Using Obi Silk

Or, 
Vince's Extremely Niche Shopping Guide for Persons Intending to Make Pieces of Historical Costume Using Obi Silk, Especially From One Specific Ebay Shop

Apologies in advance to anyone who finds these as difficult to resist as I do. 

Close the tab now if you are actively trying to avoid buying new fabric!!

Unless you really hate piecing and have no use for 30 cm wide yardage, if that's the case you're probably safe. 

Also I recommend reading the whole post first, so you can hopefully avoid the mistakes I made the first time I ordered.

And maybe check the about page to make sure they ship to your country.

So, this January I accidentally stumbled across the ebay shop sou-japan, which sells various articles of kimono.
They have a lot of very fancy, very expensive ones, but they also have auction sections where the less desirable ones can be had for barely more than the price of shipping, assuming nobody else bids against you, which they often don't. 

As of the time of writing this post the bids start at $1 USD and shipping from Japan to Canada is $5 USD for each, which for me means I pay $8.68 CAD, total, for each. An absolutely bonkers price to pay for that much silk.

!!!!!

I may have lost my mind a little when I first came across the shop, and then again when my order arrived a few weeks later, after which I went and bid on some more. 

It's a very dangerous shop, and I was so good and restrained all of February and didn't look at it at all, but then I had to look at it again to make this post... and it is helpful to have some screenshots of active bids, so surely just a few more couldn't hurt.

I've logged out of ebay and will redouble my efforts to not look at the shop at all for at least a few more months, and to use up more of what I have.

Anyways, I already had a dozen or so others in my stash which I'd bought very cheaply from a shop called Ichiroya when it shut down in 2020 and had a big going out of business sale. 

Since a few people have asked questions about what to expect I thought it would be helpful to do a post with all my observations on the various qualities and conditions of the fabric, and what amount of fabric to expect.

First I'd like to say that, from everything I've read and heard, it is 100% OK to cut these up and make things out of them. These aren't the super expensive pristine ones that people are going to wear to fancy events, these have been consigned to the figurative bargain bin, it's fine! We're scraping the bottom of a very beautiful and high quality barrel.

I understand that there are some materials from some cultures where using them as fabric would be unacceptable, but as far as I'm aware that's not the case with kimono silk. 
Back when Ichiroya was still around I emailed them some pictures of a couple of waistcoats I'd made, and their response was very enthusiastically positive.
Many, many of these auction listings explicitly say that they aren't in good shape for wearing anymore, and that they recommend using them for fabric.

This caption is on at least half the listings for the ones I've bought.

They've already had a full life of being worn as obi, and now they're very narrow pieces of yardage waiting for a new life as whatever garment you make them into.

I haven't bought any of the non-obi garments and so have no experience with using fabrics from them, mainly because I worry they might be too lightweight for tailoring. (I do have a couple small pieces and they're very soft and drapey.)
The Dreamstress, however, has used a lot of vintage kimono fabrics and has a blog post about unpicking & washing them.

Since my focus is 18th century European menswear styles that'll be what I mostly talk about using them for in this post, but it should still be helpful if you're planning to make other sorts of things.

Unpicking

Not much to say about the unpicking, it's pretty simple. Sometime they're sewn up entirely by hand, and sometimes the sides are sewn by machine and just the ends are by hand, but either way you can undo them with a small pair of thread snips or a seam ripper. I suggest doing it while watching or listening to something, because they're very long and it takes a while.
If there's an interlining you'll find long hand stitches tacking it to the edges of the outer fabric.

The ends are often done with herringbone stitch, which is easy to cut.

At my tailoring job we use razor blades to open seams, but you've got to be careful not to cut the fabric.

Just ripping the sides apart is sometimes an option, but it can tear or distort the fabric a little.

Sometimes there are nice firm smooth selvedges that are simply whipstitched together.

I have a few that can't be unpicked at all because the sides aren't sewn, they were woven in a tube! 

Two warps and the shuttle must have gone around and around between them!

Size

The size and amount of fabric varies depending on which kind of obi you use, and the various proportions of brocade to plain material vary even more. Most of them are small, which means you'll either have to make relatively small garments (still often with piecing), or do patchwork or colour blocking.

