If you’ve seen my Instagram, you know that this is about all I’ve been working on. I’ve had the idea for a while now, but I never quite got around to making them. A loooooooong time ago, I made obi-ish belts, but never got around to doing more with the idea.
Que getting a stack of kimono in the mail (Yahoo!Japan Auctions are going to be the death of me) and needing something to make. Can’t make corsets, because my sewing room is still basically boxes piled up in all corners. I can barely fit the sewing machine on the kotatsu as it is, and it wobbles like crazy, so I can’t make anything big…
Then, a friend, Kozi Nu, mentioned fabric cuffs, and I remembered some sketches I had in my bullet journal that had been forgotten about after the move.
Couple that with my recent … thing … for embroidery, and ideas just keep coming!
Most of these come from a kimono I just picked up. I thought it might be silk, but it’s a really soft rayon (burn tested it), but I don’t really care. It has a nice hand to it, and needs to be backed with cotton so the embroidery doesn’t get too wodgy (yep, that’s a technical term). I love the colors, I’m a sucker for pink/purple/blue.
I wasn’t originally keen on the button closure, but I thought I’d give it a try. I like it now, it’s really easy to wear and doesn’t move or twist like I was originally afraid of. I have a couple of other ideas, but they require having the space to pull out my ungoldly amount of resin stuff, which isn’t happening until aforementioned room gets sorted.
Then, I had some scraps (I mean, these are all scraps, but scraps of scraps I guess is what I mean) that were too small to do much with, so I decided on braiding them. The first one needed the embroidery to hold it together, I think, but later (aka once I busted out the sewing machine – sewing tubes by hand and then turning them is just a total pain in the ass) I was able to make them narrower and they didn’t need the extra support.
Basically, these little pieces are what’s holding my sanity together right now. I even dug out a few other kimono hunks I had from other projects – one to go with my dress made from a yukata, and another from scraps of a koi yukata I turned into a shrug a few months ago.
I am honestly thinking about selling them, but I don’t know if anyone will buy them. I have a few friends I’m just sending them to for the heck of it, to see how much shipping on them would be. I dunno, I think these would be like $20-$25 or so? Does that seem fair? Any input?
Bonus kitty pictures!
Spice is greatly annoyed that the sewing and embroidery bits are taking up his sleeping space. Until his sister Sugar comes to claim what little is left as her own.