Short Kimono

Recently made up a short kimono, Yakata style.


I only had 3 yards of the 60 inch wide fabric, so, couldn't make it the full length. This fabric came from Walmart's and was only two dollars per yard.

Of course, when cutting out the cloth fabric pattern from some of Walmart's a dollar a yard fabric, Sparky let her presence be known by becoming a weight on fabric pattern pieces.

Then, Velvet decided to participate, too. She became a weight on the fabric pattern when laying out the turquoise dragon printed fabric just before I started cutting away. 

I had used one of the books in my collection of Japanese kimono books for making up the fabric pattern pieces, the center one.

1) Japanese Kimono Designs by Shojiro Normura &  Tsutomu Ema.

2) Making Kimono & Japanese clothes by Jenni Dobson

3) The Book of Kimono, The Complete Guide to Style and Wear by Norio Yamanaka

I also checked out two patterns for making up the kimono. The Butterick pattern # 6698 is considered the  modern "Western Style" kimono because it has the shoulders slanted and the armholes cut out, whereas the other one, Folkwear # 113 that I got from http://www.patternsoftime.com/ is a lot moreso like the diagrams for making up a kimono in the book up above that I used, which also told how to do it, step by step.

 

All turned out as I had expected, except for one thing... I only cut out one arm piece instead of two of them. I ended up salvaging the project by cutting the arm piece in half to make two arms, plus I used some matching binding on the edges of the sleeves so I didn't have to shorten them too much.

So, the shortie kimono has shortie arms, too.  The main difference between the short Hapi Coat and the long Yukata Kimono is the collar. The Hapi's doesn't go across the body the way that the Yukata's does. I used my Brother SE 350 sewing/embroidery machine when making up the kimono.

You are looking at samples of the embroidery work done up on kimonos from book # 1 that's available at http://www.doverpublications.com/. Just put in "kimonos" at that website and the book will come up. People were crafty in those days too. There's a total of 60 kimonos pictured in the book for ideas of making up your own embroidered and traditional kimono of yesteryear. Some are really detailed and have lots of embroidery work on them. Some of the hand crafted designs have special meanings behind them which is explained in the book below each picture. 

   

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This post on kimonos is linked to My Pattern Review on Kimonos