At the ends there's usually a large seam allowance folded under, and I'm not counting that in the length when I measure these, though it it sometimes usable for little things.

There are a lot of different kinds of obi that I don't know anything about, and for this post I'll stick to the only 3 kinds I have experience with: Maru, Fukuro, and Nagoya.

(Image source)

Maru obi are the biggest and most formal ones, and they're one solid piece of brocade. There aren't very many in the shop, and according to the articles I've read they aren't often made anymore, but I have several. 

The finished width of all these obi is pretty consistently about 30 cm, and Maru obi are folded in half lengthwise, so with them you get fabric that's at least 60 cm wide. Unfortunately this does leave a crease right down the middle of your fabric, which can show a lot of obvious wear. 

Be extra cautious about Maru obi, because the fact that they're often much older means they're also often more fragile. I do have one that's very sturdy that I have now made 2 waistcoats out of, but I also have two that are so fragile I regret ordering them.

On average they're about 4 metres long. The longest I have is 4.09 m and the shortest is 3.8 m. 
The widest I have is 71 cm, but unfortunately it's one of the very fragile ones, making all that extra seam allowance virtually unusable.

Just to give an idea of scale, I've spread a 3.9 m one out on the floor and laid my dressing gown pattern on it. There isn't enough for that pattern, but if I were to make the skirt half the length and do some piecing there would be enough for a jacket.

(For reference I'm average height - 5'9")

Please note the end at the left is folded over
as there wasn't enough floor for the full length.

While I wouldn't rule out these ones entirely, I'd suggest focusing on the other kinds, especially since there are thousands of search results in the shop for "Fukuru" and "Nagoya" and only a few hundred for "Maru". (And only a small portion of the search results are the super cheap auction ones)

Fukuro obi are the same finished width of 30 cm, but instead of being folded they're sewn together at the edges (excluding the aforementioned woven in a tube ones). These are also usually around 4 m long.

They usually have one big long piece of brocade, a piece of plain fabric, and then another much smaller (about 30-40 cm) piece of brocade at the end. Then a lining of the same plain material sewn to the other side. 

This has the least brocade out of the 6 that I measured, and it's a very 18th c. appropriate 2 tone damask.

They never seem to have a photo of the entire thing laid out, but you should at least be able to see both kinds of fabric in the listing photos, to get a good idea of the colour and texture.

I've measured and made a handy little chart of some of them, in order from least brocade to most, to help give a rough idea of how much to expect. Keeping in mind that this is the total length, and that both the brocade and plain areas are in two different chunks.

The black one is the only one I didn't order - I found it at a thrift store here in town!

The reason I don't know how much lining the orange/gold brocade one had is because I already used it to make those bright orange silk breeches back in 2020, and I still have a good bit left.

Sleeved waistcoats from the first half of the 18th century typically have a fancier, more expensive fabric on the fronts and cuffs, (and maybe the centre back slit) and then the back and upper arms are made of a plainer, less expensive fabric because those areas will be covered by the coat. 

Early 18th century, London Museum.

If you had enough brocade to do the lower back and were strategic enough with the pattern layout you could position it so the waist is right on the part where the fabric changes, and then you wouldn't need to have an extra seam there.

More than enough material for a sleeved waistcoat in this one.

One of the obi I got in 2020 is 4.28 m and had orange/gold brocade on one side and white/silver on the other with no plain sections at all, and the invoice still calls it a Fukuru obi.

That pink one in the chart is 4.5 m on both counts because it's a continuous brocade pattern on one side, and all white satin on the other, so you really never know for sure what arrangement you'll get until it arrives.

Nagoya obi are considerably smaller because only part of them is lined, and the other part is folded in half lengthwise and sewn together, so if they've been worn they'll have Y shaped creases.

A lot of them have sections of brocade and plain fabric, similar to the Fukuru obi, and it's also divided into a long brocade section and a very short one. I've measured and made a chart with some of these ones too.

But they aren't all the brocade & plain kind. Some of them are 100% brocade.

Not a bit of plain fabric on either of these!

Some are entirely plan (the neon lime is the only one of those I have) and some are mostly plain but with two motifs or stripes.

Gold with flowers in 2 places.

Brown with 2 stripes of wood grain.

Here are the lengths of all the examples I have of those kinds. 

