Kona Bay Fabrics have offered Japanese cotton sateens for many years now, but I’ve not ordered any until this month. Why oh why did I wait so long? These are gorgeous! Photos don’t do them justice. The metallic gold is beautifully incorporated into the print, which means it doesn’t stand out as much as it…
Category: textiles
Ringing in the New Year with a pile of old indigo
I spent New Years Eve picking apart two vintage cotton kasuri kimono, stitch by stitch. The one on the right with the cypress fence design (numazugaki 沼津垣) was so carefully sewn that it was a terror to disassemble. However, I wasn’t the first one to have taken this kimono apart, as evidenced by how it had…
Unpacking the pretties and piecing them together
I’ve been back from Houston for a week, worked 2.5 days at another show, and now I’m settling into the happy work of sorting fabrics in the studio. My show stock arrived a few days ago and is still being unpacked. Thomas and I discussed the new shelving units he will build for me, and…
Houston International Quilt Market and Festival 2013
I survived! After finding out at the very last minute that I had been accepted for Festival, I packed up the majority of my stock and shipped it out to Houston in mid-October. Then I did the East Bay Mini Maker Faire at the Park Day School in Oakland, California, and packed up what was…
Yukata Disassembly – indigo shibori
We live in an era of mass-produced, off the shelf clothing. That which was novel a century ago is now commonplace. To make clothing by hand is no longer a necessity, but a novelty. That’s great for saving time, but where is the love? In vintage, of course. Hand sewn garments of decades past can…
Vintage Katazome Comes Clean
Meiji era katazome cottons have a special place in my heart. I started collecting them years ago, back when I could barely afford to, and now it’s become something of a joy and an obsession. The fine dots and designs that remind me of having henna painted on my hands when I was 12 years…
Nouveau Boro
I’ve brought samples of my sashiko work to various quilt guilds and fabric shops, offering to teach a class or do a talk on the vintage pieces in my collection. So far the responses have varied from the rare “We’d love to have you, how much do you charge?” to the far more common “We…
Kimono Disassembly
I’ll be back to posting the Caterpillar to Kimono series very soon. In the meantime I’ve been taking apart several kimono I picked up on the Japan trip, and it’s been an interesting experience. Back when I first opened KimonoMomo in 2005 I spent a lot of time taking things apart. I am fairly adept at…
From Caterpillar to Kimono: a Journey in Silk, part 2
From careful handwork to heavy machinery, there are many ways to unreel a silk cocoon. Gunma Prefecture, north of Tokyo, is famous for silk production. In the 19th century Japan produced far more of the world’s silk than it does today (China has taken the title of world silk producer, much as it has taken…
From Caterpillar to Kimono: a Journey in Silk, part 1
My brain is still on Tokyo time. I sit at the breakfast table with my tea and toast and contemplate the day ahead; only it’s almost noon and I’m still not really awake. Most nights I’m up until 1:00 or 2:00 AM, but I’m struggling to get back on a schedule the rest of the…
Home again, with an extra suitcase or two
I left California two weeks ago with a half-filled medium-sized suitcase and a nearly empty duffel bag. I returned from Japan two days ago with those bags packed to bursting and added even more; a new, larger suitcase and a box, both filled with kimono, haori, obi, raw silk, furoshiki, books, obijime, yukata, and other…
Kona Bay’s Hana Bashi Collection by Nobu Fujiyama
Kona Bay Fabrics is known for their wide selection of Japanese-themed fabrics, and two prints from Hana Bashi, the lastest collection from designer Nobu Fujiyama, are now in stock, ready for your spring projects. The colors are a bit darker than they appear on the images, and the metallic gold details are far nicer than…
A love for both the common fiber and the extraordinary textile @KimonoMomo 