A jinbei is a set of garments: a top which crosses over to tie both inside and outside, and either a pair of shorts or long pants. The waist of the shorts/pants are either elastic or with a drawstring. These were clothes meant for lounging around the house during the summer or for sleepwear, and originally only for men, but in recent times they’ve become popular with women also. Muji has some for sale if you’re not interested in sewing a set up:
I’m considering trying to make a set, and figuring out a good pattern for it. Essentially, the bottoms are any length you’d like, and the top is a variation of a haori, with the front-piece crossing over more like a kimono, but there is no okumi (front flap). Instead, the front part of the body pieces are somewhat wider than the back, allowing for the garment to close neatly at the front. I did find a free downloadable pattern online, but I really don’t want to expend masses of printer paper. However, the site provides both cutting schemas and cm measurement charts for each of the sizes they offer, and I think I can work it out from there, without having to print out the pattern.
The ‘fabric needed cutting diagram’ is a little confusing, because there’s a Japanese character I don’t understand, but I’m guessing it is the width of the fabric in cm and then the length of the fabric. I’ve downloaded the Ladies Medium size diagrams for fabric and detail size.
Having used a translation tool, the Japanese character in black, to the right of each of the numbers in black, is indeed the fabric width, and the numbers in orange are the length of the fabric needed.
If we step back and think about measuring for kimono, there is a bit of variation here. We can assume that each body panel piece back width is going to be a half-yuki size. The cutting size for the sleeve is slightly wider than a half-yuki, which I think I will ignore. I’m not going to bother tapering the sleeve pieces either, since I like a wider/shorter sleeve myself.
Frankly, I am not going to bother with using this schema for the shorts, as I have a tried and true method for sewing up a pair of shorts with an elasticated waist. And, to be honest, I’m not a big fan of matchy-matchy sets – so I will probably sew a couple of pairs of shorts up in plain white cotton.
However, I found this lovely cotton voile fabric on sale at Ribes & Casals, and now I’m wavering about it. Maybe I could live with a matchy-matchy set of pjs with this.