Just like all the others they're 30 cm wide, sometimes with a bit of extra seam allowance at the edges and sometimes not.

I hadn't planned on starting a new waistcoat now, but I figured for demonstration purposes I really should cut one out instead of just laying pattern pieces on them, so I cut a mid 18th century waistcoat out of the red one at the bottom of the brocade/plain Nagoya measurement chart, which had 2.56 m of brocade and 2 m of plainer fabric.

Each of my front pattern pieces cut out with seam allowances measures 90 cm long, which means they took up 1.8 of the 2.56 m of brocade, and the remaining 76 cm had to do for the piecing and pocket flaps. 

A tight squeeze! I had to cut the pocket flaps on the cross grain. This one is extremely heavy and has firm selvedges, so I was able to just whipstitch them together for the piecing.

The back pieces are 74 cm long each (1.48 m together, out of the 2 m of plain, but part of the side piecing also got a little bit of the plain) and there's only 37 cm of plain fabric left, and if I wanted to make a sleeved waistcoat they would use up about 2.07 cm of length.

The cuffs of a sleeved waistcoat are often brocade, and sometimes part of the lower back too (since it'd show occasionally through the coat vent) but all in all this means that to make myself (5'9") a mid 18th century sleeved waistcoat (mid thigh length, this pattern) out of 30 cm wide fabric I'd need about 6.26 m of it, and a bare minimum of 2.55 of it would need to be brocade.

So!

1 Fukuru obi = Most likely enough for a sleeved waistcoat, though it may be a bit short on brocade for the very long early ones.

1 Nagoya obi with brocade & plain areas = Definitely enough for a short late 18th century waistcoat, possibly enough for a midcentury one, but not enough for sleeved or extra long early 18th century waistcoats.
But it's also totally reasonable to piece the sides with a different one if you can find 2 that are similar enough.

1 plain Nagoya obi + 1 co-ordinating all brocade one = Enough for any sleeved waistcoat including very long late 17th century ones. Or you could just get one and make the sleeves and back out of plain linen.

A plain Nagoya obi or the lining from a Fukuru obi are also probably enough for breeches. (Though again, I'm just going off my measurements and I don't know what size you are.)

And of course you can just as easily make waistcoats out of the plain silk, or do embroidery on it! 

I've sometimes seen two obi that are very similar, but I've never seen two exactly the same, so it's best to assume the amount you have from one is all you're going to have of that particular colour & design.

Colours

If you like warm autumnal colours you're in luck! There is SO MUCH red and orange, ranging from bright traffic cone orange to rusty brownish, brick red, bright cherry red, burgundy, and various shades of yellow.

There's a lot of white, grey, straw colour, and pink - a lot of pastel pink and also some more orangey salmon. And green, which is often very bright lime, but there's pale lichen and olive too. 

The neon lime is washing the others out but I swear they're all definitely green.

Brown shows up a lot (especially reddish browns) and occasionally black. 

A rough approximation of the colour distribution I've come to expect.

There are other colours of course, but this is just an overview of the ones that I've seen most often. Any one of these may also have metallic thread in one or more colours, or other colours of silk thread, or both.
Since you're buying them on the internet the colours might not be entirely accurate to how they look on the computer screen. I've got a gorgeous dark burgundy one that looked like a lighter washed out purple in the photos, and a disappointingly salmon pink one (pictured below) that looked brick red.

Personally I tend more towards cool colours so I'm a bit sad at the lack of teal, purple, and blue, but perhaps it's just as well. If all those orange ones also came in dark teal my head might explode along with my fabric storage cabinet.

Silk takes dye very well though, so they can be overdyed! But some designs are better suited to it than others. A design that's just metallic thread and one shade of silk is an excellent choice, and one that's got a very clear high contrast design of silk threads would also probably work. But a design with a lot of similar tones of silk thread, and only small accents of metallics would be a bad choice, as the silks would all get murky and the pattern would be less visible, and the disconnected bits of metallic pattern would look out of place.

I'm thinking I'll dye these either deep purple or brown.

Oranges and reds could be overdyed to make brown or black, and yellow could have more options including greens, but white or very pale pastels would be best because you could do any colour. 

Excellent candidates for dyeing.

