Making the First Fundoshi

As mentioned, my first fundoshi was fashioned from an old duvet cover. It is a rather thick muslin weave....thicker than you would normally find in a muslin. The rope-like twist was a little more bulky than I wanted. This led to 2 things....online fabric shopping and experimenting with width.

Based on endorsements on fundoshiphile - all ages and fundoshi4all - adult, I took a virtual trip to fabric.com for some Island Breeze gauze. I made an order of a few different colors (lime green NOT being in stock...I was bummed), and started to play with my muslin.

Here is a close-up of the material I was dealing with.....

I started out with a 16 inch width....way too thick.  I started to cut it down a bit. For those that aren't in the 'fabric know', this is very easy to do with most basic materials (muslin, gauze, voile, lawn, etc.)....all you need is a pair of scissors and your hands! More after the break......

Fundoshi...
Still on my first attempt - trying to get the width to my liking.

Fabric...
A quick tutorial in cutting and tearing.

Photography...
My new lighting supplies have not arrived yet, so I tried my hand at using low flash, found light and some lamps I had in the house. Fancy equipment is not always needed!

this 12 inch fabric needs to be 10 inches wide

a 2-3 inch cut is all you need to get started

now....start tearing

the fabric will tear along the natural weave, leaving the edge straight

keep going for about 9 feet until you are done

 viola.....we are where we want to be

You will now see why I cut this down....the portion of the fundoshi wrapped around my waist is thicker than was comfortable. 

I tried using a hand-held approach with a low flash.

Back to a more natural and normal lighting.

I then remembered I have a couple of l.e.d. lamps that can be pointed and directed, so tried for some contrast with varying degrees of success.

There are still closet doors in the background, but I pointed one of the l.e.d. lamps at them, which created the spot-light effect in the background....I like that and will be using that again!