March Fudangi Friday with Sakura

🌸🌸🌸 Belated Fudangi Friday with blooming sakura 🌸🌸🌸

This is a cotton kimono with a lace overlay share fukuro obi, mint green obiage, and brown obijime. The sakura are blooming here so I wanted to do an ode to them (pink, green, and brown for petals, leaves, and branches) without outshining them.

Fudangi Friday - January Edition

Ever since the first one, I keep missing Fudangi Friday! 😅 So here’s the belated Sunday addition! 

I wore a light purple yuki komon, yuki obiage, brown wool heko obi, and pink obijime. There are a lot of “errors” here but that’s ok! It’s meant to be very casual. 🙂 I love using heko obi for this because their soft texture will always make the musubi a little “imperfect”.

This obi musubi is called "wano"(ワノ). It came from one of my favorite casual obi musubi books, 「ファブリックブランドの本」. If you love women's heko obi, you should pick up a copy from Kimonoya Kururi (can be ordered via Rakuten or Amazon JP). The ISBN is 978-4-309-28459-0. 

2017 Year in Kimono

Here is my year in kimono! My outfits were few this year due to being a new mom, and there were several only done on the mannequin since I couldn’t wear them in the first months after my son was born. The first one I wore this year is the only one I wore in later pregnancy (the brown and black ume komon). I also made and altered several kimono and obi this year. Next year, I hope to do a little more, and maybe there will be more children’s kimono soon!

Simplification of kimono?

I'm not going to lie, as I have become a busy mom, I have tried to find ways to make kitsuke quicker and easier. I have always disliked two-piece kimono because they rarely ever look as neat as a regular kimono, but this one seems better than the others. I'm thinking of making my own prototype similar to this to see how it works on myself and maybe just to have that quick "go-to" outfit when I'm in a time crunch, and it's not a formal situation. I actually already own the t-shirt juban she wears (and it works surprisingly well!) and I've strongly debated converting some of my more damaged obi to the type she wears here.

 How do you feel about this kind of kimono? Would you wear it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g9vs4I0qHg

Handmade Kimono

For my last week of maternity leave, I really wanted to finish a sewing project. I bought the fabric for this kimono a long time ago, but I have only gotten around to making it now because the baby has started going to daycare. So here's the finished product (the color is most accurate in the close-up photos). It's a cotton-linen blend with white flower embroidery. I did a casual pairing with a hanhaba obi just for picture purposes. The obi is tied in 二色鼓結び (futairo tsuzumi musubi).

Yukata for Belated Gofuku no Hi 2017

I missed Gofuku no Hi since I was out of town and sick (still sick though), so here's my super late contribution! This townscape yukata arrived today so I paired it with a reversible red and black kingyo hanhaba obi. This musubi required an obijime, so I used a green and white checkerboard sanbuhimo with a silver dragonfly obidome.

Pink Hakama Kitsuke

Quick post for today: pink hakama kitsuke! I used my blue baby duck haneri with this deep purple butterfly komon and a light yellow hanhaba obi.

Kodomo no Hi (こどもの日) 2017

I put together this ensemble in honor of kodomo no hi (こどもの日) tomorrow. The kimono is pink cotton seersucker, and I made the matching hanhaba obi and haneri out of cotton nursery fabric with a pattern of baby ducks. It's a rather lightweight ensemble, but our weather has been around 80 degrees F (about 27 degrees C) for the past few weeks. This was also my first time doing musubi with a sanjuuhimo, but I'm happy with the result!

Hydrangea Yukata and Too Small Heko Obi

Today's kitsuke was a lesson in problem solving! I ordered a heko obi for this yukata, and the dimensions were listed incorrectly. Instead of the adult size that was listed, I received a child's size... It was a good buy so I figured it was not worth returning. At first I thought I might just use it as a puchi-heko obi or even for fabric, but then I decided to see if I could find a way to tie it. One of my favorite books (ファブリック帯の本) has many ways to tie heko obi, including using long scarves, so I modeled it after those musubi. I also used a hanhaba obi tying tool (kind of like biyosugata but for hanhaba) to help provide support. I hope you like it!

First Postpartum Kitsuke - Spring Edition

After just having a baby, I can't really do kitsuke on myself, so out comes the trusty sewing mannequin! I got this cotton kimono and obi fairly recently and was dying to see them together. I tried to use colors in the obi for this ensemble to help keep the spring look, since an orange kimono could easily lean toward autumn.

