This is a full bolt of fabric intended to be made into a haori, type of loose jacket you wear with Kimono. This bolt is a deep, rich navy blue, almost a black. This color is a product of traditional indigo dye work, which is extremely hard to find. This is a vintage bolt of fabric, but presents as new with absolutely no imperfections or signs of age. The floral motifs in the background are white, pink, and yellow.

Size:

• about 20 cm/7.9 inch wide

• about 590 cm/232.3 inches long

Detailed Design and Technique Notes

Shibori is what we in the West know as tie-die but, as with so very many things, the Japanese textile artisans excel at it and their version is usually intricate, extremely precise, of great skill and very time consuming to create. In Japan it is considered a highly prized textile. Shibori garments are incredibly expensive and much revered. An elaborate, entirely shibori kimono can take a whole year to make and the cost is therefore exorbitant. There are machine done shibori fabrics nowadays but it is easy to spot, especially as the dots it creates are very regular (it is still rather expensive, though), and one sometimes sees prints done to look like shibori but they are completely flat, without the creped texture that the real thing has.

Haori Fabric FAQ

A full haori bolt will make a single haori with no leftover fabric. The basic haori garment design is four panels wide, each panel being around 14 inches wide. A shibori bolt for a haori will measure only about half this width until it is ironed and stream pressed. This step is needed if you want to make a haori from this shibori bolt. A sleeve is a single panel folded in half, and the front and back panels reach from front hem to back hem with no seam in the shoulder to separate them.

Note that there are no actual curves on a haori . Anything that appears curved is an illusion, basted, stitched or tucked into being. All cuts are straight. This facilitates reuse as when a single part of the garment becomes worn or stained, it may simply be relocated. Worn cuffs on sleeves may be swapped so that the worn part is now hidden under the arm and the part previously under the arm is now the cuff. This is similar to turning the collar on an old dress shirt.