Reading a Traditional Kimono Cut Chart

This guide is part of Komon Lab’s free MVP series. We do not sell patterns. We explain how the traditional system works so you can use any pattern — paper or PDF — with more confidence. Affiliate links, where present, are clearly marked at the foot of the page.

Why the cut chart matters

A Japanese kimono is one of the few major garments in the world that is entirely rectilinear. Every piece is a rectangle or, at most, a rectangle with one straight bias cut. There are no princess seams, no darts, no curved armholes, no notches that have to line up around a sleeve cap. This sounds limiting at first; in fact, it is the whole point. The geometry is what makes the garment foldable into a perfect flat package, reusable, alterable, and — historically — recyclable down to the smallest scrap.

The artifact that captures this geometry on paper is the cut chart, known in Japanese as the 裁断図 (saidan-zu) or 裁ち合わせ図 (tachi-awase-zu). If you have ever bought a kimono pattern from a Japanese book, opened a Folkwear envelope, or downloaded a PDF from a free pattern archive, you have met one. It looks dense and almost mechanical the first time you see it. The aim of this guide is to make it readable in about an hour.

This guide assumes you have already read, or are willing to skim:

• Guide 01 — How to Measure for a Kimono so the dimensions on the chart map onto a real body.
• Guide 02 — Understanding Traditional Fabric Widths so the chart’s width direction makes sense whether you are working from a 36-cm tanmono or a 110-cm modern bolt.

What a cut chart actually shows

A typical cut chart is drawn as if you were looking down at the bolt of cloth unrolled flat on the floor, with the warp (the long direction) running horizontally across the page. On that long rectangle, every garment piece is sketched in place, in order, with arrows showing the warp direction. The chart is, in effect, a recipe for slicing the bolt without waste.

There are usually four things drawn on every cut chart:

1. The bolt outline — a long horizontal rectangle whose width matches the fabric width you are working with.
2. The pieces — each one drawn as a labeled rectangle with its finished dimensions, sometimes annotated with seam allowance, sometimes not (read the legend).
3. Grain arrows — short arrows showing which way the warp must run inside each piece. Almost always parallel to the bolt’s long edge.
4. Position markers — small notes such as “outer (omote)”, “lining (ura)”, “center back”, “fold here” that tell you which face of the fabric becomes the visible side, and where you fold rather than cut.

Some charts go further and add cumulative length marks down one edge so you can verify the total fabric requirement as you go.

The eight (or so) pieces

A women’s lined kimono is conventionally cut into eight pieces from a single bolt of tanmono, sometimes ten or twelve when lining and collar protector are counted separately. Beginners often miscount because some pieces are made of two halves stitched together to gain length. Working through the list once removes most of the confusion.

Migoro (身頃) — the body

The migoro is the body of the garment. It is two long panels, one for the left half, one for the right half, each one wrapping over both the front (mae) and the back (ushiro) of the body. On the cut chart, each migoro is drawn as a single tall rectangle that is about twice your back length plus seam allowance. You then fold it in half at the shoulder line during construction — you do not cut a separate front and back panel.

• Mae-migoro (前身頃): the half of the migoro that ends up at the front.
• Ushiro-migoro (後身頃): the half that ends up at the back.

Okumi (衽) — the front gussets

Two long narrow rectangles — narrower than the migoro, usually about a quarter of its width — are added down the front edges of the body panels. The okumi exists for a simple reason: tanmono is only 36 cm wide, which is not wide enough on its own to wrap the front of an adult body and still overlap. The okumi extends the front so the garment closes cleanly and you can walk without the lower edge parting.

On the cut chart, okumi pieces are usually drawn immediately next to or just below the migoro pieces. Their warp runs the same direction as the migoro’s.

Sode (袖) — the sleeves

Two more rectangles become the sleeves. Each sleeve is drawn flat in the chart, but is later folded in half along its bottom edge to make the deep tube that hangs down from the shoulder. The sleeve width on the chart is therefore half of the final hanging depth. This is a common point of confusion: read the legend carefully when the chart says “sode-haba” — depending on the source, that number is either the cut width or the finished hanging width.

Eri (衿) — the main collar

The eri is one long, narrow strip that runs the full length of the front opening, around the back of the neck, and down the other front. On most charts it is drawn as one rectangle, but in practice it is sometimes cut as two halves and joined at the center back to save fabric.

Tomo-eri (共衿) — the collar protector

The tomo-eri is a second strip of the same fabric, slightly shorter than the eri, that is layered on top of the main collar in the area most exposed to skin oils, makeup, and hair contact. It is removable. When it wears out you replace just this strip, not the entire collar. Its presence on a cut chart is one of the cleanest signals that you are looking at an authentic traditional layout rather than a Westernised adaptation.

Lining pieces (ura)

A fully lined kimono — awase — adds a parallel set of body, sleeve, and okumi pieces in lining fabric. Many cut charts split into two diagrams at this point: one for the outer (omote) bolt and one for the lining bolt. Read them as a pair.