I've only done overdyeing on a couple, and one turned out fine and normal, but the other was very odd - the process washed the gold colour off most but not all of the metallic strips.

Before & after. (I only dyed part of it) Very strange!

Always best to do samples first. And be gentle - the metallic strips have paper in them, so I suggest vat dyeing in lukewarm tap water and hand washing after, which is what I did.

Patterns

There's quite a wide variety of designs!
In this post I'm focusing specifically on the ones that could be useful for the kinds of historical costumes I'm most familiar with, but there are many many more.
Some abstract, some representative, some combinations of both. Wavy lines, spirals, bamboo, hexagons, fans, animals, little scenes with hills and buildings, zigzags, diamonds, etc. 

The thing that I find most exciting about obi silks is how very similar some of them are to the "bizarre silks" of the late 17th to early 18th century. (Which is not a coincidence! Those designs were influenced by Japanese textiles, among others, as it says in the linked blog post.)

I've been planning to use this for an early 18th century waistcoat for years.

A lot of the fashionable silks of the Baroque era had patterns that were BIG, asymmetrical, and often incorporated a lot of metallic threads. For years I'd been pining about how unobtainable that kind of fabric is nowadays. There are some specialty places that do reproductions, but of course being silk brocade they're prohibitively expensive, and the obi silks have much more variety.

c. 1720-1729, Attributed to Enoch Seeman the Younger.

Smaller amounts and a few extra vertical seams are concessions I'll happily make!
Are they perfectly historically accurate? No, but they can get pretty damn close.

A good search term if you're looking for this kind is "arabesque". That'll bring up a lot of the ones with looping floral vines, and with a particular kind of abstract swirly pattern.

Both of these had "arabesque" in the titles.

As did these.

And these.

But that term doesn't get all of them, a lot of the nice big florals just have "flower" in the title, so that's a good search term too.

The title of this one just called the pattern "woven Chinese flower".

By Robert Gabriel Gence, 1713.

c. 1726-35, National Trust.

I would have bid on this one if I liked the colour scheme more.

By Bartolomé Alonso de Cazales, 1722.

Note that there's no pattern matching, and that the patterns are so big and beautiful that they really don't need it.

By Alexis-Simon Belle, c. 1712.

This is one of my very favourites. Look at the variegated thread!

I'm definitely making a sleeved waistcoat with this one.

Nasjonalmuseet

 But there are smaller patterns too!

This one immediately made me think of loud Victorian waistcoats.

1880's, Augusta Auctions.

 

I can see this working as a shawl collar waistcoat, but it's also not too bad for mid 18th century.

And even smaller designs, like the brown & gold I used for a waistcoat a few years ago, or this pinkish orange & black one I got specifically for a 1780's waistcoat.

c. 1790-95, Philadelphia museum of art.

There are some fun plaids, also very appropriate for 19th and late 18th century waistcoats.

Probably 1790's. 
Centraal Museum but the link was broken and I can't find the object page.

There are occasionally striped ones in just the right style for late 18th- early 19th century waistcoats. Some with lengthwise stripes and sometimes width wise, and the waistcoats of that era can be either horizontally or vertically striped.

Early 19th century, Nordiska Museet.

I can imagine using obi silk for a little Regency spencer jacket, or for those late Victorian styles where the skirt of a dress is one solid colour but the bodice is in a contrasting patterned fabric, or where the contrasting fabric is only part of the bodice, and maybe some of the skirt draping.

1890's, McCord Museum.

A little obi brocade paired with a lot of plain taffeta or velvet could really pop!
And if you wanted to do something similar to the above dress it's easy enough to find massive symmetrical florals.

Sometimes the pattern runs in a nicely contained stripe along the length of the fabric, and I can imagine some of those ones working for big hanging side pieces on a bustle, with just enough left for a couple little strips on the bodice.

It's a different sort of style from the example below, and you'd need to find a co-ordinating fabric that wouldn't match, but this is the kind of brocade-on-plain distribution I'm thinking of. Many possibilities.

c. 1889, Albany Institute.

You could make a corset or pair of stays or a bodice, or a jacket as long as it was small enough or had some contrasting parts. Perhaps just a fancy stomacher. 
The fabric probably wouldn't allow for the very symmetrical pattern matching common on 18th century women's jackets and bodices, but no pattern matching at all works just as well if the design is big enough. (As can be seen on the above early 18th c. men's waistcoats.)

