We had a wonderful holiday in Mexico to celebrate 25 years of unwedded bliss, Al and I would both go as far as to say it was a perfect holiday.  We completely relaxed, enjoyed good food and the glorious setting of our hotel on the Caribbean Sea.  Now we are home and it is definitely Winter and I have been sewing enthusiastically.  

I have finished the koi wall hanging that I've been working on for a while.

My sister came for a visit and she has recently started patchwork.  Her first major project is a wedding sampler quilt for her daughter.  The wedding is in August 2017 so Jane's going to be busy.  While she was here we had a good look at Mummy's quilt.  You might remember this is an English paper-pieced "Grandmother's Flower Garden" quilt.  Mummy was determined that it was to be all recycled fabrics, in the traditional way.  I had thought I might do something dramatic with it but when we laid it out on the guest bed it looked just right so I am simply going to finish it.

My first job is to remove a lot of the papers to reduce the weight and make the quilt easier to work with.  I say "papers" but they are actually more of "cards" being cut from Christmas and birthday cards and art and education supplies catalogues.  The fabrics are a real mixture, a lot of furnishing weight and the plain is all curtain lining.  Fortunately I also inherited a box full of extra hexagons and fabric.  Alan and I have been sitting in companionable silence, with our thoughts, unpicking Mummy's tacking stitches.

Some news resulting from my sister's recent visit is that she has decided to join me when I visit Japan next year.  Golly, it's been a few years since we've shared a bedroom!!  We're both really excited about it, or rather, Jane was excited, until I explained about onsen etiquette!!  Still, she'll rock the karaoke experience while I'm hiding in the corner.  And, speaking of holidays, here's a quick reminder that only a few weeks ago we were enjoying temperatures of 30+° C rather than today's 2°C.

Indigo Heaven

Over the past few days I have had plenty of time to stitch and I have been working on a boro style table runner.

I gathered a selection of indigo and woad dyed pieces of fabric, including new and vintage, dyed by me and by others and the lovely kantha designs on woad dyed fabric from Angela Daymond.

I also bought this lovely book to enjoy when my fingers got sore from stitching.  Some of those fabrics are pretty tough.

The backing of the runner is a lightweight yukata fabric bought in Japan and the "wadding" is simple cotton.

This is half of the runner.  I am stitching as the mood takes me or the fabric directs me, using an Italian 100% cotton perlé thread that I found in a charity shop.  Often I find I have stitched in a similar way to the shibori stitching that would have been used to create the dye resist patterns.

And on the blue and white theme, I found this beautiful feather from a Jay in the garden.

I'm feeling blue, in a good way.

Getting Prepared

Next month we are having an embroidery workshop with Liz Hands at Country Roads Quilters.  We need to prepare the work ready for a day of hand stitching.  

The title of the workshop is "Mini Delft" and the sample piece from Liz is a lovely blue and white mini quilt with four different styles of flower in blue appliquéd and then embroidered on a white background with blue and variegated threads.  Now, I love blue and white but had to make my piece more Japanese-looking!  I pieced three pieces of Japanese fabric and then used almost plain fabrics for the appliqué.  I chose the lotus flower from Liz's pattern, and drew my own maple leaf.  Using Liz's instructions and help from Wendy at Camelot Crafts I faced my fears and used invisible thread!!!

The flowers were attached using Bondaweb and then zigzagged around the edges using the invisible thread.  The embroidery will hide this, and any wobbles!  But what will hide the wobbles in my embroidery?  I can't say I enjoyed machining with the invisible thread but I am happy with the results.

These are the number 12 cotton perle threads I will use for the embroidery in July.  Please come back then and see the results.

I've Got Mail

An exciting package arrived from Ichiroya in Japan. Proper photos of these three haori will follow. 

Keep warm and dry - where did the sunshine go?

Parcel Two - Boro Delight

"This is a vintage noragi vest from Hokuriki district. It is made of beautiful sakiori fabric. Sakiori is a traditional Japanese technique of rag weaving.The rag strips are cut finely and woven into a tweed-like fabric. In olden times people in northern district were poor, and people used their fabrics repaired and repaired, and finally make the fabrics to sakiori fabrics, and made noragi, interior fabrics and obi from sakiori fabrics.
This piece has especially beautiful (well worn) sakiori pattern. Textile is very very thick. And in the back near the neck, sashiko stitches are done. Its white pattern is exceptionally beautiful. Please check the fantastic sakiori and sashiko details with more photos.
It has a tear in the right chest, but as a whole it is in very good condition.
For the connoisseurs."

Above are the details from the Ichiroya - Kimono Flea Market website where I saw this vest and, although I am no "connoisseur", I knew I had to have it.

