Haori

I had this bolt of fabric in my draw for a number of years now - I thought three, but flicking back through the blog tells me I got it in April of 2022. It came from my friend David along with a cotton yukata bolt, and three wool kimono bolts (here, here and here). This one was a shorter length - not the 12 metres needed for a full garment, but probably half that - maybe six metres or so? It was perfect for a haori, which is a jacket worn with a kimono. 

Not only had I never made a haori before, but the fabric itself was intimidating because it was dyed with shibori techniques that left it with a texture. Obviously that's hard to explain here when you are unable to touch the fabric, but imagine it's bumpy, not smooth. Also, my friend David had given me a piece of silk for the lining that wasn't quite enough, so I needed to really think through how to make it work. 

And all the instructions I could find on the internet for a haori were for either an unlined one, or a men's style, which is actually different because the ladies version has extra spacers to allow for the larger obi that would fit underneath. 

All the problems! Should I be the one to provide instructions for the internet on how to do this? Clearly there is a gap there....

Focusing up though, I'm really trying to sew from my stash and use what I have. We were coming into winter and I figured it was now or never for this. I studied some of my exisiting haori, did a lot of thinking, over thinking and mental gymnastics figuring out how it would work and what sewing order to do and then I got to work. 

I ended up using a lighter pink cotton to line the sleeves, but everything else was with the fabrics I had. I sewed it on Sally, except for the final collar hand sewing. I think it took a week? 

And then I wore it. With my Black Yukata and a obi that I also made. I don't know why the photos of the fabric and then the final product on look like different colours. Even looking at these ones, they come out a lot more pink looking than it is. Maybe because the obi changes things? 

I've actually worn it a bunch more because it's so beautiful and fun. It feels very fancy - especially because I know the pattern on it comes from some seriously time consuming dying techniques. 

I realised after taking these photos that I'd made this entire outfit - including the undergarments that you can't see (and I never blogged about), which is pretty wild really. 

Thoughts and Previews

The girls have been sick lately. Rachel most of all - she came home from school one Thursday, was in bed by 3:30 and pretty much slept solidly for three days. Wouldn't even come out to watch a movie or read a book. It was pretty nuts. Suffice to say, we cancelled all plans that weekend and sat around at home. Sophie came down with something similar (though not as bad) the following week, so we had another weekend of laying low and resting week. 

As part of laying low, I did some reading, but also re-started chipping away at a sewing project. I've had this in the "work in progress" box for at least two years, and it's really bugging me now, so I'm making a concerted effort to get it done. It's intended to be a present, so I don't want to give too much away on it. 

But as I sat there at my sewing machine, I was wondering to myself; is this really what I should be doing? Is this the most important way to be spending my time right now? I mean, I had pretty much an entire day free, surely there was something else? 

I can't say I thought too much more about what else I could have been doing, though I'm sure there were worthy options, but my impulse response was to decide that the best thing I could do would be to finish this project as quickly as possible, and thus not have to deal with the conundrum again. Not sure that was the wisest decision, since three hours later I was so deep and focused on the sewing I clean forgot that we needed to pick Rachel up from a Guide camp (luckily Steve remembered and went for me). 

I'm finding though, that recently I've got a lot more of these existential crisis thoughts going on. Am I where I need to be? Doing what is meaningful? What is the legacy I'm leaving? Is anything I do having a lasting impact, or is it all pointless anyway? 

When I turned 25 I remember feeling funny about a quarter of a century. 30 actually felt great - lots of clarity and wisdom about things I never realised before. 40 feels much more like things might be falling apart. That I'm about to start dealing with the consequences of bad choices and that I don't have the time or ability to fix things anyway. Some days the future looks good - I've got the resources and know how to keep going, make positive impact and change things, while other days seem like there really is no point to it at all. 

In reflection too, I find that a lot of my choice activities of late have felt withdrawn or isolated. Reading, walking, sewing. Contrasted to our six months in Japan last year, when even our "chill at home days" were very together as a family (D&D). On one had I miss that, but obviously I don't feel like we would be able to recapture the same kind of (for want of better word) vibes now. That was obviously a very unique set of circumstances that led to those times.  

Anyway, instead of dwelling on these (probably totally normal) thoughts, I will just go back to my sewing project and the isolated enjoyment it offers, and tell myself that it's only for a season. 

Shoulder Bags

Even though the girls have a plethora of bags, they have taken to using an old shoulder bag I have at any possible moment. My bag has sushi print on it, and I'm fairly sure it was a 21st present from my childhood friend Alice. I had been using it as my "church bag" so it had my housewife, a pen and my bible in it ready to go every Sunday, but I'd swapped it out for a new one we bought in Japan (on Shodoshima), because it had started fraying. 