Fabric c. 1730's, Kerry Taylor Auctions.

I don't know very much about Medieval and Renaissance styles, but I know there are some styles of dress that had contrasting brocade sleeves, which would be a great use as long as there didn't have to be any more of the same material in the skirt. 
And I think brocade purses are a thing in quite a few eras? If you use it for small accessories you can make a matching set!

And for fantasy costumes there are so many more options! I can see them working especially well with Renaissance inspired designs, what with all the paned breeches and slashed puffed sleeves, and all that fun particolour stuff. 

Wilhelm Pantomime Designs, 1898.
(The V&A has a large collection of these.)

I've made a pinterest board with a lot more pictures - either because they're small things in common obi colours, made with a small amount of brocade or satin, have some pattern and colour blocking, or just remind me a bit of obi fabric in some way.
They're not all perfectly suited, especially since not all of the things pictured are silk and some of them would have come with matching larger garments, but it doesn't have to be perfectly right for the material to be inspiring. (And some look to be on the thinner side and would probably work better with lighter weight kimono silks.)

Material

With silk this cheap the first question is usually "Is it real silk?". 
I do burn tests and bleach tests on every obi I get, and can confidently say that the answer is usually yes.

Out of the... more than 10 but fewer than 20 I currently have from sou_japan, two did unfortunately turn out to be a poly/cotton blend. (Poly warp, cotton weft). 

The 2 poly ones.
I think I'll use the red for mockups and maybe use the green for home decor stuff.

When this happens with new yardage from fabric stores I get very annoyed, but in this instance I believe it's an honest mistake, especially since they have other listings that do say synthetic or cotton, and they're all the same starting price.

I've also seen listings that say "combined weave" but I don't know what that means.

I have several that have a silk warp with cotton weft, but I'm totally fine with that, and the silk threads are the ones that show on the outside anyways.

I also have a couple with a silk warp and rayon weft, and I generally like rayon fine, but I have had some trouble with those particular ones because of how dramatically they shrink when wet. They grow back to regular size when ironed out again, but it's still a bit annoying and I just recut the lining for my red waistcoat because I didn't want it acting all weird and shrinky like that.

You can tell by pulling apart some threads and burn testing them separately - silk bubbles up into little black crunchy blobs that easily crush to fine powder. Rayon and cotton both burn to wispy little bits of ash that float away, but cotton has shorter fibres and rayon has continuous smooth ones like silk.
You can also do bleach tests and see what dissolves and what doesn't.

Protein fibres like silk and wool dissolve completely in pure bleach.

100% rayon brocade ones do exist, which I know because that's what my 1730's waistcoat is made out of, but it behaves very nicely and feels just like silk so I can't make any grand sweeping statements about what rayon is like.

Most of them are 100% silk though, with the obvious exception of the metallic threads, and at this price I consider it absolutely worth the risk of one or two maybe turning out to be poly. Since the shipping is non-refundable I don't think it's worth the bother of asking for a refund for the dollar you paid for the item itself. The other ones more than make up for it, and for $8.68 you're probably going to order more than one option anyways.

The silk, like everything, has variety! A lot of them are the weight of a heavy silk taffeta, but they get thicker and stiffer, and some of them even feel as heavy as canvas. (Like the red one I cut the waistcoat fronts out of.)
The weight is one of my favourite things about obi fabric. I love a good crisp, heavy silk, and it makes smooth tailoring so much easier. 

The linings/plain sections are nicely heavy too, and I've never seen one thinner than about a medium weight silk taffeta. You can make a decent guess about the texture from the closeup photos in the listing.

One of my thinnest linings.

Some of them are very heavy and ribbed.

Some have a twill weave. 

Some have a rather unpleasantly crispy crunchy texture, and I wouldn't want to use those ones for outer fabric, but they're well suited to waistcoat linings.

And some are satiny on one side and have a ribbed or plain texture on the other. 

The orange satin I used for my breeches was just like this.

They're not all completely plain though. The 2 red ones I got are somewhat similar and both have a lovely little square texture on the plainer sections.

