A friend of ours showed us some swatches of great fabric from a local fabric store, and one of them had this terrific green leaves and blue dragons pattern. Another friend of ours has a green oak leaf in their arms, so I knew they needed something made out of this fabric. It’s not nice to drop a pile of fabric on somebody who already does not have enough time to sew the things they want. Consequently, I made a kosode for them.
Detail of the Fabric
Completed Kosode
It’s maybe a little busy, but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s not very tall, so it will have to be worn with hakama, but I had enough fabric to do the wide fold-over collar, which is a little fancy. Adding to the fancy are 16-inch wide panels. I also added a little length to the sleeves with faced cuffs.
I finally ran out of the mesh material that I have been using for making hikitate eboshi. I had bought maybe 5 yards of it back years ago, and it’s no surprise that eventually I’d use the last bit for something. Anyway, this happened back in December when I went to make a hikitate eboshi for a friend who was being elevated to the Order of the Mark. Sweetie was able to order a new roll of a new kind of mesh and I wanted to experiment with it.
Hikitate Eboshi from Nylon Mesh
This one is just a tall “pulled” eboshi using the latest version of my sewing pattern. I levae them very open at the back now, so they can accommodate a variety of head sizes. The band is white linen.
Ori Eboshi from Nylon Mesh
I made four of these total, since I was pleased with how they came out and I know they will be useful as gifts. This is a “folded”eboshi using a brand new pattern. I’ve never really made any of these before. The shape is basically just a tate eboshi, but it’s folded once to the right, then back to the left. When you tie it dow like here, it gets its distinctive “samurai eboshi” shape. The band is black linen, with interfacing inside for comfort. There is a cord inside the band across the back, which can be tightened or loosened to change the size.
Tate Eboshi from Nylon Mesh
So this last one is kind of special. I’ve tried making these before, with limited success, but I like how this one came out. It’s a mid-height tate eboshi with the expected “face” in the front. It is also adjustable using the cord at the back of the band. The band itself is linen, with interfacing for stiffness. I left large seam allowances at the top, then sewed them open to give the top a more rounded shape and provide more overall body to the eboshi. This is more of an “out and about” eboshi, not as formal as the other two or as specialty as the samurai eboshi.
I’m very happy with this new mesh. I has a more “woven fabric” look and less of a “window screen” look to it. It is also slightly lighter and easier to work with. I also like how is has just a little bit of glossy sparkle to simulate lacquering. Thank you very much, B&J Fabrics for sending me some swatches so that I could pick the one I liked best.
I finished this kosode back in February, but for some reason I never posted about it here. When we were vacationing to visit family at the end of last year, I found a friendly local fabric store that stocked a bunch of cute cotton prints and other attractive fabrics. They had some nice octopus print cotton, but I decided to get this sweet little moon bunny print.
Kosode from blue “Moon Bunny” cotton print fabric
The design of this kosode is not very period, and the fabric is completely modern, but sometimes I just want something fun to wear, and not everything has to be a formal project. One difference from period design that you may notice is the double-length sleeves. I did make an effort to do the overlaps according to the currently accepted pattern, but you’d have to know what you are looking for to even notice that.
A very good friend of ours was elevated to the Order of the Mark yesterday for his years of excellence with thrown weapons and related service. Hara and I made this hitatare sugata for him to wear for his elevation. Hara found the wonderful silk brocade online, and she made the hakama. I made the hitatare and the braided embellishments.
Silk Brocade Hitatare
I also made the white tekkou bracers from some excellent white silk, and lined them with white linen.
White Tekkou (Bracers) from Silk
I also made the jinbaori arming jacket. Hara bought the lining, and Alime bint Yorgi found the shell fabric. We might later replace the buttons with new buttons shaped like the Mark badge.
Jinbaori Front
On the back, I embroidered a Mark badge onto some of the extra lining fabric, then turned the edges under and sewed the square down to the center of the back.
Jinbaori Back with Mark Badge
This is some of the shiniest, most extravagant garb I have ever made. It was my special pleasure to make these garments for Kuma because I was otherwise prevented from attending his elevation.
The first is another white kosode. I’m having to retire one of my old, old kosode because the cotton fabric is failing, so I need a kosode with narrow sleeves that can fit through narrow spaces in older garments. I have modified all of my older kosode to maximize the opening where the sleeve meets the body, but some of them just don’t have a lot of height to the sleeve itself.
White Kosode 2025, from Linen
I only had a few months left to make my white kosode for 2025 anyway. This one is from the nice white linen I have been buying at Pennsic for the last few years. Due to some poor planning, I was not able to use the most au courant sewing pattern for kosode. I also decided to cut the piece for the neck band a little wider than normal, so it would stay more visible when worn under other kosode. This meant that the okumi overlaps are a little small. Oh well.
The next one is more exciting and more interesting. It’s made from a black and white linen tartan fabric I also bought at Pennsic, I think from the same merchant who sold me the linen for the recent green hakama. The pattern is woven in, not just printed on the surface. It’s very nice fabric.
