I didn’t feel up to crawling around in the floor cutting up silk today, so I’ve been spending time staring at zoomed in images.
A flat braid with a chevron pattern is visible woven through the sheer fabric. I know that the sleeve ends of hitatare have a flat decorative braid run through them, using either tiny loops or slits in the fabric. Hitatare – a men’s upper body garment with decorative cords at sleeve ends and attached to the collar frequently worn with matching hakama (pleated pants) and one garment in my next big clothing project after C3 so stay tuned for that.
On the other side, still zoomed in, are what appear to be the kazari-himo tied off to the flat braid?
As in they don’t attach to the hat? Oh dear. This is what I get for saying I’m going to finish the accessory layer first. Looks like I need to stitch the individual panels to each other a bit further down as well.
It makes sense to have something hanging over the panels to help hold them down in a light breeze. A built in cord that the decorative cords hang from would absolutely do this well. I’m curious about the sheer fabric holding the weight of the kazari-himo from the flat braid. I have some scrap of the silk gazar I used for the mushi no tareginu. I could do a test. The slits in the fabric are only cut, and at that position would be through 2 layers of fabric, just above the fold over hem. I’d guess that the braid width is about 3/8 inch wide.
Do you know what this means? More silk thread. I can’t order any more, so I’ll have to make do with the extra spool I ordered this last time.
I wish I could just go to Kyoto and look at the thing in person! I may keep the kazari-himo (decorative cords) attached to the hat as the image is a little difficult to make out for sure. The flat braid though…that should happen. I’ve found a chevron braid in one of my kumihimo books already. It’s also an 8 strand. I’ll measure out the finished mushi no tareginu (hat curtains) width, double check it against my hat circumference, and use that as my cord length.
Good news. The completed panels are slightly smaller than the outer circumference of the hat. So they fit and I didn’t screw up when I cut my panels. Hooray! My flat braid needs to be 63 inches long. I’ll aim for 70 inches to be safe. I should have enough thread. I think. The math says I have enough. Fingers crossed.
