Sashiko Work Jacket

Blood, Sweat, and Tears... Actually no sweat and tears but a surprising amount of blood

I went to Japan last year because that seems to be the place everyone is going and like everyone else I bough an unnecessary amount of stuff. One of these things being fabric.

I was in Tokyo and I found a used kimono store nearby that I decided to check out. I was toying with the idea of buying some old Kimonos and breaking them down for use in something new, so when I found this shop sold bags of scrap kimono fabric I knew that was exactly what I need and I bought four.

Now I later realized after further traveling that there are lots of stores that sell kimono and other Japanese textiles and don’t get me wrong they are beautiful. However you quickly come to realize upon purchasing the fabric that it is specialized and actually doesn’t work well for much else outside its intended purpose. Kimono fabrics in most cases are not meant to be washed often if at all which is a big limiting factor. Even dry cleaning seems like a bad idea for many of these textiles. Knowing little about kimonos it was interesting to find out that to wash some kimonos it’s actually a highly specialized process where they completely deconstruct the garment in order to clean each piece of fabric. Ultimately my two biggest points of concern with this fabric were in many cases it was not color fast and also many pieces are not very abrasion resistant.

As a note on the above there’s nothing worse then pouring hours into a project to have it ruined in the wash or by wear. I’ve made garments where after one wash all of the seams pulled apart because I was asking too much of the fabric. I’ve also made garments that pilled so bad after a few wears I no longer wanted to wear them. I’m now extra cautious when embarking on a project to approach it from a longevity angle.

My initial idea to make a pair of patchwork shorts was out the window as these would need to be washed often and be durable. So after going back to the drawing board I decided on a jacket. I figured Like a Kimono the exterior of a jacket, fingers crossed, shouldn’t take as much wear as a garment closer to the body. Fingers extra crossed it shouldn’t get dirty and need washed or at least not at the same rate as other garments.

I decided on a work jacket silhouette even though no work will ever be done in it. I messed around with making a pattern from scratch but I wanted something slightly oversized and I always stress when making oversized garments as its not always as easy as just sizing up. I ended up using a store bought pattern as a base.

This was the pattern I used. I mean, once I saw that all blue fit I knew this was the one. I did make several changes however including a new collar, cuffs, pockets, lining and front button placket which you can see on the finished product.

I cut each pattern piece out of black cotton canvas. Then for the next 4 months I attached the kimono scraps to the jacket pieces using a sashiko technique and thick cotton sashiko thread. I didn’t use any kind of guides or templates as I am much to lazy for that and also I wanted there to be an easily visible hand crafted quality to the jacket.

The amount of times I pricked my finger while stitching and had to get a bandaid is too many to count. I could also only do about two patches per day before I would start to lose my mind. However this project was great to take to different mending/crafting events around me and people loved seeing the progress.

After it was embellished it was a fairly straight forward jacket assembly. Putting the welt pockets in the front was nerve racking because I didn’t want to mess up all of the beautiful sashiko. However with this kind of project I could just slap another sashiko patch on top and no one would ever know.

Overall Im super happy with how the jacket turned out! Of course now its basically summer and its too warm to wear it 🥲.