Kimono Advent Calendar Day 3

I got this kimono last year but haven't worn it yet. It's a very nice silk tsumugi and I simply love the stripes. 

I paired it up with a vintage Nagoya obi. It's pretty short so I might convert it into a tsuke obi at some point. The obiage has both red and black stripes , but all the red stripes are hidden in the back under the obi. 

Lyuba 

Kimono Advent Calendar Day 2

Hello Everyone,

For the 2nd day I decided to go all out in PURPLE and UME! I love ume! Purple is not one of my go to colors, normally, but somehow I accumulated quite a large collection of purple items. And no, I'm not willing to give them up! I'm very pleased with this coordination and definitely going to wear it sometime in February.

I'm also pretty excited about my new felt boater hat.

Lyuba

Kimono Advent Calendar Day 1

Hello Everyone,

My friend Hong came up with the idea of doing Kimono Advent Calendar (except that she is SLACKING!), so here is my first entry.

The kimono is vintage komon, I haven't actually wore it out yet. I got the kitty paw obi as a gift from Hong a while back, and it remains one of my favorite obi. The haneri was made fairly recently and you can see how I did it in my most recent issue of Western Girl Kimono Style online magazine. For some reason some people can't open the file, my home computer included, so I apologize in advance for that. I don't know why some people have no problems and others can't load anything.

I am pretty happy with this coordination and I definitely will wear it out one day!

~ Lyuba

Western Girl Kimono Style Vol 1.2

The long awaited WGKS Issue 1.2 is finally here! In this issue you'll learn how to make haneri out of two cotton fat quarters and see one kimono coordinated with three different obi. 

This issue is longer than the first one, and it felt like I was working forever on it. I finally had to stop myself and just publish it, because otherwise I would never finish. I want to keep doing these mini magazines because it's fun for me, and it was getting to the point where it wasn't. I got an ok from several of my beta and proof readers (THANK YOU ALL!) and pressed the dreaded publish button. 

On to work on issue 1.3! 

~ Lyuba

Western Girl Kimono Style Vol 1.1

Check out the very first issue of my mini-magazine that I plan on publishing semi-regularly HERE!

I hope to have the 2nd issue ready in a couple of weeks.

Since my last post...

Wow I haven't updated in a long while! I did, however, update my FB photo album, so you can check out my most recent coordinations. Sadly, I didn't get to wear kimono as often as I would have like to, but that kind of comes with the whole moving-across-the-world-and-getting-used-to-the-new-area thing. Last time it took me almost 2 years to get back into regular kimono-ing, so I'm hoping that this time it won't take me as long. Of course working a graveyard shift (nights) also doesn't help, as I'm asleep during the best daylight hours.

Anyways, here are some photos that I took but didn't post here.

We had another snow back in February in Clovis. It wasn't as much as back in November, but it was still fun to run out and take some photos. I even borrowed a dog specifically for this reason!

 I had a lot of fun styling this outfit. I tried something different with my hair, and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. Of course my husband had to help me with one side, but at least he was willing to do it! And did a great job at it too!

For anyone interested, the hat is my newest purchase at the local antique store, and the mustache belt is a separate belt from the obi! They just blend it so well that it seems like I have a mustache pattern on my obi.

Let me know if the comments if you had to take a break from your kimono-ing lately!

Lyuba

My first snow in the USA

When I found out that we will be moving to New Mexico, I absolutely did not expect to see more snow than I did in England. Yup, that's right! We got snow this weekend! It probably will be gone in a week and we will see no more, but still!

Of course I had to use this opportunity to take photos in the snow. I wanted to wear something very bright, so I found my much-neglected red komon (but it looks like iromuji from far away) and paired it up with one of my recent purchases. I've been looking for an excuse to wear this chuya obi for a while now, and I thought it would stand out nicely against the red. Unfortunately I don't really have anything else blue in the right seasonality, or even close to it, so I went with the next best thing - this purplish haori. I also thought of wearing one of my blue hats, but I just really wanted to wear this red beret.

The haori has some mint leaves designs on it, so I figured that would be the color of my accessories. The gloves are very close in shade to the green on the haori, but the obiage is not the same shade. It is actually a light blue, but it looks very similar in the photos. I figured that might happen, as the same thing happened in my photos before.

At one point I slipped and almost fell in the snow.

One thing I wish I would have done differently is wear a different lipstick. I thought I would wear some pink for a change, but in the photos it looks like I have no lipstick whatsoever. I know it's a little thing, but little things like that are the ones that literally make or break a photo.

As always, you can see the rest of the photos in my Facebook album.

~ Lyuba

How I store my obiage

Few weeks ago Naomi showed me a blog post about vintage gloves storage, so we immediately started looking for these storage containers to buy for our gloves and possibly for our obiage. After looking at many different version, we eventually settled on these ones, as they seemed to be the most sturdy of the bunch.

Well, after organized my obiage AND gloves, I'm proud to say that these containers work for both, but you will need to fold your obiage quite a bit to make it fit.

New life for an unwearable obi

Hello Everyone, 

A while back I won this gorgeous obi for very cheap, but at the time I didn't realize WHY it was so cheap. You can see below the reason why no one else bid on it. I wasn't upset though, because I saw the potential for a nice tsuke obi. 

Not only was the bottom of the obi in a completely unwearable condition, but there were tiny little holes everywhere on the front. Luckily for me, the obi has the same design on both sides, and the other side was in perfect condition! All I had to do was iron out the fold and make the drum part from the good size.

The first thing I did was cut the bottom so I could shorten the stiffener, then fold the fabric. It made the end understandably shorter and a little unbalanced in terms of the design (you can see it in the finished photo), but I'm not bothered by that.

Since it's a tsuke obi, there were lots of hidden spots where I can cut off some fabric to cover the holes in the obi.

By the way, I decided to do it all by hand because sewing by hand is very relaxing for me. It's much faster to do it with a sewing machine.

Here is the back side so you can see how I constructed the tsuke obi. It's actually really easy to do, and I really should stop procrastinating and convert some of the other obi I have.