The girls had swooped it up, and were using it alternately. After I quizzed them about why their other bags were not enough, it turned out they liked the one long strap, over the shoulder, design of my sushi bag. Rachel also told me that her Falinks Bag just wasn't big enough for a morning at church, especially since she had been taking extra books to lend to a friend each week. 

So I made them bags. I let them pick fabric from my stash, copied the design and did some sewing. 

It was a little hard cutting into the kookaburra fabric, knowing I was taking 2m of potential dress down to 1.5, but better to be using it right? And I'm fairly sure I could still get something great out of 1.5m.

Similar with the cool sushi fabric that Sophie chose. 

Anyway I lined them with fabric that matched and made sure they had pockets and key clips. Sophie's lining fabric was so thin that I added an extra layer of random bedsheet-fleece that I had to give it a bit more stability. The white with small rainbow hearts fabric is a hand me down from Aunty Sue, and the other navy one that became the pocket is scraps from her quilt. 

Rachel's was lined with fabric she had left over from making Sophie a pencil case for her birthday, (Japan fabric!) as well as some dress off cuts and one of the fabrics she and I picked out for Sophie's Quilt that Sophie decided she didn't want in the end (those cute butterflies). 

I'm pleased to say that the new bags have been well received and we managed to clean out the old bags so there is a much more manageable bag situation at the front door. 

Dress Fail, Skirt Success

So I tried to make a dress. This beautiful fabric (Jocelyn Proust print bought on sale at Spotlight probably ages ago (at least two years?)) I initially got thinking of Rachel, but the more I had it in the drawer, the more I wanted something for me. Thankfully, Rachel was not excited about the fabric anyway, so I didn't feel selfish about the switch. 

Wanting to be fancy and different, I thought I'd try incorporating a cap sleeve into my usual design. I did a make a mock up. It seemed like it would work. So I went ahead, cut and sewed away. But when I had the 90% finished dress on, it became oh so clear that it had not worked at all. 

Everything had too much. Too much width across the shoulders, too much length in the bodice, too much extra in the back. Even the skirt was too long by far. Sadly, because of the design, I couldn't see any way of salvaging it as a dress. I used off cuts from making this for Sophie's Quilt, and I've used some of the fabric before in a pencil case for Rachel. It's lined with fabric I've used for PJ's before that also featured in Sophie's Quilt. 

Photos taken inside on a dark rainy day,
so the colours look strange - it's much brighter than this in reality. 

I'm trying to be much better about actually finishing things though, and so I only let it languish for a month or two before I got to sorting it out. Since the skirt (with it's excellent pockets) was still good (despite the length), I unpicked the bodice, cut a waist band and sewed it up. 

Weirdly, though I wear this kind of full, gathered skirt situation on most of my dresses, having it on a stand alone skirt seems different. Don't know why. I'm hoping I'll still get some use out of it, because I love the fabric and it would be a waste otherwise. The hem is a good 10cm deep, and actually folded three times to get the right length. I could probably lop it off and use the fabric for something else (quilting?), but it isn't hurting anyone there. 

Cultural Festival Day!

I know I say that my work has been busy, and I guess I can't complain when sometimes the extra stuff is self inflicted. Still, this day, extra work that it is aside, is totally worth it and lots of fun. I run a 文化祭 (bunkasai) cultural festival day for the whole school. It's changing gradually each year and the kids love it. That said, it always required some prep work. 

This year, I had my ninja throwing boards that I painted for the 2025 festival ready to go. I also had the set of blue bean bags I'd made for the first one we ran back in 2024. I needed two additional sets of bean bags (one yellow, one white to match the sports teams we have), but thankfully, Steve's mum came to the rescue there. Not only did she cut all the fabric, but she sewed and filled over 200 bean bags for me as well. Good thing I blogged about it back in 2024, because that post turned out to be the best instructions to follow. 

Rachel came with me to school in the holidays for a day and did some prep work on the boxes I needed for a relay game as well as the shoe boxes I used for a sumo game. 

She also helped me paint the background for this six-metre long cherry blossom mural. 

This was a collaborative art work that the year 1 and 2 students contributed to on the festival day. They added the cherry blossoms all over the trees. 

I've been asking at school if I can paint murals, but the answer thus far has been no. This, however, feels like a step in the right direction. It's hanging where the Year 1 and 2 students put their bags, and you can see it all the way from the carpark because it's so big. Really brings some colour and fun to an otherwise boring wall. Wonder what we will do next time. 

Antisocial Quilt Making

School this year has been a lot of work for me. I don't want to go into it much but I've been asked to teach a second subject area alongside Japanese, without any additional time for planning or actual teaching. It's been a bit rough to say the least. When I got to the end of term and holidays started, I really needed to switch off. 

