A Little Handmade Project: Making a Mae-ita for Kimono

I am a cat person, but yes, they are so adorable!

I wear kimono almost every day. In summer, I sometimes wear Western clothes because it can be quite hot, but kimono is my usual everyday wear.

When wearing an obi, sometimes we put a thin, board-like piece in front of the obi to keep the front looking smooth and neat. This is called a mae-ita, or an obi board.

I don't usually wear one when I am just staying at home, but when I go out, I like to slip one inside the front of my obi.

I have to admit that I can be a little careless sometimes. I have a bad habit of putting my mae-ita somewhere when I take off my kimono and then forgetting where I put it.

So, when I cannot find one, I sometimes use pieces of thin cardboard instead. I fold the small pieces of cardboard that come with things like underwear so that they are less than 15 cm wide, and keep two or three of them in the drawer where I keep my kimono dressing accessories. Then I can just take one out when I need it.

That drawer also contains things like koshihimo (kimono waist ties) and sanju-jime, a special elastic band used when dressing in kimono.

I Can't Resist a Good Bag of Scraps

I have always had a weakness for small pieces of fabric.

Whenever I have a little extra pocket money, I somehow end up buying fabric. At fabric shops, I love looking through the piles of fabric scraps that have been marked down to half price and choosing cute patterns one by one.

I am very happy during those moments.

Recently, I have also started buying what Japanese fabric shops call “scrap fabric lucky bags” online. These are bags filled with assorted fabric scraps, and I especially enjoy them because they often contain fabrics that I would never have chosen for myself.

And this dog fabric was one of those fabrics.

It has a clear direction, with the dogs facing a certain way, so there are only certain things I can make with it. I had been wondering for a while what I could use it for.

Then, just the other day, I wore a heko-obi, a soft and casual type of obi. I used two obi boards underneath it, and I remembered thinking that it would be nice to have one more good-quality mae-ita.

And then I thought:

Why not make one with this dog fabric?

A Dog Fabric Mae-ita

For the back, I could have used almost any thin fabric.

Luckily, I had recently bought a piece of fabric from Yuzawaya. It was a collaboration fabric between Yuzawaya and Tokyo University of the Arts, and it was not allowed to be used for commercial purposes.

Since I was making this for myself, rather than for sale, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally use it.

For the inside, I used two pieces of thin cardboard.

They are about 13 cm wide and about 30 cm long.

Because I have a fairly wide waist, I normally use a slightly longer mae-ita. But if you are making one for everyday use with a hanhaba-obi, a narrower obi often used for casual kimono, around 30 cm long should be quite enough.

Making a little pocket for the cardboard insert

The making itself is very simple.

First, I covered the two pieces of cardboard with fabric.

Then I placed the two pieces together, with the fabrics facing outward on both sides, and simply sewed around the edge with my sewing machine.

That's it.

A little piece of fabric that had been waiting in my scrap box has now become something I can actually use.

And yes, I am definitely a cat person. 🐈

But these dogs are pretty cute, too. 🐕 Nat