Rachel's Kimono

After I made the yukata in April, I moved on to making the girls ones pretty quickly. It was holidays after all! Rachel's was first up, I think mostly because the one I had for Sophie had some slight staining on the fabric that I needed to wash out first. Given that that was an extra step, I think Rachel's appeared easier. 

Turns out I was wrong on that front. Rachel's fabric was a light wool. It's an orange colour that sometimes seems more red than orange, and I know that my rubbish night-time photos don't do it justice. The trouble was that it had a pattern that needed to be matched. 

I cut the pieces for this following the advice of this video that I watched on YouTube. It's all in Japanese, but you can watch it if you like. Essentially, he folds the entire fabric in half, then measures the sleeves first, and folds the remaining (double layer) into roughly thirds with the very top being 12cm shorter. The sleeves are on the bottom, the body of the fabric is in the middle and the top, not quite as long section, turns out to be the collar and okumi parts of the kimono. Then you just have to make two cuts, which was heaps easier than measuring and cutting each part separately. 

Then with my pieces, I thought and thought and thought about how to make the patterns work. Firstly I wanted to make sure the butterflies fall in nice positions on the sleeves and also on the body, but secondly, I wanted all the black lines to match up where they could. So much thinking!

After it was cut and I had started to figure out where things would match up, I began sewing and noticed something not so fun about sewing with wool. It frays. It frays pretty badly. At the time I was convinced I did not know this before, but in hindsight, I do remember the cape wool fraying. I think I didn't remember initially because the lining fabric in that project frayed infinity more. Oh well. 

All the fraying edges of this kimono gave me a sense of urgency to sew it as quickly as I could; so I sewed it in a week. 

Check out that pattern matching friends! Got to be happy with that. 

After it was finished, I tried it on and then sized it down for Rachel. This had always been my plan, which is also historically accurate. The fantastic thing about kimono is the way they are made is easy to adjust them, for shorter people who can grow into them. 

Rachel was so excited to wear this. 

She was so wriggly with excitement that it's all tied a little lopsided, but so cute right!? 

The lining layer is still my size, and the sleeve bits kept popping out. If she was going to wear this for an event or even just longer than a five min photo shoot, I would tack them back for her. 

Patterns matched! After all of that though, I decided I would need to make an active effort to take longer to sew Sophie's. Really, sewing an entire kimono by hand in one week is a little too committed.