Wednesday, June 24, 2015

New obidome

I've been getting ready to list some of my new obidome creations to my etsy store.
I've made a few colour ranges, basically I just really enjoy working with a certain colour and end up making 5 or so obidome from that colour before finding a new "yummy" or "pretty" colour.

Available for sale is a classic faux "tortoiseshell" colour combination:


A clear "glass" design:



Bright fuchsia:


There's also some random coloured obidome that you can see in the obidome section at Kofuji Kimono such as black plum and camellia flowers and more metallic designs.


Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Finally, some kitsuke photos!

Hello everyone, long time no post aye...
I swear, every year I say I'm going to blog more, and maybe I do for a couple of months and then I forget about it...

So technically here in Australia its winter, however this is kitsuke was planned for a late autumn showing but I didn't make it in time...
So let's just pretend its still autumn for another week or so and we'll be all good ;)


And let's pretend I can master the art of trying to take photos and organising my face better.....







Hands down  I love this kimono. If there was a fire in the house I would grab this over a few hikizuri ( for sentimental value not monetary, obviously with the prices hikizuri are going for these days, geeeez...)
So because I love it so much do I like to wear it each autumn, although I did buy a similar kimono here in my Ravenclaw kitsuke and it's nice, but I don't love it as much as this one.
I don't love the kitsuke though.
Let's face it, I'm not one of those people who can do clean, neat kitsuke. Mine is definitely the frazzled house wife version!
The obi is white and green hakata ( I never saw the appeal of hakata for about 5 years and now I'd like more in my collection)
Obiage and obijime are yellow and golden, to reflect the leaves on the kimono and the obidome is a clear "glass" leaf one I made hinting at the iciness of winter around the corner.
(Shameless plug, but my Etsy store Kofuji Kimono will be updated shortly with some new styles of obidome including this "glass" style)

The han'eri is a black base with painted silver swirls on it when I played with stencils late last year, it was already on my juban and I thought it would maybe work well going into the "dead" of winter.
Its a very meaningful kitsuke if you hadn't noticed ;)


I tried using my biyosugata for the musubi, obviously practice is the key with this kimono hobby, the more often and frequent you do it the better you are and it shows today.
I couldn't get the drum part right and it was all lumpy for some reason? I don't remember having this trouble before.
But then I seriously thought I should turn all my nagoya obi into pre-tied obi.
I mean why not? I never do anything else with them and it would've been a life saver today, but the thought of cutting up an obi......
I might stew on it for a bit longer, then probably pick out an obi for a practice and see how I go.
I've made pre-tied obi before so that's not an issue, its just working up the nerve to cut a perfectly good obi, even if it is to make it more wearable...
Have you ever made your own pre-tied obi? If you have, did you ever regret cutting or has it been the best thing you've done?

I imagine some pre-tied obi will be very useful in my near future, as I'm working less I may find the time to practice my kitsuke before my hobbies go on hold for a bit....
You might kind of be able to tell in the above photos but my belly's getting a bit bigger these days, and its only getting bigger!
I'm 21 weeks pregnant and it took 20 weeks to think "I'd like to wear kimono".
The photo isn't the best, didn't get the angle just right but there's a belly there.


So now I'm off to ponder which poor obi will be the first to get the chop and work out which of my kimono will be big enough to fit in a couple of weeks...