First Project of 2012: Complete!

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, my grandmother widened my beloved yabane-komon for me. Last weekend she finished it and it turned out awesome (thank you so much grandma <3).

It's wingspan grew as well as the overall width. It's probably still far from having the perfect wingspan, but it became much easier to wear.


Here are some pictures for comparison. I admit it's not that visible, because of my posing in the "before" picture. The sleeves don't look as short as they were:

Before

Cleaning Task: Han-Eri

With a Nagajuban I've now re-sewn into a hanjuban (this one) came a lovely silk Han-Eri. It has leaves weaved in the fabric, but it's stained and yellowed in some spots, so it won't be wearable like this (T.T)

Big Problem: Silk cannot be cleaned to easily, and yellowing is almost impossible to remove. And if you managed to remove it, then you probably "removed" the whole fabric.

I still tried to make the stains at least a little lighter, so I gave it a nice lukewarm bath in our sink. A small amount of wool and silk soap and some very careful scrubbing helped with the job.
Another try was soaking it into milk and let it sit until the milk became bad. (I read somewhere this makes silk white again) But the stupid milk they sell since recently won't get bad the classical way anymore. It's the "stays fresh forever" type -.-, which won't get bad for weeks and if it does it won't clump (this is great, 'cause you'll notice when it's too late and you had a taste of it XP). Such it didn't work out well at all and took almost a week.
If you want to try that milk trick, make sure you get real "fresh" milk.

As you can see the result is not overwhelming, the stain got lighter, the yellow spots, too.
My plan is to dye it, probably in orange, red or brown so the stain will vanish within the colour.
I did this to another plain Han-Eri too. It wasn't that badly stained, but like the leave one it is to be dyed.