The overlaps are a full panel width! They are joined at the edges of the neck opening! Neither the body panels nor the overlap panels are cut to make them narrower or angled, they are just folded! The sleeves are 1.5 panels wide, but those panels are not cut either! The sleeve ends double back on themselves to make self-facings! If you look closely, you can see I’ve done some clever things at the seams where sometimes the grid matches up and sometimes it doesn’t. I know all that sounds very technical and maybe doesn’t make sense to you, but trust me, I’m very happy with the work that went into this one.
Sweetie and I were in a fabric store a few weeks ago, and they had a selection of faux boro fabric in several colorways. I really don’t need another happi coat, but they always come in handy and are a way to add another layer to a basic outfit as the evening cools off at Pennsic. Plus, one of the colorways was “black and gold”, which fits into the aesthetic we have here in the Debatable Lands.
Happi from Black & Gold Faux-Boro Cotton
Happi were some of the first Japanese garments I ever made for SCA wear, and they are still fun to make. They have a partial lining that helps to make them very durable. They are a good use for a a few yards of fabric that would be uncomfortable or distracting to wear as just about any other garment. The pattern I use is based on Folkwear 129, “Japanese Hapi & Haori“, but I no longer really need to refer to the pattern, I can just make one mostly from memory.
I’m going to save this one probably until January, then wear it at our Baronial 12th Night event, which is the SCA’s version of a Winter Holiday party.
Here is a more recent project than some of the backlog docs I’ve been posting lately. This past Pennsic was the first Pennsic, after more than 25 years of going to Pennsic, that I was able to spend the full two weeks mostly on site. There is a basic pair of blue linen hakama that I rarely wear during the year that I got a lot of mileage out of at Pennsic. It’s a little more historical looking than the monpe I usually wear for informal use. So, I bought a few yards of this nice olive green linen to make another pair of basic hakama for informal wear.
Green Linen Hakama
They only have 3 panels per leg, two in front and one in back. This makes them lighter to wear and much lower class than the 4 panels per leg I normally make for semiformal wear. Each panel is about 14.5″ wide. The legs are 36″ long from waistband to hem, which is a little shorter than I normally make, and there is a drawstring through the hems so they can be drawn up just under the knee. I expect to get a lot of mileage out of these as well.
Last summer we were out in Rockaway for a niece’s wedding, and realized two things: we were probably close enough to Brooklyn that we could probably find a few bottles of Brooklyn Gin, and we were probably close enough to the fashion district that we could probably find a good fabric store. It turns out we were right on both counts! The fabric store had a lot of great silks, and I got some shiny violet silk that I knew would make a very fancy kosode.
Kosode from Violet Silk
This was great to sew. I have not worked with this kind of silk in many years, since I made the Gray Silk Kosode in 2006. I had a really hard time with it back then, and it was nice to see that my fabric handling ability and sewing skills have improved considerably over time.
I was watching the thoroughly inappropriate cut of the 2010 ridiculously entertaining Japanese action movie, “13 Assassins“, and while on the road, everybody had these great travel outfits. We go to a fair percentage of events where the event is primarily outdoors, and the weather turns out to be terrible. I figured that something like what they were wearing, only made to be waterproof and super-warm would be about the right thing to have in my wardrobe. Hence, the travel coat.
Travel Coat from Canvas
I made mine out of cotton canvas. It’s huge, with 18″-wide panels so it will fit over just about anything else I am likely to wear. I tried treating the canvas with kakishibu (fermented persimmon juice) to waterproof it, but it turns out you need many many coats of kakishibu to waterproof fabric, so I eventually sprayed it with a couple cans of waterproofing spray.
I lined the coat with poly-fleece fabric. Combined with the water resistant and windproof shell fabric, this is basically a bedspread with sleeves. I have not tried it in a driving snowstorm or downpour, but there was one damp, chilly night at Pennsic where I was awfully glad to have this with me.
Our friend Kusunoki Yoshimoto (or “Yoshi” as we call him) who lives in the East Kingdom of the SCA, received a writ for the Order of the Pelican. He’s a pretty good friend of ours, and we camp right next to him at Pennsic. He made Sharon’s crossbow and her first set of bolts, and he helped her figure out the best shooting style for her. He does a lot of service to the archery community in the East and elsewhere, and it was really good to see him recognized.
We were tapped to create a few items for his elevation. Sharon made his elevation garb, which was a full hitatare sugata including undergarments, and his “Pelican Cloak” which was styled as a dobuku coat. I wound up making a silk hata-jirushi banner with his heraldry and his “Cap of Maintenance” which was styled as a hikitate eboshi with ermine spots block-printed on the band.
Silk Banner with Yoshi’s Device
Eboshi of Maintenance
The eboshi was so tall, the King had to stand on a bench to get Yoshi’s Pelican medallion around his neck!
Here is what everything looked like in action:
Yoshi in Vigil, with Banners
Yoshi and Hara in their Pre-Elevation Garb (Braided embellishments by Forveleth Dundee)
Yoshi During the Elevation (Printed fabric designed by Morikawa Rei)
It was a wonderful event, and a great elevation. We were so happy for Yoshi’s elevation to the peerage, and to have our work be a part of it. Travel to Bangor, Maine and back was a terrible experience, but the day itself was wonderful.
