Modern Kimono at the Met & さよなら

If you'll be anywhere near the Metropolitan Museum any time soon, I can heartily recommend 2 exhibits.  First, Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry, huge tapestries, all from the 16th century, with amazing colors & details still gorgeous after all these years.  It runs thru 11 January 2015.  But I couldn't take photos.  

However, we also made it to another great exhibit, also currently at the Met, Kimono in Modern History, which runs thru 1/19/15, and we could take pictures.   So I thought I'd share a few with you (the Roommate took most of them).  

First off, the patterns were amazing.  Wonderful & graphic, just the way we like 'em!  Keyboards & sheet music, stained glass, circuit boards (?). So much fun.  

And one with cameras!  The text says FILMCAMERAFILMCAMERAFILMCAMERAFILM...

Many were classically Japanese (or what I think of as classic).  Stylized nature, with striking colors & interesting scale & repetition.  I love these unrealistic red & white waves with the little water drops in turquoise.   

Below is a chrysanthemum, but forgive yourself if you think it's fireworks...I think the artist was playing with us, especially by putting them against that dark blue background.  

Old kimono & yukata were made into new with some wonderful recycling. The first is a farmer's jacket from 1925-1950.  Using old yukata, which were cut into strips & re-woven, it's a heavy jacket with a wonderful abstract pattern.  

Next is another farmer's jacket (probably belonging to a woman) made using a patchwork of old silk kimono.  Yukata & kimono wouldn't be thrown away when they were worn out...instead they were re-used & turned into something as good as (or better?) than they were before.  

This is just a small taste (I wish the photos came out better, but of course we were taking them thru glass), and I didn't show any of the heavily embroidered and ornate kimono that were for weddings or the upper class.  All lovely.  Just a wonderful show, with many different styles and many examples.  

I must also mention the Matisse Cut-Outs exhibit at the MoMA, too.  It's amazing (I've been twice), but not really textile-related (though Matisse loved them & painted them a lot, there aren't really any in this show).  It is inspiration-related, though, so worth the lines.  

Finally, I'm saying さよなら. In English that's goodbye.  I started this blog over three years ago (6/19/11) because Tilly encouraged me to.  Although I enjoy her blog, along with many other sewing blogs, I really hate writing!  (And I have to say I avoid it at all costs...so why did I start a blog!?)  I have lots of things to write about, but often struggle to come up with something, or an angle on what I'm writing about, and it feels like torture.

Many sewing bloggers have developed their passion into a business. They seem to be able to turn out lovely finished items as quickly as a factory.  Although I admire their business-savvy & hard work, I don't want a business (I love my government librarian job), and I don't complete that many items in a given year because I love working in my garden, riding bikes with the Roommate, cooking, reading, etc.  I really hate the idea of turning my hobby into a scheduled deadline-driven activity.  I love deadlines at work; at home, not so much.

The last year or so I've really dreaded trying to come up with something to blog about!  Even this blog post took me a few weeks (thank the gods for two recent NYC trips!).  I'd really rather be sewing than blogging. So in the words of the immortal Gary Larson, "Adios, Amoebas!"

Shibori no Haori / しぼりのはおり

I want to show you a haori I got the last time we were in Japan.  A haori is a short kimono, worn over another kimono, mostly for warmth.  But originally they were worn by men, and used to protect a kimono from the elements.

This kimono is silk, and you're looking at the back of it in this photo.  It would not be worn with an obi, which is the wide decorative belt.

I have only worn this once--most of the clothing in our collection is for view, not wearing.

What makes this haori especially amazing is the extremely detailed tie-dye technique the Japanese use called shibori. We all know about tie-dye with rubberbands to make hippie t-shirts, but the Japanese, not surprisingly, as a nation of overachievers, have to do it the hardest way possible (with the most amazing results):  with a needle and thread.

Look at the detail of this haori, in the second photograph.  It looks to me as if they made 10-11 little circle knots in each row!  And there are 3 rows in each group...and you can count yourself (if you like) the number of groups across each row on this fabric.  All I have to say is, "I love admiring this artistry, but I do not want to do it myself!"

If you do want to do it yourself, check out this page from Victory Patterns.  It's got a great after picture, with lots of before shots showing the hard work involved in pre-dye stitching.

The final photo shows the oh-so-classy lining of the haori.  Maybe when I get tired of looking at the back I'll swap it around and pull back one of the sides to show the lining, too.

