VINTAGE GÁKTI

Wearing my mothers old gákti at Rudolstadt Festival

Last year my mother was cleaning her closet, and she had a few gákti´s (sami dress) that are to small for her. They are supercute and vintage, so it would be too bad to throw them away. No way!
They are still usable, not too worn. And the gákti has not changed much since the 70ies, so its no problem wearing it. I guess thats the great part of traditional clothing. It never goes out of fashion! 

 I hadn´t got around to sewing my own gákti, so I was very happy when my mother said I could get from her. But one of them was a bit worn, so I didn´t feel I could use it for anything else then for example kitchen work, or everyday gákti. But I don´t really wear a gákti everyday, even though it would be cool if I did..
 It´s just that the skirts are so big on them and a bit annoying and impractical to wear all the time...
 I wanted to give the gákti a new life, but I didn´t want to cut it or anything, so that´s when I came up with the idea of dying it a different colour. A excellent idea!

Before

 It´s a little bit tricky to dye this kind of fabric, becuase it had so many different colours - and all of them will react on a different way to the colour. I was wanting a green-ish gákti, instead of blue, so I went for a colour called emerald-green. The thing is that the colours will not blend like watercolours.

First I though that if I get yellow colour it will blend with the blue and become green. But Hertta Voido - who is a designer told me yellow colour would do aboslutely nothing to the gákti. There is no point in dying it in a lighter colour then the original. So my best options where blue, green or black.
So I went for the green, and the red parts of the gákti became dark orange, and the blue became green. It just turned out perfekt - and I am so happy with this colour! What do you think of the new colour? Do you think I should start wearing gákti every day?