Nara madness continues

OK. Panels for the underskirt have been hem stitched along both long sides, which means no raw edges to deal with when it comes time to pleat the tiers together. In a fit of need-to-paint-stuff, I decided it would be cool to have some sort of faux rokechi dyed effect on said underskirt (which means I could wear it by itself as well as with the green overskirt). The fabric is a nice shade of yellow, so any paint effect on it in white will be fairly subtle. I'm kind of liking these, taken from an 8th c. floor covering* in the Tokyo National Museum (scan is from Jodai Gire: 7th and 8th Century Textiles in Japan from the Shoso-in and Horyu-ji by Kaneo Matsumoto).


*Yes, I realize a floor covering is not a skirt, however, there is an extant rokechi dyed skirt in the Secrets of the Silk Road exhibition catalogue from about the same period, found in one of the tombs at Turfan, China. The designs and technique are somewhat similar, even though the skirt construction is completely different from the pleated tiers in the Nuikata reconstruction I'm going with.

Image has been scanned and scan has been printed, stencil blanks have been found, scan and blank have been taped to cutting mat. Now where the HELL is my Sharpie?

Don't ignore the signs.

First I couldn't find a fine point Sharpie* anywhere in the house, even thought I'd bought a package right before Twelfth Night, dedicated two to the wish-tree/tanzaku box and put the others in my paint box. Then I couldn't find the pair of cuticle scissors I use for stencil cutting - and the last time I used those they went straight back into the paint box specifically so I wouldn't lose them. And I was getting low on masking tape.

Sometimes you just need to get out of the damn house anyway and my wrists were feeling a little twingy from doing eleven yards of hem-stitch between Thursday night and this morning. So I made a run down to the Walgreens at the South Shore center for what I needed, picked up a salad and iced tea at McAwfuls, and found a place to park by the bay over near Ballena Yacht club and eat my lunch and read another chapter of The Great Wave. Stopped to poke my nose in at an estate sale over in the Gold Coast neighborhood on the way home. Nice things, but I don't have the cash or the room for any of it. Came home and fell asleep on the futon downstairs in front of a Jackie Chan movie.

So I'll cut the stencil tomorrow morning when my eyes and hands are fresh and I'm less likely to muck it up.