This braid has been on the takadai for about six months. I have not been working on it constantly, of course, but still. It is a double-layer double-twill braid that used both the upper and lower arms, so it is essentially two braids stitched together at the edges. Even If I had been braiding at full speed, it still would have taken me twice as long as a single-layer braid, but I had so many other things to take care of and so many other braids to do.
The final braid is about a yard long and a little more than a half-inch wide. It’s all in silk lace-weight yarn and there are 52 (!) elements with 3 ends of yarn per element. There are plenty of errors in the braid. You can probably see a few in the photo. I’m still happy with it. It was a great learning experience.
Almost 8 years ago, Makiko Tada was kind enough to teach me kute-uchi hand-loop braiding in her studio. For the past 8 years I have been making “practice” braids, “sample” braids, “class” braids, and the like, but never making any actual braids from silk. So, I did it. Twice.
The first braid is a 5-loop (3+2) AB flat braid that is usually referred to as shigeuchi. I used 12 ends of silk reeled silk yarn per loop, 3 loops red and 2 loops pink. The “3+2” means that three loops start on the left hand, and 2 on the right. The “AB” refers to two of the four moves used to make the braid from loops:
A = Outside Straight
B = Outside Twist
C = Inside Straight
D = Inside Twist
I realize that this doesn’t actually tell you anything you need to know about loop braiding. Anyway, the braid:
5-loop AB Shigeuchi in Reeled Silk
The second braid is a 9-loop (6 +3) AADC Odoshige braid, again with 12 ends of reeled silk yarn per loop. This time I had 6 loops of pink and 3 of red. This braid makes this great 8-ridge flat twill structure. The name odoshige indicates that it was mainly used as lacing on odoshi , which is a word for armor. This particular one is a little wide for armor lacing, though.
9-loop AADC Odoshige in Reeled Silk
I feel like the tension on both of these braids is still a little off. I bet you can even see the change in tension over the course of each braid. I have tried to showcase the best section of each braid. In the first braid, it’s the arc at the bottom. In the second braid it is the diagonal part near the top. In both cases, the nicer part of the braid is closer to the finish end of the braid. That should tell you something about how difficult it is to tension a longer braid.
Both braids are roughly 30 inches long. The second braid also has an error in it, but I have skillfully hidden that error from the camera.
Every year at Pennsic, the Kingdoms in the SCA trade gift baskets. This year, my Kingdom is gifting the Crown of the East Kingdom with a basket of goodies that they can use during their reign or give out as largesse themselves. I decided to chip in with some of my stock of illustrated scroll blanks and some fresh medallion cord braids in East Kingdom colors.
9-strand Marudai Shigeuchi
9-strand Sankakudai Shigeuchi
9-strand Shigeuchidai Shigeuchi
7-Strand Sankakudai
9-strand Shigeuchidai Shigeuchi
7-Strand Sankakudai
These were all in violet and gold silk lace-weight yarn, with multiple ends of yarn per strand. These braids enabled me to practice some new techniques and on some new equipment, so it was totally worth it.
At the Braids 2025 conference in Cleveland, I am scheduled to teach a class on three braids for the marudai that use an odd number of elements. I realized that while I had a bunch of sample braids for those three, but none that I would consider to be “show quality”. They are mostly done in cotton or fuzzy yarn, and some of them have been attached to garments or other projects. to be “show braids”, they really should be done in silk thread and should be at least a couple of feet long. We still had plenty of reeled silk from the Georgia Yarn Company, so I decided to get busy braiding.
9-Strand “Shigeuchi Gumi” (30 inches)
17-Strand “Taka on Maru” Braid (32 inches)
15-Strand “Sankaku Gumi” (26 inches)
I braided each of these with about 16 ends of silk thread per tama. I say “about” because the lavender thread is ever so slightly thicker than the other colors. To get the 17-Strand braid relatively even, I had to go down to 12 ends of lavender pr tama. I had to work out the right patterns for each braid that would keep the colors together through the braid. That was somewhat tricky, but I now have a Jacqui Carey-style coloring grid for the 17-strand braid, which will be super handy in the future.
If any of these three braids interest you, please consider coming to the conference and signing up for my class! I am scheduled against some big names in braiding, so I would really appreciate support from the marudai braiding community.
