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.
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.
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.
This was the first time I had ever made tabi for 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.
As is my tradition, I made some braided silk medallion cords to donate to the Barony at Agincourt. These braids are all 8-tama braids with 8 “ends” of lace weight silk yarn per tama. The braids are all standard 8-tama braids (kaku genji, kaku, shippou, Edo yatsu, yatsu se, shige uchi) with 4 tama of each color, and I set them all up with the same color positioning (KK GG GG KK) so that I could compare how the colors move through these different braids. I gave them my standard “ring and toggle” closures, and added a jump ring for any medallion.
This is the last Agincourt for our current Baronage, so I’m not sure that they will need all of these cords themselves, but I’ll make more for the next Baronage anyway.
I neglected to post about this at the time, but back in March when we were getting ready for my sweetie’s elevation, I made three more eboshi for our friend Gwen.
Of course, Gwen has been camping with Kaminari for years and has several eboshi, but nothing deemed nice enough to wear while heralding an elevation. So, I made three more for them. One floppy nae eboshi, one linen tate eboshi lined with heavy interfacing, and one mesh tate eboshi for summer wear. The mesh eboshi has a silk band for the extra-fancy.
For my third takadai braid, I decided to both continue my progression through Rodrick Owen’s book, but go a little less dainty with the braid. Changing two variables at once is always risky, and this did lead to some regret.
It is about five feet long. The tension is inconsistent so the width varies, but it’s about 1.125″ wide and 0.375″ thick. Heavy.
The structure is called a “rep braid”. Each time you open a shed, 3 bobbins pass through it. This creates the big knobbly stitches and thickness.
I used 16 ends of reeled-silk thread per tama, and this braid is done with 43 tama. I used the new 100-gram tama that Sweetie gave me as a present.
I think that I was not beating hard enough at the beginning, and I was beating too hard at the end. I guess this will get more consistent with practice. If I did this with half as many ends per tama, it probably would be easier.
Our SCA Kingdom, the Sylvan Kingdom of Aethelmearc, had its Spring Coronation last weekend, so I made some braided medallion cords for the Baronial gift basket to the Crown.
I was a little short of time, having entered the six 16-tama braids I made in the fall into a largess derby in January, so I did mostly 8-tama braids. One of the braids is the 16-tama double-rai braid, four are yatsu se, and one is shige uchi. I should do a batch of the 9-tama shige uchi braid next time.
My sweetie answers her writ to the Order of the Laurel tomorrow. Here is the silk banner I made for her!
This banner is made with “Dye-na-flow” paint on habotai silk. I pre-treated the silk with “No-Flow” sizing to make it react to ink more like paper than fabric, so I could just trace the artwork as if it was an illustrated scroll. I’ve had mixed results with this method, but I think it came out wonderful this time around. The suspensory braid is a 16-strand braid in white silk, actually a length of braid left over from Duchess Sir Morgen’s elevation garb.
Sweetie needs some braids to make tokens for her elevation later this month, so I spent a few weeks doing nothing (braiding-wise) besides edo yatsu in silk.
These are all 8-strand “round” braids about an eighth of an inch in diameter. The violet braids use lace-weight silk yarn, but the lilac braids use reeled-silk. This fine filament silk is a bear to work with, especially in bulk lengths like this. Each braid is about four yards long, starting from about five yards of material.
