Tag: Crowns A&S Champions

Still two weeks away / the season’s official start / but temperature tells a much different tale / of a winter weary day.

Winter is coming.

I spent a little time with the instructions for the hitoe trying to piece together what the seriously bad translation gives me, and it’s just no use. The diagrams mostly make sense. I’ve pretty much narrowed one character that translates as “twist” to be a rolled hem. But I can’t be positive. There’s still that line that says glue and twist… There’s no way around it, I need to learn Japanese.

Of course I’ve known that for years and just haven’t done it. Maybe this will be the final push I need to get serious about it. There is only so far I can go with my research without it.

I did reread the diagram for sewing the sleeve bottoms, and wow. The stitch length is .8cm or about 5/16 inches. That’s essentially 3 stitches per inch. That’s quite a departure from the 10 stitches per inch I’ve been doing everywhere else. I set the sleeves aside and started working on the collar. I was incredibly lucky to have a scrap that was big enough. I cut the length down by only an inch and a half and the width of the scrap at the narrow end was exactly the 7.5 inches I needed it to be.

I’m not looking forward to all the rolled hems I have to do still on the collar and the back of the sleeves. This is quickly becoming my least favorite stitch.

Sometimes I write a good portion of my blog the day before. Sometimes I’m scrambling at 11pm trying to get anything posted. Most of the time, I work on it throughout the day, adding little bits as I go, using it as a guide for what I intend to accomplish.

Today I need to carefully think through the next steps so I am less likely to make a mistake. I’m about to recut the sleeves and collar, and I’m nervous. Here’s the process I’m trying to follow…

I’m going to work on the sleeves today, hopefully finishing them, though likely not attaching them.

First I sorted the remaining fabric. I have the two sections for sleeves set aside, the scraps that are going to be the sleeve extensions on the table, and the scrap that becomes the collar folded neatly on a chair.

Next I’m going to iron the sleeve extension pieces and square them up. Then the sleeve pieces will be ironed, marked and cut.

Once all four pieces are prepped, I’ll pin things together and stitch the extensions on then finish the bottom seams.

I’ll need to add sources to my documentation for doing this. I think there’s an example of extended sleeves on a men’s hitatare in the main book I’m using, the Jidai isho no nuikata.

And I think I’ve come up with a middle ground for Crowns A&S, but I’m going to run it by a Laurel or two before I commit. I’m thinking of entering just the hitoe. It’s not what I wanted to do, but it’s what I can feasibly do. I still really want to do the whole thing.

Struggling with a choice / to do the easier thing / or test my limits. Will the pressure reveal a / diamond or a missed deadline?

And I have confirmation from a Laurel in the Ministry of Arts and Sciences (and friend) that I can register the whole thing and switch to just one garment if necessary. That’s a relief. Another friend asked some very thought provoking questions to help me home in on why I want to enter A&S Champs. It comes down to me being almost desperate to share my art and believing A&S Champs is the best way to not only share my art but also get feedback on it. I want to get better, that means I need knowledgeable people to show me additional places for improvement. I actually have a little section of my documentation that talks about the lessons I’ve learned and ways to improve things for the next iteration.

The sleeve extensions are attached.

Words and phrases turn / through my head, a tumult of / metaphor and analogy. / Counted out in syllables, / ordered chaos on the page.

My poems usually feel like that, plucked from the ether, phrases turned over and around, substitutions and elongations…

The plan is to eventually be able to compose a poem in less than 5 minutes on any topic I’m given. To test me my partner supplied a very random word. I took a few minutes and came up with this:

Venomous mammal / From an egg your beginning  / And water your life / swimmer of the Southern Isle / Nature’s glowing chimera.

It’s not bad for what it is. I would have much rather preferred a color or object or emotion…but when life gives you a platypus…

I am considering adding my poems to the blog in a different format. I’ve never really liked the slashes for syllable delineation. In period they would just be written in two lines, the first three and then the couplet. My problem lies more in the limitations of my interface with the blog and how little I know about manipulating it. Eventually I’ll find something I like more. Until I take the time to play with format, it will stay as is.

