May 8, 2012

Happy International Kimono Day!

Today is International Kimono Day, so I've decided to do some kitsuke and wear the yukata I bought from Bangasa Kimono! The obi musubi is the Multi-leaf Carolien and I tried 2 weeks ago

  

Cotton is so different from silk, which flows and folds so easily. But then again, if something goes wrong and you get a (little) stain on the yukata, you can just throw it in the washer ^_^

And since I was in yukata anyway, I also put my 'new' furisode on one of my dummies. This beautiful furisode with shibori, embroidery, lovely stylized cranes woven into the fabric and an extra soft pink haneri sewn in, was also previously owned by the lovely Bangasa Kimono.

  

Ever since I saw a white/creamy furisode with red shibori when Misuchi, Rota and I visited an exposition at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, I've wanted one. And now I have!!!

Finding a right obi (in my current collection) was a bit difficult, but this blue nagoya obi is a good match. Nice to know, Misuchi has a twin of this obi, but in black. We still have to wear them together someday...

May 1, 2012

Musubi practice

Last Sunday, Carolien came over to take a peek at my kimono-collection. She is one of few who lives in the south of our little country, and is the one who lives nearest of me of our Kimono de Jack-members.

Of course all my kimono got out of my little Ikea-'tansu' (which is getting pretty full) and my obi out of their container (which I can't close without a big bump in it's cover)! It's nice to show them to someone who loves kimono and obi, and it even helps making new kimono-obi combinations.

After lunch we put the kimono and obi back in their 'tansu' and container and decided to practice some musubi for hanhaba (over our normal clothes). Hanhaba are so much fun and easy to wear, and you don't really have to be afraid to damage them, at least not mine since they are all synthetic.

Our first try was the 'ballon flower' (according to Google Translate). Carolien's version wasn't exactly like the photo's, but way better than mine!















Next one: multi-leaf (again, Google Translate...). We both got this one quite good, and it was really easy. The only tricky thing is to get the start-lenght right, to make sure the bottom two 'leaves' are bigger than the two upper 'leaves'.



The last musubi we tried was the weeping cherry tree (GT again). My version was a disaster, Carolien's wasn't that bad, except that the end of the obi was a bit too long.




We had fun trying and tying these musubi! But sometimes it was hard figuring out what the next step was... with some instructions we just needed an extra picture.