A practical and inspirational book for dressmakers, quilters and embroiderers who have long coveted the style of Japanese clothes, in particular the kimono. Expert dressmaker and quilter Jenni Dobson takes you through the techniques for making Japanese clothes with simple step-by-step processes, but goes further, covering details on Japanese design and the various techniques for embellishing Japanese clothes. Colourfully illustrated with images of finished garments as well as practical diagrams and patterns for dressmaking, the author has deliberately made all the garments accessible even for those with limited experience of dressmaking, but there are plenty of ideas to inspire those more accomplished readers.

Suki's very favorite thing is her blue cotton kimono and she is determined to wear it on her first day back to school--no matter what anyone says.

"Cinematic, deeply moving, and beautifully written." --Carol Mason, author of After You Left Inspired by true stories, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home. Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage secures her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community. However, Naoko has fallen for an American sailor, and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations. America, present day. Tori Kovac finds a letter containing a shocking revelation. Setting out to learn the truth, Tori's journey leads her to a remote seaside village in Japan, where she must confront the demons of the past to pave a way for redemption. In breathtaking prose, The Woman in the White Kimono shows how two women, decades apart, are inextricably bound by the secrets between them.

"I jostled her shoulder and noticed when I did that her skin was cold to the touch....her entire torso was covered in tattoos from her collar bone to the midline of her thighs. All were of kimono motifs-fans, incense burners, peonies, and scrolls." This ghastly scene was the last thing Ruth Bennett expected to encounter when she agreed to translate a novel by a long-forgotten Japanese writer. Returning to her childhood home in Kyoto had promised safety, solitude, and diversion from the wounds she encountered in the U.S. But Ruth soon finds the storyline in the novel leaking into her everyday life. Fictional characters turn out to be real, and the past catches up with the present in an increasingly threatening way. As Ruth struggles to unravel the cryptic message hidden in the kimono tattoo, she is forced to confront a vicious killer along with her own painful family secrets.

Photos of kimono remnants, chiefly of the Showa period, with identification and dates from designers and collectors in Japan.

What is the kimono? Everyday garment? Art object? Symbol of Japan? As this book shows, the kimono has served all of these roles, its meaning changing across time and with the perspective of the wearer or viewer. Kimono: A Modern History begins by exposing the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century foundations of the modern kimono fashion industry. It explores the crossover between ‘art’ and ‘fashion’ in this period at the hands of famous Japanese painters who worked with clothing pattern books and painted directly onto garments. With Japan’s exposure to Western fashion in the nineteenth century, and Westerners’ exposure to Japanese modes of dress and design, the kimono took on new associations and came to symbolize an exotic culture and an alluring female form. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the kimono industry was sustained through government support. The line between fashion and art became blurred as kimonos produced by famous designers were collected for their beauty and displayed in museums, rather than being worn as clothing. Today, the kimono has once again taken on new dimensions, as the Internet and social media proliferate images of the kimono as a versatile garment to be integrated into a range of individual styles. Kimono: A Modern History, the inspiration for a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,not only tells the story of a distinctive garment’s ever-changing functions and image, but provides a novel perspective on Japan’s modernization and encounter with the West.