New Year and Making a Dress - Black and white Striped kimono!

Time has flown and as always the end of 2015 has been busy.

I had visited my kimono friends in Birmingham for the day.  I literally flew in and then out of Birmingham in one day.  I think I might not do that again.

Then at work we had our Christmas party which was a lot of fun.  Good food and good company all rounded off if a quiz and then a pub visit.

After that I had a few days of peace before flying back home to see family for Christmas.  Yes ate too much but I loved it.

But just before I left, I finally got back to sewing and I am going to make the most wanted kimono in my collection.

The black and white striped kimono!

I have seen one of these kimono a long time ago and I fell in love with the look but to buy one from Japan was just out of my wallet reach so the only solution was to make one.  Hmmmm that was not as easy as I thought.  Firstly finding fabric with stripes that were more then a couple of centimetres was tricky and secondly I wanted cotton fabric with a nice drape.

Okay with those conditions in mind, I went hunting and last year I succeed in finding the perfect fabric.

Now I had the fabric, it is time to make the kimono (6 months later).

As normal, I followed the method in my kimono book and made a hitoe (unlined) kimono.  It will be more versatile in my mind and I want to experiment in layering.

I did make a miscalculation in the amount of fabric that I brought.  I was told the fabric was 150cm and therefore brought 4 metres only.  BIG MISTAKES!  It turns out I only had 140cm to work with which ruined my original plans.  Especially the long 18cm by 200cm collar piece but I managed to work around it and got all the pieces I need.

At the back of my mind I wanted to practice my handsewing using the Japanese way of hold the needle but I had only just got over a cold and I was not up for the challenge so I did all the long seams on the sewing machine and then blind-hemmed all the seams by hand.

Strangely this kimono sewing went very smoothly.

Day one - Sewed the back and horizontal seam and sleeves.

Day two - Sewed the side seams and blind hemmed them down.
Day three - Attached okumi panels and again blind hemmed them.

Day four - Collar sewed down,

Day five - Sewed both sleeves.

Bearing in mind I only really work 7 hours per a day on sewing however it is done.

Now I have a black and white striped kimono all of my own :)