Saturday, July 07, 2012

Tanabata - Japanese Star Festival!

It's July 7th, which means it's Tanabata!  That's the Japanese Star Festival, which is pretty neat.  Tanabata means "evening of the 7th" and it's when the two stars representing the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (the stars Vega and Altair) were allowed to meet after their separation in the sky.
To celebrate Tanabata, people write wishes on paper strips and hang them up on bamboo.  Then you burn them or float them on water the next evening.  There's lots of information on Wikipedia about Tanabata, and a Google image search will show you some really pretty pictures
One of the traditional decorations is a paper kimono to wish for better sewing skills, and I thought I would participate in Tanabata by making the fabric kimono above to hang for the day.  I found an easy tutorial online here, and made it in about 25 minutes.  What would you wish for?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Your Kimono is perfect, and I love the sentiment! I don't know what I would wish for, more patience maybe?