Tactical Kimono and Tactical Yukata

Ok, so tac vests are awesome. I love all the pockets. I recently found myself in need of an article of Chinese/Japanese-style clothing, and as I was laying it out, I thought.. "You know, there's a lot of room in these sleeves." And thus my Tactical Kimono was born. (Ok, so it's not really a kimono - too short, wrong fabric. But still.)



For extra sturdiness, I topstitched all the seams and did a satin stitch on joins that were likely to see some tension.


One side of one sleeve (I flipped the sleeves inside out so you can see the pockets in all their glory)


I tried to make cargo pockets like you see on BDUs...

Little elastic loops and button toggles so you can fill the pockets arbitrarily full.






At the time I made the Tactical Kimono, I wasn't blogging, so I never thought of doing in-progress pics. If anyone's curious, leave a comment and I'll try to explain - but basically, it's just a simple kimono with a sleeve lining of canvas with pockets sewn on.

Anyway, after that, I decided that I wanted something a bit more authentic (...as authentic as a tactical kimono can be, anyway) and something a bit lighter. So I ordered some fabric from the amazing people at ichiroya.com - they sell all kinds of kimono/haori/obi/etc as well as fabric for all of those. I also decided to go with a double layer of fairly fine-woven cotton broadcloth (sheets, actually) for the pockets. I also got an obi from them - and it turned out that the same kind of flower is on both the obi and the fabric!

Yukata with obi






Just in case one of the things you need to keep up your sleeve is an 8.5x11 envelope.


Loop and toggle again, with pleated cargo pockets




Turns out this fabric takes flat felled seams really nicely.

I was making it up as I went along, and the neckline turned out all wrong; I'll fix that before the next time I wear it.

Isn't the fabric pretty?

There were a couple flaws in this model; I should have tacked the pocket pleats together at the top, because they kept spilling everything out. Also, the sleeve lining tended to creep forward out of the sleeve - I need to tack it down inside somewhere. Same basic construction principles as the original tactical kimono; I just spent more effort getting the pockets finished neatly. Lots and lots of topstitching turned out to be the secret.