So I spontaneously decided to make Sophie a quilt. 

She's kind of needed one for a little while now, since the one I made for her back in 2013 is only a single. While it does still fit, Sophie is the type of sleeper who likes to get a bit tangled up, and it wasn't cutting it. She'd found the Queen Quilt that I'd made for Steve and I (pre kids - way back in 2009!) and had claimed it as her own. Which was great for her, because she could roll around, wrap up and sleep peacefully, but not great for Steve and I who were now without a quilt. 

I'd seen a video pop up on YouTube of a "Floating Lanterns" quilt that seemed pretty easy to replicate. I dug through my fabric stash and pulled out some ideas that I thought Sophie would like, and then took Rachel on a trip to Spotlight to get the plain colour for the sashing/background and she helped me pick out a few more colours to compliment things. 

Sophie did have a look over the fabric and veto some, but was pretty happy with most of them, so I got to work. Cutting hundreds of squares and rectangles to sew. Can't say I love this part of the quilting process, especially when it's so reliant on doing the maths right and then counting correctly as you go. I was some squares and rectangles short when it came to sewing, but when I did cut more squares and sewed them in, I found I had excess blocks. Oh well!

The above photo is Sophie lying next to what I think will be the layout and me trying to decide if it's going to come out long enough for her. I was working on roughly double bed measurements but it didn't seem wide enough to me. I was contemplating taking one of the top rows of blocks and moving it to the side (rather than making more), but then that seemed like it would leave the quilt too short for Sophie's long legs. 

In the end, I used the surplus bits and cut and sewed a few more to gain an extra row to add to the width of the quilt. Once I'd lay out the blocks in their final pattern, I had to tell everyone we couldn't open the doors because the wind was my enemy. Also, we were going to have to walk around it being on the floor for a while, since sewing takes time. 

At one stage I thought I had sewn enough and could risk the doors half open, but that resulted in the wind blowing away about 85% of the rest of the layout before I could stop it. Thankfully I'd taken a lot of photos, so I just needed to sort through and lay them out again. Lesson learned though. Once it was finally sewn together, I was well pleased with the result, so I added the boarder and went to get some backing fabric from Spotlight (on sale whew!)

I am still not amazing at actual quilting, but I have been watching some videos on YouTube from Pin Cut Sew, and I must have picked up something, because this quilted much better than my previous attempts. I was going to wing it when it came to the quilting lines, but I ended up pre-marking them, because my blocks were not all square and I figured if I was juggling the quilt through the machine I didn't want to have any extra things to think about. It was worth it, because it did make the quilting easier. 

Sophie went away to camp on Saturday morning and I had the quilt bound and finished for her when she came home on Monday. She's given the quilt a stamp of approval and Steve and I have reclaimed our quilt once more. I was pretty anti social for the ten days that I worked on this quilt. Headphones on and off to my little sewing area. Thankfully my family knew I needed the down time and were gracious to give it to me. 

This quilt has some beautiful fabrics in it, PJ fabric, Luke's Christmas shirt, Sophie's halter top/shorts, some leftover maple leaves and cat fabric that Rachel bought in Japan and used to make Sophie a birthday pencil case, some other cat fabric that I got in Japan for Sophie too. I had enough of the pinky floral print (from Sophie's halter top trial) to make the binding for the quilt too. I also learnt that polyester thread does not play well with the very hot iron that I used to press the seams. I melted quite a few rows of stitching making this quilt!

There is something really lovely about seeing a home made quilt on a bed. Hours of work, various skills and at the end, something beautiful that will last a life time. Well worth the effort.

The Black Yukata

After making arduous shorts, I decided I needed a break and a quick sew of something that I knew would turn out. I had this amazing patterned fabric in my drawer since I'd used some of it for Sarah's 40th Birthday bunting 18 months ago. Even though I had bought actual yukata fabric in Japan, for some reason, the time felt right to use this up.

 

When I'd bought it, Spotlight was closing down their store, so I got it at a really discounted price and I'd bought what I thought was enough for a whole yukata (FYI, you need about four metres of standard width fabric). I was pretty sad when I lay it out to discover that I didn't have quite enough! I considered different options, but decided that I would make a half half yukata with some plain black fabric. 

Since I was using non-standard fabric, I decided I'd also just use my sewing machine to sew this, rather than hand stitching like I might have usually done. I did french seams to encase all the raw edges, which is what I've noticed is common for modern made yukata. 

The whole thing sewed up in a weekend and man does it look stunning. I was so happy with how it turned out. I wore it to school with an obi that I also made, back in 2023. Love the little pop of colour it gives on the back. 

The biggest trick with this was making sure I had my left and rights the correct way around, since I didn't want the plain black on the front. Success on that though!