/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

>>10238270

Sorry for the block of text. There's a lot of options you could go with so I tried to cover a few different things.

If you make a seperate skirt and top/bustier, you'd be able to swap out the grey top for a kimono top and have both your options. Alternatively, I'd go for a jsk; you can always add a haori on top or re-cut a kimono into a blouse with kimono sleeves to wear under the jsk (this would even be a good use for those stained kimonos that go for cheap). You're not really limited to finding existing kimonos either, you can pick up one of those yukata-making books and make your own kimono top as well, though that would mean no lovely half-length sleeve pattern.

As for the top, it's hard to say what colour/design the top should be when we don't know the rest of the dress design, especially I'm not really sure what patterned fabric you're using. Something like seigaiha, asanoha, sashiko would be so subdued you could do do either a solid black top or patterned fabric and it would work either way. Something like a black fabric with a colourful print could be too loud without a solid top, but if you only make the skirt colourful it might be visually bottom heavy, it may need a solid top with colourful accents.

If you want more ideas than Meta, you can look up other wa dresses made by Qutie Frash, Millefleur, kerashop.

I'd just be careful about using actual kimono fabric, they're generally only ~36cm wider, which severely limits your patterning options. If it's old the dyes may be unstable as well, and if it's silk you'll want to think about using other fabric that can be drycleaning along with the silk. I'd personally go with a Japanese print fabric, if you're worried about accidentally picking a Weepanese fabric, you can either find a shop that will tell you where the fabric came from, or stick to ordering from Nippori-Tomato (it's an actual Japanese fabric store, so anything wa in it caters to Japanese people and not tourist gaijin)