A traditional tanmono layout, walked through

A traditional women’s awase kimono is cut from a bolt of tanmono roughly 36 cm wide by 12 m long. The standard cut chart fits the pieces along the length of the bolt in this order, from one end to the other:

1. Right back / right front migoro (a single long rectangle, folded later)
2. Left back / left front migoro
3. Right sode
4. Left sode
5. Right okumi
6. Left okumi
7. Eri
8. Tomo-eri

The chart will note, near each cut line, the exact length consumed: typically 2 × back-length-plus-allowance for each migoro (≈ 3.4 m each for an average adult), 50–55 cm per sleeve, etc. The cumulative total should be close to the bolt’s nominal 12 m. If you exceed that, the chart is telling you the bolt is short for your size — a real and recurring problem with antique cloth.

Mapping a tanmono chart onto a modern bolt

Modern Japanese print cottons and Western quilting cottons usually come in 110-cm widths. A 110-cm bolt is roughly three times as wide as a tanmono. That changes the layout in a specific way:

• You no longer need to lay all eight pieces end-to-end. You can place pieces side by side, often two or three pieces across the width.
• You may not need a separate okumi at all, because the migoro can be cut wide enough at full width to include the overlap.
• The grain arrows still matter and still point along the bolt’s long direction. Do not rotate pieces 90 degrees to save fabric — the drape of the finished garment depends on warp-aligned panels.
• The total fabric requirement drops from ~12 m to roughly 4–5 m, depending on the layout.

Guide 02 covers the width arithmetic in more detail. The important point for chart-reading is this: a cut chart drawn for a 36-cm tanmono can almost always be re-laid for a 110-cm bolt by hand on graph paper. The pieces do not change, only their arrangement does.

How to read your own chart in 15 minutes

When a new chart lands on your table, work through it in this order:

1. Find the legend. Confirm units (cm or sun), confirm whether dimensions include seam allowance.
2. Find the grain direction. Trace one arrow on every piece to confirm they all point the same way.
3. Find the migoro pair. These are always the longest pieces. If you find one and not the other, the chart probably draws them as a single doubled rectangle.
4. Identify the okumi. Narrower, paired, same grain.
5. Identify the sleeves. Roughly square or slightly rectangular, paired.
6. Identify the eri and tomo-eri. Long, narrow, sometimes drawn separately at the end.
7. Add up the lengths. Compare to the stated total fabric requirement. A discrepancy of more than 10 % means you have either missed a piece or the chart is sized for a different body.
8. Mark cut lines lightly in pencil on the chart before you cut anything on fabric, and on the cloth itself use washable tailor’s chalk drawn against a long aluminium yardstick. Most cutting mistakes happen because the maker started slicing before tracing the entire chart.

You will be tempted to skip step 7. Do not. It catches every common chart-reading error in one minute.

Common mistakes and how to spot them

• Cutting two sleeves the same way and ending up with two left sleeves. This happens when the chart is drawn with both sleeves in the same orientation for layout reasons, not for construction reasons. Mirror one of them during cutting.
• Forgetting the tomo-eri. It is easy to think of the collar as one piece and miss the protector strip. Look for a second narrow rectangle next to the eri.
• Mis-reading sleeve width as finished width. If your sleeves come out shallow and flat, you read sode-haba as cut width when the chart meant finished width — or vice versa.
• Cutting against the grain to save fabric. This will produce a kimono that twists when worn. Respect the arrows even if it costs a little fabric. (A 60mm rotary cutter on a self-healing mat makes a long warp-aligned cut more accurate than shears can.)

When you do not have a chart at all

If you are starting from your own body measurements and want to draft a chart from scratch, you can. The traditional rules of thumb are:

• Migoro length = back length (mi-take) × 2 + 20 cm allowance.
• Migoro width = bolt width (36 cm tanmono → use as is; 110 cm modern → cut to ~38 cm and reserve the rest for okumi).
• Sode length = sleeve length × 2 + 10 cm.
• Sode width = desired hanging depth.
• Eri length = roughly 200 cm for an adult, or measure: 2 × back length + neck circumference.
• Tomo-eri = roughly 100 cm × eri width.

Draft them on graph paper at 1:10. Add cumulative length down one edge. Compare to your fabric. If you have one more rectangle than you have room for, you are reading the chart correctly; you simply have a short bolt. This is why antique tanmono are usually mounted as separate purchases per garment.

What this guide does not cover

This guide reads the chart. It does not teach the actual stitching order (which is a separate art), nor does it cover unlined yukata simplification, men’s kimono proportions, or children’s kimono with growth folds (age) built in. Those will appear in their own guides as Komon Lab grows.

Figures

Bibliography

• Marshall, John. Make Your Own Japanese Clothes: Patterns and Ideas for Modern Wear. Kodansha International, 1988 (reprinted 2013). Penguin Random House; Amazon US
• Dobson, Jenni. Making Kimono and Japanese Clothes. Batsford / Bloomsbury, 2005. Amazon US
• Milhaupt, Terry Satsuki. Kimono: A Modern History. Reaktion Books, 2014. Amazon US
• Folkwear. Pattern #113: Japanese Kimono. Pattern instructions and chart. folkwear.com
• Wikipedia contributors. Tanmono. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanmono
• Making & Candor. Another tailoring: cutting an authentic Japanese kimono. 2022. makingandcandor.com

Related guides

• How to Measure for a Kimono
• Understanding Traditional Fabric Widths
• Kimono Sewing Tools Essentials

Last updated 2026-05-29. Komon Lab guides are free and released under CC-BY-4.0. If you used this guide for a project we would love to see it.