Tag: kaminari

bookmark_borderKaminari Nobori

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Rounding out the projects that I will get around to finishing in 2021 was a kind of large one. I made five of these large nobori banners with the mon of Clan Yama Kaminari.

Kaminari Nobori #1

I would have made only four, but four is an unlucky number in most of Asia, so I made an “extra” one which is a little narrower and which I will probably keep for myself. The clan already has four nobori, so this will make 8 we can put on display in camp.

The banners are all rip-stop nylon, and about 12 feet tall. The ones for clan are 20 inches wide, and the extra one is about 17 inches wide. The nylon is all serged to avoid fraying edges. The red band is about 6 feet tall, and the black bands are 2 feet and 4 feet tall. The “tabs” around the edges are about 1.25″ wide and start out ten inches long. I cut all the tabs from extra rip-stop so that I didn’t have to buy ribbon or webbing.

The mon is done by cutting the white pieces out of fabric, attaching them to the red fabric like an applique (that is, satin-stitching around the edges), then cutting out the red fabric behind the white.

bookmark_borderMore Kaminari Kataginu

Posted on by Elliott Evans

After I made the two Kaminari kataginu last year as prototypes, I ordered a whole roll of red linen so I could make more. This linen sat in the closet for basically a whole year while I worked on other stuff. With the news that there might be some SCA activities in the medium-future, I realized that I had to get started on this project.

So, I made six more kataginu and embroidered them with the Yama Kaminari clan mon. They are the six you see on the left in this picture. The two to the right are the prototypes from last year.

8 Kaminari Kataginu

The ones that look smaller folded up are 36 inches from shoulder to hem. The larger ones are 48 inches to accommodate those who are taller or otherwise larger. I seem to remember that the prototypes used 54-inch wide fabric, so the panels are 18 inches wide on those two. The new ones are constructed from 45-inch fabric, so they use 15 inch panels.

I can’t wait to seem them adorning my firends in some kind of procession!

bookmark_borderPoplar Solar Flicker Lantern

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Progress on the wood frame lanterns to fit the solar flicker lighting units continues! I completed the fifth of six planned lanterns recently, this one made from some surplus poplar lumber I had in the garage.

Andon in Poplar

Here is the lantern hanging in the Shourou at night after a recent snowfall:

Snowrou with Poplar Andon

Here is the lantern storage box almost full of lanterns:

5/6 Complete

bookmark_borderKaminari Kataginu

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Recent experiments applying the mon of Clan Yama Kaminari to fabric have demonstrated to me that I am most happy with machine embroidered versions. They are durable, attractive, and can be made by a robot. This last is handiest because I want to embark on a project to make probably several dozen of these so that when we do something like march in a festival parade or rocess into court as a group, we can have a uniform look. Here are two prototypes I made over the last few days.

Embroidered Kaminari Kataginu

Even with a robot to do all of the embellishment work, it’s still labor intensive to get the fabric loaded onto the machine just right to get good results exactly where you want them. It also takes about ten minutes to complete each mon, so that’s going to be a lot of time if we make a whole bunch of these.