Positively scrumptious!

On this one the "plain" section is still metallic brocade, but in a smaller, much simpler mottled pattern.

So much variety! I'm sure there are countless more textures and patterns beyond the small sample I have.

The metallic threads are sometimes the twisted kind, but most often they're little tiny strips of paper with foil on it. (You can see foil being glued onto paper and sliced up in this mesmerizing video.)

This one's all metallic gold held together with dark purple silk threads.

The plain metallic gold or silver ones would be great for a court waistcoat.

Often the foil has a mottled design on it, which is continuous over all the little strips, and they aren't always silver or gold coloured, they could be any sort of shiny colour. 

Mottled shiny purple & green.

Some of them have little strips that are shiny but not in a metallic kind of way. 

As mentioned in the colour section I once had the gold wash off of them when dyeing, leaving silver underneath. But thankfully it didn't damage the strips themselves. That one was dyed in lukewarm water and gently hand washed afterwards, so I don't know how they would hold up to more agitation or higher temperatures.

The brocade weaves themselves vary a lot too. Sometimes they're perfectly smooth on the back.

Lovely smooth back, this'll be a delight to work with.

Sometimes they have a few little floats.

A totally manageable amount of threads.

And some of them are very very hairy.

Ough. An absolute jungle.

Those ones... they worry me a bit, especially when they also have long floats on the front.

I haven't tried sewing with this kind yet. Some of them are quite easy to snag. I was able to pull these threads back into place by tugging on either side of the fabric, but once they're cut? Hrm.

The red waistcoat I cut out has floats this long too, but they're more secure because
the rest of the thread is woven into the fabric instead of floating in back if it.

I'm sure there must be a way to stabilize them though, perhaps by brushing a little fabric glue carefully onto the backs. Something to look into sometime. 

Interlining

Most of them have an interlining to add stiffness, and this is a useful material that should not be overlooked! 
I haven't burn tested all of mine, but on the ones I have it's invariably cotton. Most often it's thin, crisp, and very tightly woven, and on some of the older ones it's thicker with a kind of ribbed/slubby texture. 

I haven't found a use for the thicker stuff yet, but the thinner stuff is great sew-in interfacing! I've started using it for the skirt portions of waistcoats and jackets, and other places that don't need heavier buckram. The one downside is it can be a bit tough to put the needle through.

Sometimes the older ones have a thin layer of raw silk fibres spread out over the surface of the interfacing.

It can be scraped off with a clean lint brush, and is definitely worth keeping, especially if you or someone you know has a spinning wheel.

Look at all that silk fluff!

Once I found an interlining that's a nice thick flannel, and I used some of it in the bodice of my patchwork dressing gown.

Condition

The shop splits the auction section into "vintage" and "antique", and I have no idea what the cutoff date is for that or how they figure out how old they are when they're all secondhand and mostly unlabeled, but I've got some from both and most of them have been in at least decent condition. Sometimes great condition. 

As mentioned early in the post, the very old Maru obi are the only ones I've had serious condition issues with. I bought them because they had the biggest pieces of fabric, but what use is a bigger piece of fabric when it's in this condition?

This one's from Ichiroya and I can't remember what the description said but I wish I hadn't bought it.

These still have areas of strong fabric in the middle, but tear very easily around the edges and on stained areas, and there are a lot of edges.

This one has so many fragile stains and I don't think I can use it for anything :(

But that light blueish one is on me for just skimming the description instead of reading it all.
There's a bit under the fibre content listing that says "[Condition] Excellent" but I've learned that you should ignore it because it always says that no matter what, and the actual condition is higher up in the description.

But most of them are much, much better than that, with fabric that feels very strong.

Sometimes the big seam allowances at the ends have glue on them, and sometimes there may be the occasional glue spot from a sticker.

Sometimes a little bit of the foil is worn off the metallic threads.

Some of them are very nice and clean on the edges. 

And some are rather scruffy, which makes the creases really stand out more.

The creases are still obvious in the finished garments and I can't ever iron them all the way out. I can get it at least mostly flat, but it'll still be visible from the wear.

Worn edge plainly visible in my red waistcoat front.

You can't see it in the picture but I can feel the old crease with my thumb here.

