The Japanese dance group in which I’m a member sells vintage kimono, obi, and various items at our events to make money to support the group. Someone who visited one of our practices wanted to buy this kurotomesode kimono, but when she tried it on, we were dismayed to see that some of the embroidery had come apart. She still wanted it, but asked me if I could fix it up.

Here is how it looked before:

Before starting this, I referred to a fabulous book I own called The Techniques of Japanese Embroidery. I had a good idea of how I’d go about fixing the loose threads, and what the proper stitch was, but I just wanted to be absolutely certain. I didn’t want to mess it up.

In the book, the closest I could find was this couching stitch which uses two pairs of gold strands; however, on my subject there are actually two sets of three strands. It appeared to be stitched the same way though. I found matching thread and got to work. A challenge was not stitching through the lining. I didn’t want to disassemble the kimono, so I just had to take care to keep the stitches on the top layer.

Here’s what it looked like after it was all fixed up. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s safe to wear without worrying about catching loose threads on something and destroying it completely.

Here’s the entire pattern. So pretty and traditional.

Unfortunately, it seems that this great embroidery book is out of print! However, you can still preview some inside pages and buy used copies at Amazon if you want to learn more about this beautiful art. This is the best book I have ever seen on Japanese embroidery. It covers many basic and advanced stitches, and has beautiful examples for each. There are simple to follow diagrams, and full color photos. Wonderful book. I can’t believe it’s out of print!