Following up on the previous double-hira, which expanded the 8-strand flat braid to 16 strands by having 8 groups of 2 instead of 4 groups of 2, I decided to try the braid with 4 groups of 4. Here’s what the pattern looks like:
16-Strand “Double Hira” Gumi A
Note the asymmetrical first move. Here is what the braid looks like:
Double-Hira Gumi A in black and gold silk
I really like the look of this braid. Interestingly, the braid is much thicker along one edge than along the other. I just love the look of those zig-zag chevrons, and the stitches come out really tight.
I didn’t post a pattern for the previous double-hira, so here it is, for comparison:
16-Strand “Double Hira” Gumi B
It sure looks more confusing, but it’s the same moves, just with more groups.
So, if you remember my posting from about a year ago, sometimes I experiment with 8-strand braids that I have never tried a 16-strand “doubling” of. I was really happy with my doubling of the yatsu-se gumi, but for some reason I never thought to try a doubling of the 8-strand version of the shige-uchi braid (which is not really a shigeuchi at all) until now. Here is the pattern for the 8-strand braid:
If you expand the setup to 16 strands (with 8 groups of 2 instead of just 4 groups of 2) but keep the asymmetrical first move, the braid open up what would have been a naiki gumi round hollow braid into a wide, flat braid with a single layer plain weave,
16-strand flat braid in black and gold silk
I suppose this should be called the hira ju-roku gumi or “flat 16″ braid. The width of this braid varies due to variations in tension, but it averages about 5/8” (about 15mm) wide, which is very wide for a marudai braid. Mine came out very loose, but that may have been a function of the marudai I was using. For a braid this wide, I really should have used a marudai with a deeper “well” and a wider hole in the middle of the mirror. Anyway, the looseness makes this braid very soft and flexible.
After like ten months, this braid is finally complete. Two ends of silk lace-weight yarn per tama in a 25-tama 3/3 twill braid. Yikes. I did a bunch of braids while this waited on the takadai, but I finally powered through it and cleared the takadai for new projects.
Anyway, it’s like 75 inches of braid, 3/8 of an inch wide.
Painted silk banners are one of the things I do in the SCA. This past weekend there was an SCA event where there were four elevations, and I made banners for three of the four.
Banner for Oribe Tsukime
Back in the summer, I made this banner for Oribe Tsukime. One cool thing about this banner is that I painted the design on in water-based resist, then painted purple around it. Normally, I would start with purple fabric and paint the design on in white, or do a gutta resist around the design and flood the outside area with color, but the detail on the iris was too fine for that method.
Banners for Markus skalpr Grimsson & Sumayya al Ghaziyya
For these two banners, I was able to use the normal method of applying a black gutta resist and fill the interiors of the designs with paint. Doing the layout and resist for the gurges on Sumayya’s banner was quite a lot of work, but I like how it came out. Thank you Markus for registering a design that was significantly less work to paint than most people’s. Hara did the edging and the braids for these two banners, so I could focus on other projects.
One of our friends in the SCA, Oribe Tsukime, received a writ for elevation to the Order of the Laurel. The writ was issued back in the Spring, but she was not able to have her actual elevation until this past weekend. This gave me plenty of time to make these white silk tabi for her to wear as part of her elevation garb.
Tabi in fine white silk
This was the first time I had ever made tabifor another person, the first time I had made tabi in a few years, and the process was complicated by Tsukime living somewhat far from my home. Footwear is always difficult to fit, and trying to do it by sending prototypes back and forth in the mail took a few months.
I was able to complete this project with days to spare, however, and she wore them during her vigil and elevation ceremony. They are all fine silk left over from the uenohakama project, sewn by hand with white silk thread. I don’t know how long they will last, and they probably never can be washed, but I was asked to make them and they were ready in time, so I am happy.
Normally, I try to hand over these things by Agincourt, but with Baronial Investiture just weeks later I wound up holding off on presenting these until I could present them to the new Baronage.
First is this set of six silk braids I completed in September. These are all 8-strand marudai braids done in silk.
Second is this set of 8-strand marudai braids I completed in October. Some of these are done in silk, and some of them are done in this super-soft silk/alpaca blend yarn we bought back in January. I wanted to experiment and compare 3 ends of silk/alpaca yarn per strand to the 8 ends of lace-weight silk yarn per strand that I normally use.
Finally is this set of eight machine-embroidered belt favors for the Baronial Comet awards. These apparently came in handy, as I saw several of them handed out later in the day.
