Meiji Uchikake–Mr. Steal Your Girl

A Vibrant Phoenix In Flight Over Blooming Paulownia On Black Silk.

Not that I needed another one of these, but you look that birb right the fuck in the face and tell me you don’t literally want to eat his candy ass. Which means that I was contractually obligated to buy this just to clean it up and display it. What contract? I dunno, the weird one signed in blood. The one we all get. What do you mean we don’t all get one?

…wat…

This is one of my mid-COVID purchases that has actually technically been in my ownership for awhile, but was hanging out at the lovely Roza’s house for a bit until shipping was easier. And when it was, boy it was like goddamn Christmas. In truth, I spent a significant portion of time with this piece just petting it. The embroidery of the Houou is so soft and perfect, I couldn’t and vehemently refused to resist. But more than that, it was all I could do to keep from shoving the whole damn thing in my mouth. Let’s consider the logtistics–imagine shoving a whole-ass uchikake (outermost piece of the bride’s wedding ensemble) in your mouth. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

Phoenix Bois like this have a 100% chance of stealing your girl. Also, can we talk about this shit:

I am sure this is not what it looks like. But do you know what it fucking looks like? It looks like one of those anime anger veins. This phoenix looks pissed. On the back of a wedding dress. LOL “Fine, I’ll marry him, but I’m gonna be mad about it.”

I also discovered after doing what few repairs needed to be done that the sleeves had been shortened at some point, but whoever did it didn’t cut them at all. The sleeves are tucked in up to here:

They go all the way up to here! I’ll probably let them out eventually.

And beyond that, we have a stunning display of masterful embroidery from the Meiji Era–making this beast over 100 years old, and making my collection of century old things a bit larger. She is adorned with embroidered kamon of sho-chiku-bai in vivid color, a big beautiful houou (phoenix), blooming and vibrant kiri (paulownia) on perfect and unfaded liquid shiny silk. Feel free to hang around and enjoy the texture of the embroidery for a bit, I know I still am.

Anyway, we’re screaming head first into summer here in the US Midwest, and the weather hasn’t actually been too terrible. It’s still been hard to do much, what with the horrible crippling anxiety I’m sorting out, and my flesh prison being a shit about existing. It’s been a month of ups and downs. Probably more downs than ups in numbers, but the ups matter more in staying power–so I’ve got that going for me which is nice.

Soon, I’ll have a new cleaning tutorial up; a variant of the vinegar method that employs glycerine so as to lubricate the stain, and I have good video of it being used this time. I’m also working on a tutorial for repairing fading with commercially avaible silk dyes for black silks. That’s a bit more complicated of a process, so it’s going to be a bit yet. And after that, very soon, I’ll be finished with my Great Big White Birds.

I haven’t been as present on my blog as I have been in communities lately because of flesh prison problems, but I do want everyone reading this to know that I do still read all of my messages daily, and I’m still happy to answer questions and help whenever I can. Thank you all for sticking with me for this. Thank you everyone for the pouring of messages I got from the last entry when I said what was happening–I cried like a biiiitch. But a bitch filled with love.

Join me next time where I’ll either have another showcase because they’re a little easier, or a fresh hot tutorial on how to fix your shit.

BYE.