Fabrics From China

 I’m not a big fan of commissioned work, but when you share a kindred vision with someone, they have beautiful fabrics for you to work with and they trust your artistic eye, it’s well worth the effort.

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!