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Hina Matsuri .... we're finally ready!

2/28/2015

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Emperor Andreas and Empress Narsha
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Floral offerings from Sophie and Mimi,
kind of a combination Hina Matsuri and Chelsea Flower Show!
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A slide show of some of the details of Narsha's junihitoe.  This time around almost all the layers of the outfit are made of silk rather than cotton as I did the first time (the cotton turned out to be just too bulky.)  While I used the same motif for the mo (the long white "train"), instead of printing it myself on computer printed fabric, I sent the design to Spoonflower and had them print it.  There were two reasons for this:  the computer fabric only came in 8.5"X11" sheets which really wasn't big enough for a proper mo; and the white fabric yellowed noticeably in the last 3 years.  While the Spoonflower print is not quite as sharp as my own computer printing, it did allow me to have a much larger mo, on much more appropriately flowing fabric.  I must admit I struggled with how to size the image file I sent to Spoonflower to end up with the correct size print and more to the point, to end up with a lot of white space around the motif, but managed to fumble my way through!

I also succeeded at making more "correct" garments this time.  Most of the "guides" to dressing in junihitoe show an "antique" version of the the outfit, from the Heian period, but most of the photos that I wanted to copy show women in (relatively) modern Edo period style and it took me a long time to catch on to this fact.  The most obvious difference between the two styles is that layers of uchigi (what we would call "kimono") in the Heian style cross or lap over each other in the front near the waist and then are sequentially pulled open and backwards below the waist while in the Edo style there is very little over lap - just the wide collar/lapel (having seen no instruction for how this style is put on, I'm still not sure what keeps the Edo style "closed" but at least I now understand why I was confused between the images in my "how to" books and the photos of "modern" junihitoe that I wanted to copy!)

Here is a photo from the most extensive "how to" book that I own, by Ms. Chieko Kato.  The "empress" here is dressed in the Heian style.

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And here is a picture taken at the 1959 wedding of the current Emperor and Empress of Japan, showing the Edo style outfit.  (Yes, I know the difference is relatively subtle but .... there is a difference!)
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The weaknesses of Narsha's outfit are mostly a function of her weakness as a model but by the time I'd come to realize this, I was far enough along on the project that I didn't want to start over again on another doll.  Besides, I chose Narsha not only because she is slightly taller than most of the rest of the girls in the gang but because I wanted to honor her beautiful face sculpt.  Her head, by Dollmore, is on an "old" Customhouse Petite Ai body (sadly it doesn't fit on a Tenner body) and since I've been spending so much time in the last year or so with the wonderful Tenner body, I'd forgotten how really primitive and finicky some of the "old" BJD bodies can be!!  I ended up having to tie Narsha's legs to a doll stand - not the most graceful way to pose a body and not a situation that makes it easy to drape the nagabakama and uchigi correctly around her legs!

So .... this means I've finally completed a project that I've had in mind quite a long time .... really all the way back to my childhood when I looked at pictures of Japanese dolls and wished and wished for a Hina doll display of my own!
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvksRcYW6oQ This is a link to an interesting video about Japanese dolls.  In several spots they discuss what it can mean to people if dolls are felt to have souls, and include footage of sending "old" dolls (it looks like mostly Hina Matsuri dolls) adrift in small boats, instead of just throwing them away (or selling them on eBay?)  Oh dear!!!!  Kind of like doll assisted suicide!!  I hope this won't happen to my dolls when I've shuffled off this mortal coil.  R.
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the Emperor writes haiku

2/19/2015

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Mice in palanquins.
Me wearing kanmuri crown.
Which is more silly??
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Another lead-up to Hina Matsuri!  The fabric for Andreas' hakama arrived from England on Tuesday and thanks to a 4-wheel-drive-tire-chains equipped neighbor, I didn't have to walk 2 miles along an iced-up road to get it out of the mailbox!!!  (Yep, I'm currently iced-in here, to say nothing of the fact that it didn't get any warmer than 12 today.  Grrrrrr  Brrrrrr!) R.

Hey, that's another haiku!
Grr rrr rrr rrr rrr
Brrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr
Rrrr rrrr rrr rrr rr  
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and the Emperor is .......

2/12/2015

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Andreas, this year (for Hina Matsuri).  (No, no pictures yet.)

I'm having fun making his outfit.  And his really unusual crown!!  But that Andreas - he isn't easy to do fittings on!  I guess I should be thankful that his arms are jointed (at the shoulders) (unlike his lower torso which has no joints at all!)  But they only swing backwards and forward - no holding them out straight from the body.  So he holds all the layers of the sokutai (which I'm pretty sure is the correct word, the equivalent for men of the word junihitoe for women) pretty tightly against his sides with his arms.  Silly kid!!  (But I guess this makes him a good running back, right?)  As of this evening I'll be finished with the ho (the top layer garment) and only have the hakama left to do.  Someone waited too long to shop for fabric for the hakama and someone is worried that the fabric has to come all the way from England .... but hopefully it will get here in time.  While thinking about shopping for this last piece of fabric it came to my notice that a really great independent fabric store in Asheville went out of business
(Waechter's Silk Shop) last year - too too bad!!  I'm lucky that I shopped there when I did a couple of years ago and got the great jacquard fabric for the ho at then.

So I guess since I won't be sewing for Hina Matsuri tomorrow, it might be a good time to take down my Christmas decorations?!  In my defense, most of them are more truly "Winter Season" decorations rather than "Christmas" decorations .... and we're getting some of the coldest weather of the winter right now, so "winter" is certainly not gone!  But Christmas is over, isn't it?!
"Better late than never"?   R.
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a teaser of things to come

2/6/2015

2 Comments

 
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A peek at the project currently occupying my time and energy .... remember the reference to the roll of silk fabrics????   R.
2 Comments

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