wanted to try something like sashiko but creating regular running stitches isn't easy as I realised when I made my first kimono and I didn't want to spend the time drafting a pattern.  So I made a sort of a compromise,  last month I rediscovered tambour beading and I saw an example of the stitching used in this technique could be used to embroider pattern!

Perfect I thought, something that will create an easy running stitch which doesn't require me to plan where I have to stitch.  Of course, the tambour hook which is used need a little bit of practice but once I could do the basic stitch, off I went to find my black fabric.

I decided to embroider a koi because I don't have a koi pattern in my wardrobe.  I cheated here and searched the internet for a picture that I liked and then copied the style.


I drew it on using ordinary tailors chalk and once I was happy with the outline, I began to sew!


As you can see the progress I made wasn't bad and by day one I had the fish outline done!


The following day I filled in the scales which gave the koi a little bit more texture.


And of course we must not forget the water waves.


I am actually quite pleased with the result.  If I was to do it again, will need to add some colour but at the moment I am in a black and white mood.  Now I just need to make it into an obi.

1 comment:

Sekhet said...

Wow, that a work : D