First Project of 2012: Complete!

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, my grandmother widened my beloved yabane-komon for me. Last weekend she finished it and it turned out awesome (thank you so much grandma <3).

It's wingspan grew as well as the overall width. It's probably still far from having the perfect wingspan, but it became much easier to wear.


Here are some pictures for comparison. I admit it's not that visible, because of my posing in the "before" picture. The sleeves don't look as short as they were:

Before

Obi - Taken apart

As mentioned in my last sewing stuff blog entry, I've got another project going on, which has higher priority for now.
It's an Nagoya-obi I purchased for some dollars and is too short for me to wear. So this obi is my victim for a "sew a pre-tied obi" experiment. The first step is already done: I took it apart and removed the lining fabric. I have a subtle feeling there's more lining fabric than anything else XD

Next, I will get it cleaned, 'cause there are some stains in several place. Wish me luck it won't get ruined.

Mannequin Minarai

Having fun, dressing up my mannequin I tried out possible combinations for my dance hiki. I want to convert it into a minarai-like hikizuri, but there are some other projects going first.
Practical cause of doing minarai and not maiko kitsuke: I just don't have long enough obi and most fukuro will do in terms of lengths for minarai darari.
It's not a complete kitsuke at all and there's a lot of stuff missing including eri, obijime and so on, but I had fun with it (^.^)

So first of all I went with my sha hakata-obi in light pink.

The pink colour of the obi does match with the kimono's lining, though for an authentic minarai outfit, it's way to plain. I feel there's a lot of bling-bling (aka gold/silver/colourful embroidery) on the obi missing.
I am very pleased on the other hand with the result of the obi-musubi. It's so hard doing it with this mannequin, 'cause it's very light weighted an easily falls over.

Back to the outer appearance of the ensemble. Contrast is another point, missing in my opinion. The light colours do match, but that's not the point in this case.

For a better visualisation, I added a photo with a black fukuro obi, that has some gold and colourful embroidery. For sure, this is not the best match (wrong seasonality, too harsh etc.), but it stands out pretty well against the kimono (and has bling-bling (^-^)).

This is where my new ro fukuro obi is to be introduced. The poor thing got cut by the customs right into it's pattern, it made me heartbroken, when I found out (T-T). But thus this beautiful fukuro is probably going to have a shining future as fake darari. It has some nice shiny embroidered butterflies in gold and silver and since it's made of silk I'm pretty positive I can darken the light green colour of it with silk paint. I'm just not sure, which colour would match better (more blueish or greenish?) and when I'll have time and money to realise this new and work-heavy project.







Anyway, it's always fun to play with hikis and I really enjoy doing so. Wishing everybody a nice week,
SilberRegen!

(P.S. Please don't mind the mess in the background, I was moving when these photos were shot XP)

Items: Kimono, Obi (1), (2), (3)