We've been out in our yard a lot, and I despair of getting my sunflowers to bloom in our extremely shady yard (2 huge holly trees, a gigantic oak and a very large poplar). But it's great for all the textiles because just about the worst thing--besides the oil on your fingers--is light.

So...music?  Pavement: Shady Lane

The Tawaraya Workshop - Textile Museum Exhibition

The Roommate & I went into town in the early afternoon as we wanted to see the Woven Treasures of the Tawaraya Workshop exhibition at the Textile Museum.  The silk fabric was amazing, no surprise there, and they even had some of the ceremonial kimono used by the Imperial Household.  For example, the bridal kimono of the Empress Kojun (Mrs. Hirohito to you & me)!  The Gallery Guide is here.  


But then we went up to see a short film about the director, Kitagawa Hyoji, a National Living Treasure in Japan, head of the Tawaraya Weaving Workshop.  He doesn't just make amazing woven fabrics for court ceremonies now, he recreates 1000+ year old textiles found in Japan's museums & shrines.  This includes not just matching color & weight of the silk, but also reproducing the weaving style.  He spends a lot of time setting up looms & looking through a magnifying glass!  


When 皇太子妃雅子 (Masako-san) was married in Japan, in 1993, of course the kimono were woven at Tawaraya.   A fun exhibit & highly recommended.  
    

Ahh, those days w/ servants!

risingsunimports.com

The Roommate & I have a very old cookbook (early 1900s) and it mentions which part of the recipes you should have your maid do.  Along those lines, obi (帯), the traditional oversized belts worn by Japanese women w/ their kimono are difficult to put on by yourself; you need at least another set of hands, and strength.

So I got a kick out of an article I saw on the plane about Sayuki, the first white geisha, who has begun selling つけ帯, or self-tie obi!  Here's the website, in case you need to get yours before the new year holidays, and there's a video about how to put it on--without the help of your servant!  According to Sayuki, geisha have been using such obi for years...

Yukata! - In which I decide I need a dress form...

So, I finished it.  Again, I need to reiterate how pleased I am about how well the batik (blue) goes w/ the Japanese poet print.  You can see from the photo at right how messy my house is...NO! you can see that it is really a boxy Japanese kimono pattern, modified a bit to hopefully be a bit more flattering.  However, there is so much bulk under the arms, at the side seams.  I do like the final result & will wear it a lot (it's so loose that I can wear my pajamas underneath it easily)...but, I may try to think of a way to take in the side seams to reduce some of said bulk.

I need to mention though, that kimono are not meant to be shaped, the pieces are rectangles made to efficiently use the narrow woven fabric.  When we lived in Japan, one of my students was studying tea ceremony (the Japanese make everything an art & it always involves lots of study & practice)...and she had to wear a kimono.  She told me that her kimono hated her!  This student, Akiko, was a normal female shape, but she said that when you wear kimono, you have to have no shape.  "Like the trunk of a tree," was how Akiko put it!  Which surprised me, but if you think about it, she's correct (look at some photos from Kyoto, if you need more evidence).  Which again brings me to the question of why I thought I would get a shapely housecoat if I copied a kimono pattern?  Oh well...it was a fun project.

A reminder, a yukata is a kimono, but made from cotton, not silk or wool.  It's a summer kimono, essentially.  If you've ever spent a summer in hot, muggy, Japan, you know why they invented this version of the kimono!

Here's the back--you can see I added some darts in the back to give it some shape.  I also added them in the front, but they don't show much because of the overlap.

Under the arm, where the
sleeve (R) is attached

I had to look at the Roommate's yukata to figure out how to do the underarms.  Attaching the sleeves was easy enough--just lots of straight line sewing, but after sewing up that little flap at the bottom of the sleeve, there's actually a gap in the fabric.  I top-stitched that to make it lay smooth & look nice.

I tried it on w/ my hapi coat belt, but the Roommate & I didn't think it looked very good, so I decided to make tie fasteners.  There are 4 of them, and I'm also quite pleased with them--I made them by folding the fabric 4 times and sewing a few times--so they are rather sturdy & flat--and I think they make nice little knots.  2 are inside, where they don't show, so that the overlap stays put.

One thing I kept coming up against over & over was how to fix it while it was on me.  The Roommate is extremely helpful & willing to do most anything w/ regards to textiles & sewing, but he doesn't always "get" what I'm talking about.  I really feel like a tailor's dummy, or dress form, or adjustable mannequin is the next item I want for my sewing room.  I may have to wait a while--we have to pay for our new south wing, first! The duct tape version is looking better and better!

