FINISHED! A Lounging Liberty Kimono

I have been wanting a kimono to lounge about in for ages.  I’m one of those people that loves nothing better than to change into pyjamas at the end of the day and then potter around in them for the rest of the evening.

I have had the Liberty Book of home Sewing for a while and have had the kimono book marked but haven't got around to it until now.

I've also had the Liberty Fabric Growing Fonder from the AW13 Liberty Art Fabrics collection,  in my stash for a little while as well.  My love of the fabrics by Mo Coppoletta is well documented, having sewn with Joy and Sorrow and Daydream.

Growing Fonder explores and re-interprets the famous Liberty peacock feather, it was the first design Mo created for Liberty, so he wanted to adapt a subject that defined Liberty at a glance. Mo feels Liberty epitomises English style, rooting itself in its turn of the century heritage.

Growing Fonder was also the first Mo designed fabric that I bought and it is an intricate and beautiful print that I couldn’t resist, but there was something about the colour scheme and the ombre effect that rendered it difficult for me to make into a garment.  Mrs Pomeranz had no such trouble and has made a gorgeous dress for sale on her website.

We are going on holidays in a couple of weeks so I decided that the time was right to make the kimono as I have a lot of lounging planned and decided that this would be a good use of the Growing Fonder fabric. I wanted a contrasting fabric for the binding, just as in the book.  I went to Addicted to Fabric as they have a good selection of Liberty there so I thought I’d be able to find something. It was hard though. Harder than I thought it would be to find something within their range of Liberty that also suited the aesthetic I was trying to create. I think I found it though with the Torsten B. A pattern from the SS14 Gallery of Prints collection by Liberty Art Fabrics.

Inspired by the unique structure of retro fabric and the optical shapes found within them, the Torsten fabric design represents Liberty’s eclectic Men’s Designer Collections Department. 

The Basement fabric story celebrates Liberty’s eclectic Men’s Floor. Each design pays homage to a different area or department, taking on the intrinsic mood of each individual space.

I looked at it when I was at Addicted to Fabric with my sewing friends a couple of weeks ago, but then went back to get it on Friday after turning it over in my mind for the whole week.

It is a masculine print, but I think it has a bit of an art deco feel when combined with Growing Fonder and works better than you would expect by just holding it up against the fabric.

The pattern is straight forward, although you have to draft it as the book doesn't come with patterns. I added side seam pockets and omitted the belt straps because I didn't need them.  I couldn't perfectly match on the sides because I only had 2 metres of fabric. In the end I don't mind as the peacocks match, just not perfectly on colour.

I machine attached one side of the 'binding' and then hand stitched it to the opposite side. My stitching in the ditch is always a bit rubbish and on the weekend we had a 6 hour drive to some family events so I utilised the time to hand stitch in the car.

Oh how I love this make. It is already getting nightly wear!