It arrived in the post yesterday, 

along with an apron I took a liking to and a gift of a lovely piece of kimono silk. Ichiroya are great to deal with and the descriptions and photographs of items on the website mean you know what you are buying.

The vest combines so much of what I love about vintage Japanese textiles.  The woven "sakiori" 

fabric, the sashiko stitching, the indigo dye of course, the concept of "boro" and also wabi sabi.  Here are my thoughts, I would appreciate your views.

The vest is old, and fragile in places.  I want to wear it once in a while and I want it to continue to have a life, not just become a treasure I store away in my sewing room.  It has evolved over time and I think it can continue to do so.
Can I do some work on it without stripping it of its integrity?
There are two areas I would like to pay attention to, the tear in the right side of the front (shown in the first photograph) and the stitching down the sides.

I am thinking of patching the front using some vintage indigo fabric, hopefully patching from inside if it is possible.  I would then use a simple sashiko stitch to hold it all together.
I would like to extend the stitching up each side of the vest, using the same stitch and in a cream cotton sashiko thread.
I feel that doing these things would prevent further damage to the vest.
However, should one repair such a beautiful item?
I really would appreciate your opinions and suggestions.

Japanese-speakers out there.... what exactly is on my apron?  Ichiroya say it advertises fish sausages. Are these anything like fish fingers?  I love the zipped pocket detail on the apron which I didn't notice initially!

Our Man in Japan

http://youtu.be/HzKG0wXvui0

You might enjoy watching this video of our sensei in Japan, Bryan.  He speaks (in Japanese, with subtitles) about all aspects of his work, raising silkworms, growing indigo, spinning, weaving....
Bryan shared the video on his own blog so I trust he won't be too mad with me for sharing it here!

Four Seasons Bojagi

I took advantage of the sunshine to photograph my bojagi today, unfortunately it was rather breezy and the bojagi took on a life of its own!
I'm calling it "Four Japanese Seasons".  I need to square up the cloth and decide how I'm going to edge it, probably a simple rolled seam, and I'll have a deeper hem at the top to allow me to hang it at the window in my sewing room on a pole or wire.
On a technical note:  those expensive Black and Gold needles I used for this project were a nightmare.  I broke three before I gave up and went back to trusty John James' quilting needles.

Susan Briscoe Weekend 2

On Sunday I joined Susan Briscoe's "Japanese Circles and Squares" workshop at Ludford.

Susan has made several variations of this quilt design and is planning a book which will share them and her wonderful cutting, piecing and block arrangement instructions (which saved us a lot of strain on our grey matter on a Sunday morning).

 

We all worked very hard, there was a lot of 2 1/2", 3 1/2", 1 1/2" mutterings as we cut and then a lot of 2,4...3,6... as we arranged our blocks. 

I used Japanese fabrics for my quilt but not everybody did and it was interesting to see how the quilt came together in the differing fabrics.  It seems to be one of those designs that works in almost any fabric.  I feel another version coming on!  Susan has photographs of everyone's versions on her post about the workshop here.

 

 

I made very good progress during the workshop, getting all the blocks made and arranged in order.  I was pleased with how accurate my work was on this project with everything coming together neatly.  Yesterday I sewed them together and then spent a while playing about with adding the circles before deciding I didn't need circles at all on this version.  No, I wasn't swayed in that decision by the thought of needle-turn applique as Susan demonstrated this and I'm sure it's really easy :-)

So now I need to think about borders and then I am going to use sashiko stitching to quilt the piece, using a cream thread.  Here is the quilt so far, "Japanese Squares Without Circles":

Thank you for all the comments you made regarding the handles on my Southern Belle bag.  I agreed with several of you it would be sensible to machine them as that would give them strength.  I did that this morning and am now going to return to hand stitching to quilt the bag flap.  I'll share that when it's finished but if you would like some Japanese eye candy please scroll down to my first post of today and see some of the lovely quilts Susan shared with us on Saturday.

Festival of Quilts 2010 - Part 2

I promised to share my Festival of Quilts loot with you so here goes.  As I am a little partial to textiles Japanese I did veer towards traders that were offering such goodies.  In fact so much so that my friend Trish started to tease me, just a little, "Look, there's some fabric called "Tokyo"...on that stall".  I had a great time at Susan Briscoe's stand (which was high on my list of those to visit) and then, as we were heading for the exit I found a wonderful array of Japanese fabrics that I was totally unable to resist - last minute impulse buys, brilliant.  Please head over to my other blog for Japanese eye candy and links later this week.

