I want to talk about the stripes I make.
According to a book, there are 270 names for striped patterns in Japanese. Thousand stripes (sen-suji), ten-thousand stripes (man-suji), with kids stripes (komochi-jiima), twin stripes (futago-suji), fall stripes (taki-jima), bonito stripes (katsuo-jima), benkei stripes (benkei-jima), wickerwork stripes (ajiro-jima), etc., etc., etc.
Among these, I basically make random stripes, called “yatara-jima”.
Yatara-jima have no regularity in the arrangement of the stripes, and were originally woven to finish off the threads left over from weaving, and originated mainly for women's kimono.
Yes, weaving always produces surplus threads, but that does not mean that a regular number of threads can be taken.
If that were the case, it would be more fashionable to arrange them randomly... nowadays, but I think it's amazing that the people who first made them ( I suspect that they were everywhere in private kimonos) and put them on the market are so amazing.
I think there were people who thought it was interesting and stylish... but I wonder through what channels it spread. I wonder if it was a marketing strategy at the time to have ukiyo-e paintings of beautiful women drawn, or if the models happened to be wearing them. It’s similar to influencer marketing or buzzing on SNSs!? I can imagine all sorts of things.
Taking these cloths as an example, I used 19 different threads in total: three red, three yellow, five green, three grey, three purple, one off-white and one non-dyed white.
In my case, I of course use leftover thread, but basically, as in normal weaving, I have a design first and then prepare the thread. To be more precise, I have the design, dye the necessary colours, take some yarns out of the chest, lay them out, look at the colours and readjust the design. I use two or three threads of the same colour to create shading or variation in the slightly thicker stripes.
But sometimes I feel that I have made a mistake, because when I add the weft yarn, there is not much difference, and in some cases it is a newly dyed yarn, and I feel like, "Wow, give me back my time!" Sometimes I feel like, “Wow, I want my time back!” I'm not experienced enough …
It is actually very difficult to distinguish between the two types of red cloth.
It's not so much about making stripes, but more about the colour composition of the kimono or the shape of the cloth, so it may be a slightly different way of making it.
The right two madders look different, but...
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I used the same warp (silk) as this cloth and hand-spun ramie yarn as the weft, and of the 19 colours... 15 are included.
Red: Indian Madder (strong&pale), Sappanwood
Yellow: Amur Corktree (strong&pale), Gardenia
Green: Ōbaku x odour wood (two light varieties), Green leaf extract powder, Japanese Pagoda Tree x Indigo (strong&pale)
Grey: Cochineal (strong&pale), Sawtooth Oak
Purple: Cochineal, Lithospermum Erythrorhizon (strong&pale)
Off-white: Walnut
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