30 Weeks Pregnant Kitsuke

For most of my pregnancy, I have avoided doing any kitsuke - even for practice. With hormones making me generally not feel well for a good amount of the time and (of course) an ever-changing body to deal with, it just felt like too much. However, this past weekend, I had a good reason to try to get dressed in kimono. It was the annual local Japanese food event, "Oishii Japan", and my tea ceremony group was asked to do a short presentation. The outfit I ultimately ended up choosing was not something I would usually wear for tea, but I went with it considering it was a casual event, and I had a limited number of things that still fit and would be comfortable enough. 

2016 Recap

I apologize for the long hiatus on this blog. 2016 was a pretty bad year for me kimono-wise just because I didn't have the ability (surgery and really rough 1st trimester of pregnancy) or the opportunity to wear them as much as I would have liked. I made a small collage of the outfits I wore or styled.

The most pervasive theme I notice is that I focused more strongly on casual outfits. Cottons and tsumugi were favorites, and bold obiage were used to make the kimono more youthful and modern. There were a few colored haneri and tabi uses early in the year, but since most of the later occasions were more formal or for tea ceremony practice, I stuck with mostly white. As usual, I pretty much stayed away from vintage and kimono hime. (They look great on many people, but just not on me!) The loudest outfit by far was the playing card yukata that I styled for a fashion show in July. It really can't be seen in the photo, but there is a small silver dice obikazari, and the obidome is a roulette wheel. The last kimono I wore this year was a blue shibori hitoe kimono for a shamisen performance. Technically, it's a pregnancy kitsuke since I was 13 weeks at the time, but I wasn't really showing then so fitting was essentially the same.

Unfortunately, I don't see myself posting too frequently in the coming year as well due to having a baby on the way. I hope to have at least one pregnancy kitsuke to show before it's all over though. And who knows? Maybe I'll have some cute baby kitsuke in the future in addition to my own!

June Chanoyu Okeiko Weekend

I got a lot of practice for tea ceremony last weekend! We had a big group class on Saturday, and then I had a private lesson on Sunday.

Saturday's outfit: 

Pink ro komon with kikyou, cream Nagoya obi with hyotan, purple summer obijime, mint summer obiage, summer zori from Calen Blosso

Zelda Symphony Ensemble

My husband and I went to the Orpheum last night to see the Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses show last night. I wanted to wear a more formal ensemble, so I finally had an opportunity to wear this yellow crestless irotomesode that I bought last year. It also gave me a chance to wear the new haori I bought recently. I chose a royal blue obiage for a pop of color. The obi I got recently from eBay. It's a cream-based taiko-gara fukuro obi with lavender and blue karabana. The sanbuhimo is light pink with silver threads. The obidome is handmade with items from the craftstore. The camera unfortunately did not pick up the true vividness of the colors.

Belated Post - Birthday Kitsuke

I did this coordination about a month ago, but forgot to post it here. I decided to do a coordination for my birthday, and I chose to use several new items. The beige kimono (one of my "bucket list" kimono!) is a cotton-linen blend and is so comfortable! The obi has big peonies that remind me of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. I chose turquoise accessories for this particular coordination, but I think it would be a match for other colors as well. The obi is tied in tsunodashi musubi, and since the obi has no core, it's a little more curved than I would like, but oh well. 

wink emoticon

Several new purchases and mannequin kitsuke with new obi

I decided to do some kitsuke on my sewing mannequin the other day so I could practice with the new obi that my husband bought for me. The first one is a reversible cotton hanhaba. I love the simplicity of the dots and stripes in black and white! 

And here is the kitsuke I did with it. This musubi was kind of made up as I went along, but based on many I have seen in the past.

Giving Life to Old Obi

For years, I have had these two tsukuri obi just sitting in my house. I bought them both for very little. The first is a rough brown one - likely cotton - and the other is a synthetic one with printed kanoko dots. They are plain and versatile, but pretty boring... I had an idea quite a long time ago to add appliqués, but I truly kept forgetting about it. While moving thing around the other day, I finally remember that idea. I found several cute designs, but the little orange and yellow owls were my favorite. I also picked up some flower appliqués of varying designs. These appliqués are iron-on type,

And these are the results!

Brown cotton obi with owl and flower appliqués