For the lining of this waistcoat I used the lining from a different obi and I put the edge further into the seam allowance than the original edge had been, but it's the lining so I don't mind.

Very obvious creases and old stitching marks in the lining.

And I'm ok with them showing a bit on the outside too. In fact, I think it may be a slight benefit, depending on what kind of person you are. 
I have a really hard time letting myself wear silk clothes because I'm always worried I'll damage them or get them dirty, but if there's already a little bit of a worn crease on it then that makes it more ok. I wouldn't want it on something like a plain white satin waistcoat, but in a busy brocade pattern I don't think it stands out too much.
And I'm totally fine with the piecing. The chest areas are cut all in one piece, as are the pocket flaps, so the seam down the side of the front isn't a big deal.

The Nagoya obi have the most creases because of the narrower bit that's folded in half, like on the above red waistcoat, but sometimes you'll see a listing where it hasn't been sewn up all the way. That doesn't necessarily guarantee no creases, but at the very least it's less to unpick.

For the most part they look and smell quite clean, with maybe the odd little stain. I've only tried washing one so far, and it was one of the Maru ones that was quite dusty when I unpicked it. I hand washed it in cold water with orvus and hug it to dry. It smelled strongly of moth balls while wet, and the dye bled into the water a lot, but it didn't loose much crispness at all, which is the major concern when washing crisp silks.

Buying

I like to either sort by price> lowest first, or time> ending soonest. Either one should put all the most recent auction listings at the top. 

You can do time> ending soonest in either of the auction sections, or just in the search results for "obi" or "stripe" or "flowers" or "fukuro arabesque" or whatever it is you're looking for.
The search bar seems to just show you stuff based on the listing titles, not the description, so I've never had any luck searching by colour.

It's very easy to become overwhelmed when scrolling through the shop, so be picky! In my first order I ended up with some that I regretted because the prices were frying my tiny little brain and I hadn't seen yet that there were hundreds of other options to look through. 

I also didn't know that once you bid on an ebay item you can't un-bid on it.

My best solution to this is to open all the obi you might buy in tabs, read the descriptions to make sure there's nothing objectionable about the fabric or condition, and then save them all to a secret pinterest board so you can look at them next to each other and really narrow down which ones you want most. Then after you've decided and placed your bids you can simply delete all the pins.

I got the one on the left.

Seeing them all together really helps me decide, and it's especially useful if you're looking for similar ones to use together. It's much better than saving them on ebay where it spreads them all out in a list.

If you don't find any you want then just wait and try again. Come back in 3 or 4 days and check the new listings. 

Once you've had a good look at all your favourite options and narrowed it down, just click the blue "place bid" button and then the "bid 1 USD" button (or whatever the lowest current price is).

You should then get an email saying you're winning, and you can also see your active bids in the "bids & offers" section of your account.

I had zero competition for any of the ones I bid on while making this post!

As mentioned in the beginning of the post, a lot of the time nobody bids against you for the obi (the other garments tend to get a lot more bids), and even if they do the most I've paid for one was $4.66 CAD plus the usual shipping. Just make sure to check your email or your bids & offers page before the time runs out.

(I've been bidding as soon as I decide because the ones I want most seem to be quite unpopular, but if there are other people bidding then it's best to wait until very late on the last day.)

Ebay keeps sending me emails saying the listing is "ending soon, bid now!" even though my bid is already winning, so I just ignore those. (If you are outbid it'll say so quite clearly in the email.) 

Then after I've won I get emails reminding me I need to pay, but the about page says you've got to pay within a week of winning, so it's more sensible to wait and pay after all the ones you've bid on have ended.
As far as I've seen the auctions all last 5 days, so if you bid on some one day and a couple more the next day you'll have enough time to pay for them all in one order.

You can click "request combined shipping", but they shipped all mine in one box even when I didn't, so it's probably not necessary.

Then you just have to wait for them to arrive! For me (in Canada) that takes about 2 or 3 weeks.

My goodness this post turned out long.
I hope it was helpful to the very small audience for which it was made! And I hope I can manage to stay away from ebay for at least the next 3 or 4 months...

Be nice to your fabric! Pat it and admire how beautiful it is and do lots of hand finishing on it!! And if you do make a piece of costume after reading this post I'd love to see a picture!