Over Hills and Mountains

One of the best ways to bring back flagging or missing motivation is a new piece. I saw this gorgeous 53 Stations of the Tokaido obi in the extra clearance section over at Ichiroya just over a month ago. It had been marked down to $16, and I couldn’t resist. It arrived earlier this week and I knew I wanted to do something with it.

I decided to combine the soft, painted quality of the obi with a bolder, woven design on the kimono. They’re both landscapes with mountains, but the different techniques complement each other wonderfully. The obi has gorgeous, soft dusty decoration and I pulled out the sort of raspberry/burgundy colours with the accessories. A green obijime echoes the kimono, and an agate obidome in the same reddish tones was the perfect finishing touch.

To prepare for my upcoming presentations at Costume-Con 38, I also used this as an occasion to practice doing kitsuke while explaining what I was doing. My poor father was subjected to my “lecture”, and he was a good sport about it. 😛

Since this obi is so new, I don’t have proper close-up photo of it yet, but that’s coming! I need to catalogue a lot of new stuff sometime soon. It’s just a bit overwhelming.