summer sewing: Asaka kimono

July is here, and so is the first project from my summer plan!

(Please excuse my weird glowing photos. I've been trying to get them done for over a week and I never wake up early enough to avoid the glaring sun. What is going on?? This is a goddamn weird actual summerlike summer we're having here.)

I made this one first because it was the one I was most excited about. The Asaka kimono was the first Named pattern I ever wanted to buy, but I was suffering from a weird kind of sewing imposter syndrome at the time (along the lines of "everything you make is bad, even you think so but you force yourself to wear this shit anyway so you can keep deluding yourself") so I talked myself out of it. Totally impractical, I said. You'll never wear it, I said.

When I found this fabric (an Italian crepe-type from my perennial favourite, Fabric Store in Walthamstow) I immediately had visions of the Phryne Fisher loungewear I used to promise myself I'd make but then never did, and realised that the Asaka really isn't that impractical. Since I'd be wearing it as a dressing gown most practicality concerns don't apply, and there's not much I could make that would get more wear than a fancy black floral robe. It may be the height of summer but still nobody is going to persuade me that what I want is a light floral.

Look at these sleeves! They're actually much less of a pain to wear than you'd think - since the vent sits above the elbow, when you bend your arm the material just quietly drapes out of the way. I'm not saying I'd make pancakes in them, but for general day-to-day activities they're pretty well-behaved. 

Named no longer sells the paper pattern for this design and I couldn't be bothered to track it down even though I know I could have, so I bought the PDF. Thankfully this one wasn't an overlapping layout like some of the Named PDFs I've bought before. I understand tracing paper patterns (even though I don't tend to do it myself) but I cannot fathom why anyone would create a PDF that you had to trace. I've found a couple of old reviews mentioning that the pattern only gives you two sizes nested together, and that's not the case anymore; this one has been updated to match their current releases and all sizes are nested into one. The seam allowance is still 1cm, so I added a tiny bit extra to allow me to do French seams the way I'm already comfortable with.

The insides are all French-seamed, including the seam that splits into the sleeve vent. That took me a while to work out (and tutorials aren't plentiful, though there are approximately one shitbillion telling me how to sew a straight French seam), but it turned out to be a fairly simple "clip into the seam allowance and tuck under" job. I also lengthened the whole thing by about 10 inches, and I'm glad I did. I'm not normally one for this kind of length, but for loungewear it's perfect. It gives me both coverage and swank factor without creating any kind of tripping risk. After experimenting with the tie belt I decided to double the length, using four pieces instead of two, which lets me wrap it twice round and tie a big long bow at the front. Overall it's a pretty simple project which took me about a day start to finish, with no major difficulties beyond trying to press this fabric, which was so bouncy I probably could have hosted a four-year-old's birthday party on it. I've forgiven it, though, because damn it is pretty. 

This is one of my favourite things I've made in a while. I'm not sure if I'll make it again - there's a fairly limited amount of space in my wardrobe for kimonos, especially given that I still want to make a proper version of the Victory Patterns Trina - but if the right fabric came along I don't think I'd protest very hard. I've tried several times to make a dressing gown for myself and each one has been a colossal failure, so this feels like an achievement that's been a long time coming. I shall bask in this feeling until it gets cold and I decide I need a winter dressing gown as well. 

Next up: an incredibly uncharacteristic pink dress!