Yuna:
Yuna wears an outfit plainly derived from kimono and hakama, but a deeply pleated skirt instead of hakama, and her kimono has been cut down to the sleeves and a chest wrap. She wears her obi in a butterfly knot, the easiest and a fairly secure way to tie an obi in my limited experience.
Making her obi: A formal occasion obi will be heavy silk, damask or embroidered or appliqued or painted or otherwise embellished, lined with stiff cotton. Less formal obis are narrower and more flexible, of lighter silks or cotton or other material, patterned or plain. I wanted something sturdy and as little inclined to sliding as possible, so I used the stiffest, heaviest yellow cotton I could find, painted with fabric paint.
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| I used SoSoft brand fabric paint for this, ordered off the internet. This is really good fabric paint: opaque, goes on smoothly, neither too runny nor too thick, really good colors, dries flexible and without any residual tackiness. |
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| When this picture was taken, with about 1/3 of the obi painted and the fabric stretching out seemingly endlessly, I quite hated this project. Obis are long. |
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| About this long, in this case. |
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| Finished! Now I love this obi again. I painted the central design with a hand-drawn paper stencil. |
It took me about 12 episodes of
HPpodcraft, the H.P. Lovecraft literary podcast, plus another 3 hours of other internet listening-to stuff, to paint this. And I even left a section that will not show when the obi is tied unpainted (quite common). The obi construction cheats somewhat in that I did not line the fabric, nor baste the folded over fabric shut.
Slightly off-topic: One of things I am really proud of myself for is learning to tie my own fukuro obi in a basic taiko knot. I learned from
this good person of the internet. (Bless the internet!) For walking around a con all day, a wide, stiff, embroidered obi provides excellent back support and is amazingly comfortable.
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