let's get the hubris out of the way: i am so incredibly proud of this. i have never been very interested in sewing and NEVER have trusted myself to sew anything by HAND (i'm not even very good with a machine). every stitch of this little curtain was made by hand -- my hand! and i'm super, super SUPER proud!
this is my first completed fabric pojagi project. pojagi are divided into many categories, so there is more than one way to describe this one -- it is min po, made by and for common people (as opposed to kung po, pojagi for the palace.) it's also an example (sort of) of chogak po -- cloth made from left-over scraps of material. as in most piecework situations, that's only half-true here -- i bought a lot of this fabric specifically for this purpose. and, again, it's the cintamani or wishing stone motif -- considered one of the most complicated designs in pojagi. yeah, mine are kinda imperfect, but come on -- for a first timer they are pretty darned good-looking!
many pojagi are comprised of or at least contain the five "basic" colors -- blue, red, yellow, black and white -- which correspond to various grounding things such as the four points of the compass plus it's center, the five elements of the universe (wood, fire, metal, water, earth) and the five (yes five) seasonal changes of the year (i particularly like this way of thinking): spring, summer, autumn, winter, and then the koreans acknowledge a fifth period called toyong -- toyong is the eighteen days that preceed the onset of any new season. isn't that just the way it works, too?
this curtain lacks the yellow element but it does go well with the room for reasons stated in a previous post and, as previously stated, because it goes so well with the picture of truman capote that hangs in the powder room. very, very hard to take a flash photo of a thing behind glass in a room that isn't three feet wide. so, an odd angle, but it should show the color inspiration pretty well.