One of these days...

As you all know, I have a habit of making ABBA costumes and then redoing them years later because the originals were not all that great.  Today's post is about yet another attempt to remake ABBA's costumes, this time being the Kimonos, for the 5th time. 

Seeing as my last ABBA costume remake,the Cat Dresses, turned out really well, I decided it was time to attempt to make the Kimonos for the 5th time.  ABBA's kimonos are made out of satin, and counter to what I had initially thought, the designs on the kimonos are actually hand-painted instead of embroidered, with some rhinestones thrown in as well.  Until recently, I was scared of trying to paint on fabric because 1) I don't trust my free-handing skills for some reason despite the fact that I'm an artist, lol, and 2) I almost always spill paint on my project on places that shouldn't be painted, and then have to either quickly try and remove the stain or redo the whole section.  Since I redid the Cat Dresses which involved a lot of painting, I was feeling a lot more confident.  The other night, I started gathering reference pictures and even made myself a guide of where all the designs go on ABBA's kimonos.  I thought that ABBA the Museum's kimonos that they sell would make a great reference, however I noticed that their kimonos are only inspired by ABBA's kimonos, and as a result, are not 100% accurate.  (I'm not trying to throw any shade at ABBA the Museum's kimonos, btw!)

Note: the designs are not in the correct placement nor are they the correct designs.  The flower design on the top right is actually the design that is on Agnetha's front right sleeve.

Yesterday I started working on the actual construction portion of making the Kimono.  I thought it would take a few days like my Cat Dresses did, but I guess I've had a lot of experience with making the kimonos that it was fairly easy and quick to make.  In the past, I thought that the sleeves were triangular shaped, but I've since learned that they actually have this rectangular chunk at the end of the sleeve.

Making the Kimono was pretty straightforward, and after a few hours of work, I've finished my first Kimono v.5, Agnetha's Kimono.  Before I show you my finished result, let's take a quick look at some of my older versions of the Kimono. :3

This first Kimono was one of my first ever ABBA costumes I've ever sewn, all the way back in February of 2012.  It's all one solid piece with painted on details and then large pieces of fabric painted and glued on to look like the ends of the belt.  It's a pretty straight forward and easy way of making it, and they honestly held up pretty well, it's just that they weren't all the accurate and I put absolutely no effort into those flowers, lol.

This next version is the result of me discovering glitter pens.  I don't know why I thought glitter pens would be perfect for the Kimonos, because the end result was a patchy mess.  I at least went for a more accurate look, just it wasn't all that good.  The top didn't even stay closed, I had to use a safety pin to hold it together!

At the end of the year, in November of 2012, I improved a lot and made a much better version.  Still made of cotton, and I glued on a ton of sequins (that would keep on falling off and leave a gross yellow glue residue...), but it looked pretty good and this version of the Kimono lasted a good two years or so.

In 2014, I attempted to make a new version of the Kimonos, made of real satin and satin ribbon (for the first time I included the purple band at the bottom of the pants as well!), but I had thought that the designs were embroidered on, and if you didn't know it already, I'm terrible at embroidery, so I got scared off and only made the base of the kimono.

With my dolls' new, updated body, they now have better proportions and as a result, I can now make more accurate costumes.  My newest version of Agnetha's kimono is so much better and probably my best attempt yet! 

For the designs on her kimono, I hand painted everything with acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium, and then cut up sequins (which took hours) and glued them on to give the appearance of tiny, tiny rhinestones.  (They are falling off a bit, because that's just my luck with gluing on sequins, lol, but they look nice for now.)

I've been really happy, seeing how much my sewing has improved over the years, I'm extremely happy with how this Kimono turned out, and I absolutely can't wait to start working on the other 3!  Hopefully I won't take forever to make them like I typically do when making doll costumes.