Every month a kimono - February

  

For my personal challenge Every month a kimono - February I put on the kimono that was on my dummy in January, the beautiful purple early Showa komon I bought from Ume Bloom.
I tried to pair it with my purple-pink-silver fukuro obi and with my silver-birds fukuro obi, but somehow I really like the obi I'm wearing it with on the pictures.

If you look closely, you can see that I've got 3 collars... The first layer is a tsuke-eri, because the second layer is my juban. This juban, a lovely red vintage juban, doesn't have an opening to put an erishin in... So what I tried to do is give the juban some 'grip'(?) with the tsuke-eri.

What do you think of these 3 layers, is it okay or do you have an idea how to do this otherwise?



For my dummy I tried a different obi on my only furisode. The only combination I've made with this furisode, is with the silver-birds fukuro obi. The obi I paired it with on my dummy has almost the same orange, but is very bold. Please don't look at how the obi is on the front! I've made the fukura suzume musubi with a biyousugata, but I calculated a tiny bit wrong. But main question... What do you think of the combo? Is this an option for Holland's Cherry Blossom Festival?

Han-eri

Oh my, a second post this year within a week! Yes, I'll do my best to keep these blogposts coming, although 2 in a week will not be common (sorry).

When I bought my first kimono, still my favorite bright orange furisode, I also bought a roll of with 2 han-eri on it. Finally after all those years in my little tansu, last week I cut them loose. One has a little drum or a wheel on it (I can't really see) with little flowers, the other is white with some lovely weaving. To stop them from fraying, I plan to hem them (I know that I don't have to).

After they were loose, the little roll or bolt still had a lot of fabric on it. I'm thinking of making an obiage out of it. It's a lovely color blue.

Maybe someone can help me with these two pictures. They were on the bolt, but since I don't read Japanese, I have no clue to what it says. Please let me know, thank you!

Every month a kimono - January

A resolution for this year I hope to complete, is to wear a kimono at lease every month. And on one of the last days of January, I had time to do some kitsuke.

For myself the choice was made very quickly to combine my green iromuji with a bright blue nagoya obi with irisses (?) on it. Funny detail is that Misuchi has a twin obi, a black version!

My kitsuke wasn't the best, and I forgot to do some padding, but it looked okay-ish.


On my dummy I put the beautiful kimono I bought from Ume Bloom. It's a deep purple and has a lovely all over golden pattern. I combined it with a fukuro obi which has fans and other embroidery on it.

The musubi I wanted to try, is a bunko. It's from a Japanese book with all sorts of musubi, mostly for furisode.






It took me 3 times to figure out that this obi is very stiff, maybe too stiff for bunko (next time I'll try a fukura suzume). And even on the 3rd time it still wasn't good. You can't really see it proberly, but underneath the musubi it's too loose. In order to keep the end-piece of the obi in place, I had to work with 2 obiage, a bit strange...

Hope you like it!

The perfect kimono dummy

It has been a while since I did some kitsuke, but last thursday I happen to came across a dummy perfect for kimono.

Why perfect?? It has a little waist and... a perfect flat chest! No more padding, yeay!

So on the last day of 2011 I did some kitsuke on it, with a kimono I haven't worn yet. I bought this from Ryujiro almost a year ago, and yes I am very much ashamed to say that ;-)

The kimono has a red pattern of wheels on it, some of which are colored gold, purple and the same red as the pattern. So I thought of combining it with my new red and black hakata nagoya obi. I'm so glad to have this obi, it's my first hakata obi!


Obiage is a 'standard' red shibori one, the obijime was a present from Misuchi (thank you!).

 When I was finished, the white collar looked a bit dull/bleak (don't know how you call it). Guess what's used as a date eri?? A black obiage I also got from Misuchi! And it looks much better with that touch of black!

Happy New Year!!

PS, I think there has to be a better obi for this kimono in my collection... Comments are welcome!

Japan Tag - Düsseldorf

Last weekend my boyfriend and I had the luck to go to Düsseldorf, Germany to visit Japan Tag (Japan Day)!

We already made reservations for Hotel Nikko (very good, and in style!) which is perfectly situated in Düsseldorf's city centre. And as it turned out, we got ourselves a suite instead of a normal room without paying for the upgrade. All I did was ask if we could check-in early 'cause I wanted to change into my kimono for Japan Tag... Maybe that did the trick, don't know for sure though...

Anyway, we had a blast! Didn't take any pictures, sorry, we were too busy enjoying ourselves haha. The weather was absolutely perfect, nice and sunny, not too cold and not too warm.

Of course I stopped at the booth where women and children could try on kimono, but only to see if I could see some kitsuke-tricks... But it was very crowdy and to each woman/girl they dressed were 2 or 3 women doing the kitsuke. I do have to say that there was one Japanese lady in that booth who looked very very sophisticated in her dark kimono, obi in tsunodashi musubi, and hair in an immaculate updo. So pretty!

We also had drinks with a Japanese colleague of my boyfriend, who lives and works in Düsseldorf, and gave us tips to do in the city. We met with him and his wife, and have a lovely chat. This picture was made by him (sorry for the difficult looks, we stared straight into the sun).  And, always nice to hear.... they (and some more people) complemented me on my kimono and kitsuke!

At the end of Japan Tag we saw the most amazing fireworks ever! 20-25 minutes of the best professional fireworks, with 4 scenes and many ohhs and ahhhs.

On Sunday we wanted to visit the EKO-haus, but we were way too early! We'll go there another time...

Almost forgot... Worn kimono and obi :-)

Finally Hakata!

Finally I'm the happy owner of a beautiful red & black hakata nagoya obi! It has to arrive, but I hope it will look as good as it does on Ichiroya's photo's.

It's been a little while since I bought a kimono. The last kimono I bought was from Ume Bloom's blogsale, this very pretty purple & gold komon kimono. Just found out that I didn't even made a blogpost for this kimono! I'm very ashamed of this, I will do this soon, it's so pretty.

And there was more I liked, way more than my wallet can handle! But eventually I chose an extra long black & purple yukata with a bolder pattern than I usually wear. Linda also has this yukata, and it looked so pretty on her, I hope she doesn't mind I got the same.







And to complete the order I got me a bundle of iromuji kimono. I do hope they're long enough, otherwise those will be my first project to lengthen them... But they had really nice colors (a pink iromuji is almost a necessity in your tansu I think) and fabric/patterns, and the bundle wasn't that expensive.

Let's hope this all will arrive very soon :-D

Tea

 

Last friday, after a very long time from our first date to do have this evening, my boyfriend and I were invited to participate in a private tea ceremony with a couple we know. It was absolutely wonderful!

At their house, their diningroom flows into a beautiful Japanese tatami room with shoji (paper) panels, closets and room for an ikebana-piece with a scroll (can't remember the specific name for it right now). The shoji panels can be opened to look at their small but very nice Japanese garden, and they can even open the garden doors so that Japanese outside is flowing into Japanese inside. Very beautiful. And our hosts both wore kimono!

Our hostess performed the ceremony and her husband explained what she was doing. I had trouble sitting on my knees and feet for long... Next time I have to bring a little cushion to put under my feet ;-) (we were already had cushions under our knees).

We had lots of fun and talked about a lot and very different topics. It was a very nice and entertaining evening.

I wore my peacock-kimono and obi, and tried a bit of padding on my belly with an obi makura. But if it was successfull??? So if anyone has suggestions for padding, please let me know :-)