This Kosode

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This Kosode is named "We took a shibori class"



It's a bit garish, but I brought appropriately-sized rectangles of linen to class for a reason.

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This Kosode is named "On the second day, I brought silk"



Excellent class, you can see we tried about a dozen different techniques.

The class was taught by a quilter, and mostly geared towards creating quilting blocks, but luckily for us one rectangle looks the same as another.

[Saionji Shonagon]

Cool! Pity my month is back to back events of one sort or another. I have plans to do more karamatsu and orinui shibori this summer.

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Fabric dying is so much easier when somebody else is making the dye-pots for you, and a half dozen other people are helping with the stirring and rinsing.

The prep work on the fabric took a bunch of time, I guess. On the silk kosode, the dotted lines on the sleeves were made by putting lines of hand stitching all the way down the fabric. The body panels were stitched into tubes and shoved down on PVC pipe. Picking out all that machine stitching took a while, too. The neck band was tied around another pipe with string, then shoved down. The overlaps were just clamp-resists. Since this class was geared mainly towards American quilters, we didn't learn any of the Japanese names for these techniques.

The teacher (Jan Myers-Newbury, www.janmyersnewbury.com/Jan_Myers-Newbury/Home.html, look on her works, oh ye mighty, and despair.) is amazed I constructed 2 garments from the class materials since Saturday. That's the part where I know what I'm doing!

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This kosode is called "A year after the class, we tried dyeing at home".

(Back - kosode-linen-shibori2b.jpg )

The fabric was actually dyed twice. First in a golden yellow, then in a red that was almost magenta. The body and sleeve panels were prepared by sewing the fabric into a tube and sliding the tube down onto a pipe. The collar and overlap panels were prepared by twisting the fabric tightly and then allowing it to ply itself into a "rope".

Lady Hara and I are hosting some dyeing at our home next Saturday (the 14th) if anybody is interested in traveling to Pittsburgh.

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It's been quite some time since I shared recent kosode work. These things wear out eventually, you know, and the supply must be replenished.

Last Pennsic, I bought enough lightweight white linen to make two kosode. I decided to make one with the sewing machine in my usual way, then make a second kosode entirely by hand. You can see that there are some differences between them. The "by hand" is a little sloppier since I used it as a "carry around" project.

This kosode is called "Lightweight linen kosode by machine":

This kosode is called "Lightweight linen kosode by hand":

Those photos are a bit backlit on purpose so you can see the seams.

I found this excellent and painful matsukawa-bishi ("pine bark lozenge") fabric in a store in NYC, and had to buy it to add it to my "period and painful" collection. The sleeves and body are a little shorter than my usual style, because I lost a lot of length to shrinkage in the wash. I think it's due to a small percentage of elastic in the otherwise cotton fabric.

This kosode is called "Matsukawa-bishi":

Check out the texture on the pattern, though:

Had to use a lot of pins to make sure the pattern matched across seams, or it totally would have clashed:

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This kosode is called kikko in gold.

...for obvious reasons.

This is some great kikko fabric that I picked up in Portland, Oregon when I was there for work about a year and a half ago. Finally got a chance to make the kosode.

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User bovil , who I don't know if he still reads this forum, once suggested ramie as a period fiber for wafuku, so when a Pennsic merchant was having a "going back to school" sale 2.5 years ago, I bought some of the brown ramie fabric she had and set it aside for a kosode project. Its day had come!

I really like the way this one came out. My seams are really clean and straight. The sleeves are "panel and a half" sleeves, though the seam 2/3 of the way down is just sewn without cutting.

This fabric is remarkably smooth and dense. Thus, it wrinkles and shows wrinkles very easily as in the photo above. In the photo below, the daytime backlighting of my studio window shines right through two layers of it.

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Because these things wear out eventually, especially the white kosode worn as a base layer, I really do recommend making a new white kosode every calendar year. It spreads out the work (rather than making a pile of them). I really do try to practice what I preach, but last year I wound up making too many things for other people and never got around to making this for myself. I bought fabric at Pennsic, but the fabric sat there, folded and bound in string, until recently. This kosode is called "White kosode 2017".

The overlaps came out a little narrow, because I decided to make the collar a little wider. Since I cut the overlaps and collar from the same panel, one affects the other.

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I haven't done much sewing lately, so trying to get back into it I decided to get back to basics with a pretty kosode. This one is called "burgundy bunnies" and is made from a cotton print fabric.

Once I finished with that, it was time to get caught up with the "white kosode a year" project. I decided to use up the rest of my white ramie, and make a kosode that would fit well if worn underneath the burgundy bunnies.

Now I just have to make a pair of kyahan and a pair of tabi before the end of the year, unless I decide to count the jika tabi I bought in Japan.

[solveig]

Nov 10, 2019 11:14:20 GMT -5 @ishiyama said:

Now I just have to make a pair of kyahan and a pair of tabi before the end of the year, unless I decide to count the jika tabi I bought in Japan.

Instead of jika tabi (which are really carpenter's boots), I suggest working on learning how to make 雪駄 setta (basically leather soled zori). Setta date to at least the 16c. Sakurako has a book with a chapter on how to make the things. If you are interested in recreating a Heian courtier, then you should take note of the various types of shoes that they wore. (Yes, they wore shoes. They were trying to out Chinese the Chinese at times.)

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Nov 10, 2019 11:14:20 GMT -5 @ishiyama said:

This one is called "burgundy bunnies" and is made from a cotton print fabric.

Finally got a picture of myself wearing the burgundy bunnies kosode with a brand new kataginu kamishimo that I made from blue linen.