Painting a Kimono

Painting a Kimono In May 2009, I was invited to paint the wedding kimono for Butterfly in West Bay Opera's production of Madama Butterfly.
The costume designer, Callie Floor, drew a design for Butterfly's kimono that asked for floral patterns starting from red at the bottom fading through orange to yellow to white at the top. The singer playing Butterfly, Kenneithia Mitchell, is African American, so Callie also wanted some African kente cloth patterns, but in the end I wasn't able to reproduce them in painting, so we stuck with floral designs I found in African-made cloths.	Drawing copyright Callie Floor, ©2009
Callie bought a large piece of silk charmeuse and drew the rectangles of the pattern on it, then I stretched it. It was so long that to keep it taut enough, I stretched about 2/3 of it and let 1/3 hang off the end (on the left), which I stretched and painted separately. (I ended up drawing resist for that part last, and so painting it first.)
You can see the stretching rods under the silk. These are 1/8" dowels with pins taped to each end; the pin is then pushed through the edge of the cloth. I couldn't find dowels long enough for the width of the material (~40" wide) so I taped two dowels together for each stretcher.
Next, it was time to draw the pattern of flowers in gutta resist.
I had to mix my dyes more carefully than usual, because I needed each batch I mixed to match previous batches. So I measured every amount of dye and chemical dilutant I added, and labeled all the jars. Very atypical for my usual "this looks about right" approach!
Then it was time to paint. Here you see the stretched silk with one of the sleeve panels and one of the collar panels painted. The collar was a simple yellow-to-white ombre. The other third of the silk is already painted and folded and pinned to the end of the sawhorse, on the right.
I had one day to paint the piece, so I started in the morning and finished it at night. Here I'm working on one of the last parts of the front panel.
Here's the major section of silk with everything painted, as seen the next morning.
Here's a close-up of part of the front panel.
I cut the silk into strips that fit one or more of the panels. Then I wrapped the panels in butcher paper, preparing for the steaming process that sets the dye. You can see that the panel is very long. I folded it once at the center of the lengthwise dimension (not shown)...
...then made a roll and wrapped in newspaper. I had to make a new steamer bag out of an old king-sized pillowcase, to hold the longer roll.
And, of course, I had to buy a new, taller tube for steaming the taller bag. (See my Steamer Demo for details about how the steamer works.)
After steaming, I rinsed out the excess dye and then ironed the silk, as usual.
Then I delivered the silk to Callie, who sewed it into a kimono.
Here's our Butterfly, Kenneithia, wearing the kimono backstage.
If you want to see even more photos of the process, go to my photo website to see the details. Meanwhile, here's a photo of the kimono onstage, in action, at West Bay Opera! :-) Photograph copyright West Bay Opera, ©2009.