Another issue...of course I don't have any matching pajamas!  Uh oh.  I do have some great stretchy fabric that sort of matches, maybe I'll make some pants out of that. 

Not OK Kimono!

Okay, we can all have a little think about What was I thinking? now.   Here's what's up: I did translate most of the kimono pattern into English; at least I did enough so I could use it to make myself another yukata.  And I could have used the measurements in the pattern (it's in centimeters), but for some dumb reason I decided to use the old measurements for my hapi coat.  Which was big & boxy.  I realize that the kimono would have been boxy, too, but narrow boxes, not wide boxes.  Why did I do that?  Now I have a voluminous housecoat that doesn't really look good when I wrap a belt around it.  It looks so bad, in fact, that NO!  You cannot see a picture!

I am however quite pleased with my fabric choices, so I'll post a picture of it so far so you can admire that:

Bella is always eager to assist me! 

I decided I need darts (not exactly a Nobel prize winning decision, I realize), and googled sewing darts and one of the first pages I found was Saraicat's! She did a guest post at Sew Mama Sew about darts, so I'm going to use her information & see if I can add some shape to this box.  I was pleased because I follow her tweets fairly closely (and get hunger pangs at the food-related tweets).

I am also glad that I have the Roommate's yukata to look at; the Japanese pattern book I'm using doesn't have instructions (and I probably couldn't translate them if it did), so I have referred to it many times so far.  The biggest deal is how the sleeves connect to the sides under the arms.  Nothing like what we do in the west for most armholes.  I'll show some photos once I get that figured out...

Making my own yukata (cotton kimono) or Lost in Translation?!

Remember this link? Of an old Japanese pattern book?  Of course you do!  So, I'm thinking of doing some translating...Japanese into English (if I can find my Japanese-English dictionary!) and miniature doll-sized pattern into human sized. 

And why am I thinking about doing this?  Because I think I mentioned that my hapi coat, which I got in Japan in 1994 is worn thru.  And because we've just moved...and I don't want to scare the neighbors.  In our previous house, the bathroom was upstairs & the windows weren't so display-like!  Here, I could cause some heart attacks running between the bathroom & bedroom.  Now the big decision--use some cool Japanese-print fabric or some of my West African?  Or both?  I need to modify the pattern a bit...I want a yukata (cotton kimono), but shorter.  Hapi coats are shorter (almost too short--above the knee), but voluminous--I would like a kimono/yukata because it will be more flattering...but below the knee--not to my ankles as most kimono are.  I may change the sleeve length a bit too.  

Of course this is all well & good sitting here at my computer with Bella nearby for some ear-scratching.  We'll see how soon I get my yukata; we haven't finished unpacking yet!  

From the Collection - Boy's WWII-era Kimono (Propaganda Kimono)

This is a cotton boy's kimono that is lined for winter.  It's in great shape & is mostly interesting for the belligerent symbolism on it.

When we bought it in Japan, our friend, Noriko couldn't believe how obvious it was...the little boy, holding a Japanese flag is sitting on a globe.  The owner of the antiques store we were in started laughing when he saw her face!  Of course, it's something they learn about in school in Japan, but to see it printed as a piece of fabric (and think about it--there were probably yards and yards of this fabric printed), really surprised her.  I like children's clothing because a lot of care goes into the creation and decoration of these items.

There are examples of Japanese technological achievements everywhere: railroads, airplanes, binoculars.  "Go forth & conquer!" the clothing seems to be telling the boy (Update: Actually it's a propaganda kimono. Here's a link to a Metropolitan Museum exhibit, which had 2 such kimono, one for a little boy (like ours) and one for a woman made of silk with gold thread!)  This is just one piece of children's clothing that we've used to decorate our bedroom; hope you like seeing it!

Music?  My favorite song by Lindberg, だってそうじゃない , (Datte sou ja nai!?), from 1993. That's a great live version.  Maki Watase rocks!!

More on Japanese textiles

From a friend at the Brooklyn Museum:  Textile Designs from Classical Patterns for Dyeing, from the 1930s. Thanks, ACE!    

I can recommend the online archives from the Brooklyn Museum.  Amazing photos from the turn of the last century, scans of notebooks from Brooklynites in the 18th & 19th centuries, so many cool things.