In Japan, kimonos were traditionally made from narrow bolts of fabric called tanmono. These were more than 12 meters long and wide enough for a generous 1/2 yuki. What is brilliant about these bolts, is that you get selvage on both sides of almost all the largest seams, so finishing the raw edges was almost a breeze. Also, the selvages of a tanmono might easily be considered to have a kind of wabi sabi beauty all of their own and could easily be a pleasure to see in their raw state in a yukata or an unlined kimono. It is possible to buy tanmono bolts online but I always worry about the condition of the cloth and storage problems.
So what are we to do outside Japan? Well, it turns out that 3.5 meters of 140 – 150 cm wide fabric, cut into four pieces, will break down into 4 wonderful strips of tanmono. The plan below will give you a sense of how this works out. It is possible to work with narrower fabric, and House of Kimono has a brilliant video on how to do this, as well as patterns, cutting and sewing guides available on Etsy for very reasonable prices.
But before you decide what width of fabric will do, please find out what your yuki measurement is. That will help guide you with your decisions. I have only ever worked with 140 – 150 cm western fabric. Below is a layout and cutting guide based on my own practice with this width of fabric.
If you would prefer to download a printable pdf version of this, click here.
Before doing any cutting at all, wash your fabric first and then iron it well. Fold the fabric lengthwise in half, so that the selvages meet, and iron a nice straight crease all the way up. Then fold it in half again, and add another good crease along the length. That is going to give you a good head start and a visual guide for how you cut up your pieces.
The black dotted vertical lines represent the four strips of tanmono – with the very last section also halved for the overlaps and the collar parts. But if you are making one for someone with a fairly big yuki, you can save 2 cm of width by leaving the back of the centre body panels uncut at the back.
The white dotted lines indicate the shoulder and sleeves folds. They become extremely important to putting the garment together, so once you’ve divided up the fabric, make sure you re-iron those crease marks back in, or you could mark them with a very loose running stitch in a bright thread colour.
You’ll notice that the sleeves and the collar parts end up with one side with selvage. This is very nice because you won’t have to finish those raw edges!
Practical scenario:
I’ve measured my yuki and it’s 63 cm. My height measurement from shoulder to top of foot is 137 cm.
Doubling my yuki (126 cm) and adding 20 cm (2 cm per piece edge) means that a fabric width of 150 cm will more than accommodate my needs with a generous 2.5 cm seam allowance on everything.
Doubling my height measurement will give me 274 cm. So, I could purchase 2.75 m of fabric to cover all my needs.
Contingencies:
But say I notice that my hips are wider than my shoulders, or perhaps I have a really magnificent butt? My yuki measurement doesn’t really represent my whole body. Not to worry! Because a kimono wraps around your body but isn’t very fitted, I can either add a few centimetres to my yuki, or make my okumi (front flaps) a little wider by taking half a cm off every seam allowance.
House of Kimono has a really helpful video for cutting out on narrower fabric, which might actually suit you well if you wanted to widen the front flats more. In any case, his “Paperless DIY Kimono Yukata Pattern – Easy to Sew with Western Fabrics” covers absolutely every contingency you might face.