Not all my purchases were oriental though.  I "needed" to stock up with wonderful Aurifil thread and as soon as I saw Alex Veronelli across the hall I made a beeline for the gorgeousness of their threads.  I bought the absolutely fabulous Rose of Sharon collection by Sharon Pederson. 

 Isn't that a divine set of colours?  I use Cotton Mako' 40 weight for most things, Aurifil say:

Cotton Mako' 40

Ideal for Machine Quilting , it is a little heavier to show off the quilting stitches. This is the "universal" thread weight in the Mako' range, perfect for quilting, as it is a little finer than the Mako' 28 "Quilting" thread it is great for ditch stitching and fine detail work, while still having sufficient definition to look good when you want the thread and stitching to show. Available on 1000 metre (1094 yd)  green plastic spool holder. 

I also bought a large cone of a basic grey and some delicious variegated threads, mmmmmmmmm.  Love this thread.  It is expensive but it stitches smoothly and finely with little lint and fluff, well worth the extra cash in my opinion. 

My next port of call was at Art Van Go, a wonderful supplier of all things fabric art, dyeing and messy.  This is more Trisha's area, she does exciting, embellished, experimental work, but I want to try my hand at dyeing - I haven't done it since I was a primary school teacher and my whole class made Dylon tie-dyed, underwater-themed cushions.  The choice of powders and potions was a little overwhelming so I made a selection from the "starter" kits and am now waiting for a dry, warmish day to get outside and take steps into this new and interesting area.  Of course, faced with all the goodies available I couldn't stop at one kit so I now have

Procion MX Dye Starter Pack
Contains six mixing colours in red, yellow and blue
as selected by Ruth Issett. 200gms Urea, 6
Pipettes, foam brush and easy instructions.
(Washing soda/soda ash, salt and Calgon also
required.)
11103 £15.95

Indigo Starter Pack
Indigo Vat 60% grains and Hydros, plus gloves, mask
and complete instructions. Will make an Indigo Vat of
15 litres or more.
14103 £9.00

and 

'Peeznkarat' Cyanotype Kit
Create beautiful permanent blueprints on fabrics
and other surfaces. Chemicals to treat approx. 1m
natural fabrics. Instructions included
17101 £7.25

I was delighted to meet Gail Lawther who has recently published a wonderful book about her series of New Zealand quilts called "Glimpses of New Zealand.  We had tried to get a place on her workshop but, unsurprisingly, they were sold out on the day booking opened.  Instead I bought Trish and I the kit 

which we would have used in the workshop and we're going to have fun working together to create our own interpretations of Gail's New Zealand seascape wallhanging (far left on the book cover below).

Of course there was fabric, what were you thinking of me?  Not as much as I expected to buy actually but, apart from the impulse Japanese fabrics I was buying for planned projects - impressed?  I bought this selection from Quilt Essential for an autumn block swap:

and these from Doughty's for a Christmas block swap:

and then I was off my list and seriously into impulse buying!  The first was a doll kit and I don't even make dolls, but she was wearing a kimono, what could I do?  Especially when I cheekily bagged two free FQs with the purchase from Step By Step Patchwork Centre!  

 The second was this:

 Can you tell what it is yet?

It is mulberry bark.  I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with it but I just wanted it.  I love the look of it, the texture and the colours and it wasn't expensive (£2.50 for that piece) so how could I resist?  There's a little more about it here at mijn-eigen.nl 

Here is one of my final purchases, gorgeous eh?  I'll put the rest at Sashiko Started It later on so do pop over there and enjoy. 

Don't Forget A Hanky

There is a very interesting post on Ojisanjake's blog
"More Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan"
a fabric installation made of 53, 000 handkerchiefs.  I love the textures created by the folding and knotting.

Friday Night Sew-In: Saturday Morning Report, July

I had quite a varied Friday Night Sew-In last night, flitting about and doing lots of different stitch-related things. 
Firstly I finished this sashiko project which you can read more about at Sashiko Started It.  It's an online tutorial from Susan Fletcher at Sashiko Stitchers and has been great fun.
I then put my needle down and spent an hour or sew catching up with all your wonderful quilty blogs.  I love reading what you are all doing, both quilt-wise and in other areas of your lives.  I find such inspiration and support from fellow bloggers.
Back to the fabric and I worked on my 'Blush' wavy four-patch for a while and then made three fabric postcards.  There will be photos soon.
I was very good on the nice things to eat front.  As it's so warm and summery here I resisted the chocolately things and snacked on a bowl of gorgeous dark red cherries from Kent, delicious.
This morning I discovered I am a winner in Abbey Lane Quilts' gorgeous giveaway so I'm doing a happy floral dance.
Thanks Heidi and Bobbi for hosting another great FNSI.  Looking forward to seeing what you all got up to.