Kimono Fabric - My New Obsession

Sunday evening I was browsing Ebay trying to find the right color of purple wool (which I never did locate) and I stumbled upon some amazing Japanese Kimono wool. It runs about 12-14" wide and comes in an amazing variety of abstract patterns. I ended up finally ordering 10 meters of this one for about $30, shipped from Japan for a pretty reasonable price . I am having a lot of fun thinking about the kind of dress I would make given the narrow width. And then I got this lovely much smaller wool butterfly piece from a lady in New Zealand who only ships one day a week because she has 4 kids.

And this small one as well. She is a very poor photographer and puts the little origami's on the fabric to "help focus the camera" (??) so I am sort of wondering what the rest of this one looks like.

Then I wandered into Kimono fabrics in general and turned up these completely fantastic abstract Obi's. This one is called a Suminogashi dye and unfortunately I lost the bidding on it because all the darned auctions are on Japanese time and finish up at around 3AM.

This is a small panel of Obi silk that I completely love....

And then I got completely carried away and bid on this lovely silk kimono - which I lost because the auction finished at 3AM - and sold for $31. I have to admit I had mixed feelings on loosing it because I am not quite sure what I would have done with it.