I wore my new hakama to kendo class last night, and my kendo sensei thought it was just the ginchiest. Our "normal" uniform, however is a dark blue hakama with a dark blue kimono. At lest pretty close to that.
My "normal" hakama is made from denim, that I made a few months ago, the kind like you would make jeans from. My sensei's is a fairly heavy dark blue material, but I don't think it is denim, and the other student's hakamas are purchased ones that are black, but much lighter weight than either mine or sensei's.
The keikogi, or kimono, that I made, is a lighter weight, but the same color as my hakama. The rest of the class uses a keikogi that is made of dark blue double weave material. It is much like a judo gi, if anyone is familiar with that.
Well, anyway, our standard uniform is "dark", sort of like this:
He then said some thing like, why didn't you make it dark like our standard uniform. I replied "what would be the point of that, I already have a 'dark' one."
A few weeks back, when I was changing into my standard, "dark", uniform, another student discussed how much money I might have saved. I might have, especially for a heavyweight, high-quality hakama like I made.
Well, I didn't make either uniform because I needed one, it would be much easier and faster to simply purchase one:
The white uniform I made was probably about $30 (I already had the pattern, $20 for the material -4 yds * 10/yd, but it turned out to be half off when I got to the checkout stand, and about $10 for the quilt binding that I used to make the stripes). The white unifoms on the page cited are almost $150, perhaps more, when shipping is added in.
I made the first one, because the hakama it was a pattern I wanted to try, not to save money or because I needed one. I made the second one because I wanted to see how it would look if I used a different material.
Also, as I made the first one, I followed the instructions almost exactly as written, in the order that they were written, but along the way, I thought "I could do this this other way" or "It would make more sense to me if I did this step before this step." In the second one, I made these changes.
After all this babbling, I guess my point is that a non-sewer will never truly understand the mind and motivations of a sewer.
Brian Christiansen