beaded kimono was: D'oh moments

Linda D. 22 years ago

Hi Kathy,

I checked out the site you posted and the work is gorgeous!!! I have a real *thing* for Japanese items these days. Did you design your own beadwork kimono? I've been thinking of doing the one on the bead-patterns.com site, but keep thinking I should be able to design one on my own. Whatcha think?

take care, Linda :)

You ever whack yourself in the forehead, thinking "That was so darned
> obvious. How come I never thought of it before?"
>
> Last one is a polyclay D'oh moment.
>
> I was looking online at photos of kimono to get some ideas on attaching the
> obi to my crystal kimono. (yeah, I know. Finish the damn thing and shut up
> about it already) I found a site with an artist who makes similar display
> kimono, not out of beads, but out of slumped glass. The patterns and designs
> she makes look almost exactly like polyclay.
>
> Yes, I've spent God knows how many hours right angle weaving my display
> kimono when I could have made one with polyclay and metallic powders in
> 1/10th the time. D'oh.
>
> Actually, that's not an entirely D'oh moment. I now know what my next
> Polyclay project is going to be.
>
> Kathy N-V, master of the obvious

Vancouver Island, bc.ca :) (remove 'nospam' to reply) See samples of my work at:

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Kathy N-V 22 years ago

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 22:39:19 -0500, Linda D. wrote (in message ):

I've been doing this on my own, and it's not that big a deal. All the kimono patterns I've seen made a finished product that was too small for me. Also, they were all in Peyote, and I really wanted to do the project in right angle weave.

The last issue of Bead Dreams (the one with the two-ton treasure necklace on the cover) had a "fur" coat made of beads. The artist made the base of right angle weave and attached a zillion little fringes of Delicas to each square. More importantly to me, she roughed out a little sketch with the rough dimensions of a kimono. I looked at them, and made the measurements on my own -- My kimono needed far deeper sleeves than the "fur" coat.

One side of the kimono does need to be larger than the other - you need the extra depth to make "sides," so the piece hangs properly and is three-dimensional. I'm making my front piece about 1" wider than the back, so it will hang like a real article of clothing.

I'll take some photos of the work in progress - the whole base of the back is done, and I'm working on the front. After the kimono base is finished, I'm going to embellish each square with seed beads. Once I get finished, I'll take a bunch of measurements and write some directions, if anyone is interested.

Kathy N-V

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starlia 22 years ago

I can't wait to see Kathy's kimono.

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