I recently spent 14 plus hours working on an indigo fabric kimono – starting from copying the pattern from a purchased garment, piecing together 5 incredible fabrics and then putting it all together. At the end I got to embellish it with buttons from the client’s incredible collection of vintage, carved mother -of-pearl buttons – what fun!
The client wanted to feature one of the firmer printed fabrics with a dark blue section of printed Chinese characters in white, so I used it for a set of matching patch pockets on the front. The firmer fabrics were used in places where they could help structure the garment (i.e., front band, sleeve bands). I used a double layer of the thiner shibori fabric on the back, utilizing a diagonal printed motif on the shoulder. This gave weight to uphold the structure of the garment and also provided a design feature which was highlighted with stacked mother-of-pearl buttons.
I made a closure consisting of 2 buttons and a loop which can be used to keep the garment together at the top or works just as well as a decorative element.
She LOVED the garment – enough said!