And now, the project progress update:

This little rolled hem is taking a good long while. I can say that I’m more than halfway done with it. It’s actually taking so long to do that I’m seriously considering lengthening the sleeves by adding that strip of fabric just to make them go faster. Because it would be faster (so much faster) to add a half panel width to each sleeve giving me selvage edges than it would to hem them both. I’ll still have to hem the collar either way.

Well, I have the rest of this hem and then the collar during which to consider my dilemma.

The other dye showed up this morning. Currently the fabric is in a wash cycle having already had it’s blue-green bath. It looks kind of bright, but I won’t know until it’s dry in another hour or so.

A cold autumn rain / tapping on the window sill / keeping me from sleep / the sky weeps for fallen leaves, / unabashed melancholy

The rain this morning around three launched me out of bed until I wrote that poem. The rain has since given way to snow and wind. And I finally made it Facebook Official, so I’ll say the same here, I intend to keep up daily tanka for at least a year. That also gives me something to share daily after I finish the travelling outfit and before I move on to the hitatare kamishimo (that’s a men’s ensemble).

The okumi overlap panels were finished last night, and today I’ve been working on a lovely rolled hem while attending a few classes at a virtual SCA event.

Moment of truth for the fabric…nope. It’s noticeably different. The first round of dye was done with old dye, and I suppose that is what caused such a difference. There was also about a yard and a half less in this batch. It is a pretty color. It’ll get used for something else.

I have enough scrap fabric to make one sleeve and can turn the piece that was to be the collar into the other sleeve. I’ll use one of the okumi off cuts for the collar. This is the only way to complete the garment. It means I have to hem the sleeves and collar instead of using the selvage edges. Boo. Unless I enlarge the sleeves…it was done. Eh. I think I’ll just keep the miscut sleeves in case I decide in the future to lengthen them. And by lengthen I mean the dimension moving from the shoulder to the wrist horizontally across the arm. Heian ladies were known to exaggerate their sleeves, to the point that some ladies had their sleeves on only one side cut extra large for hanging out of carriage windows. I believe Sei Shonagon of Pillow Book fame lists this as a distasteful thing.

The okumi or overlap panels for the hitoe or green garment are almost attached.

The rest of the dye I ordered should show up tomorrow. If I work really hard, I may have the okumi attached and hem done before it arrives. At the very least, I’ll have all that finished by the time the fabric is done being dyed. The one good thing about having to dye more fabric is the collar can now be recut so that it is also on a selvage edge.

I’m considering making a doll and using off-cuts to make her clothing. It would be a lovely way to display different outfits…great, now I want to research period dolls. I mean, I did before, but I have the urge to find out now, and there are other things to do… It figures that I’d get a little distracted by toys. Back to sewing!

As sunlight dances / dappled on the window pane / I let out a sigh. / Would that I could capture this / gold drenched beam for stormy days.

I had the silk laid out on the table, prepped to measure and cut a chunk off to dye it.

And I stopped.

Stuck. Frozen in fear / unable to move or think / in white hot terror. / Is it continued failure / or success that holds me fast?

I had a big fat doubt holding me back. What if my dye bath is off? I asked my parter if I should give it a go and try or order more dye and repeat my process as close to the same as possible. Yeah, I heard the right answer as it fell out of my mouth too.

I have ordered the dye I need. It will be here between Friday and Monday. This means sleeves for the hitoe are on hold for a few days. For now I need to cut the actual okumi overlap panels and start stitching those on.

Yes. Another one. Instead of cutting my okumi overlap panels down, I cut my sleeves which look the same as the overlap except they’re 10 inches shorter.

I’ve been in tears off and on since I realized what I had done.

The solution is not perfect. I went to the fabric store again. They had the fabric, but not enough to remake it in it’s entirety. I bought all they had left. The chain fabric store was out of dye. So I can’t just dye the whole lot of it. Tomorrow, because you had better believe I’m stopped for the day, I’ll edge a section of fabric and dye it according to the proportions I used in the sample dyeing phase. Fingers crossed it comes out close enough.

I’m seriously considering skipping A&S Champs for this year. We’ll see how well I recover from this latest set back. It’s really looking like I cant meet the deadline for the entire ensemble, and I still don’t really like the idea of entering just one piece.

Another mistake / precious time and resources / lost, squandered on carelessness / Another day spent scrambling / in attempts to salvage it.