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?

Post-Operative Stitches

I have a couple of finishes to share today.  My toe operation was put back by a day and so I had a free day to sew on Tuesday.  I finished my Malta cloth and a little bracelet bag (a kit from EuroJapan Links).

The Malta cloth, "Going Up, Coming Down",  has been a long project.  It started with cloth weaving when I did an online workshop with Jude Hill.  Over two trips to Malta I have added the embellishments, using up cycled fabrics, buttons and embroidery and lace, ribbon and thread bought on the island.  It is finally finished and I am finally happy with it.  I find it difficult to know when a piece like this is finished.  Posts about the project is progress can be found here, here, and here.  I used the piece of eco-dyeing that I did in Malta as the backing and bordered it with a batik to represent the island being in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.  I couched a bright cord within the border to represent the many festas and the big carnival that takes place on Malta.

This little bag was quick and straightforward to make.  I bought it as a kit but I think I will be using the pattern again and again.  It's a good size for a little portable project carrier and could easily be made larger to use as a toiletries bag for example.  I didn't quilt the bag but with a plain fabric I think quilting or sashiko would be very effective.

The bracelet bag is photographed against the piece I have been working on this morning.  As well as preparing the boro cloth to stitch during my convalescence I have this lovely piece of dyed cloth to stitch into.  It is a piece of kimono silk that I eco-dyed with Nat in Fujino, using moss, leaves and bark that I collected when we visited a shrine in the foothills of Mount Fuji.

So far I have simply back stitched the outline of the mountain in various places on the cloth using silk threads.  The bottom collection of peaks are stitched in a lovely thread that Carin sent me, it is a very fine perle thread and the green is perfect with the dyed fabric.  The paler threads at the top are YLI and Daruma silks.  I shall also be using some heavier threads that Blandina gave me when we were in Fujino so this is going to be another piece that is full of memories.  I think about those people and places as I stitch.

Not that stitching is that easy.  I thought I would have lovely long days of sitting with my foot up and sewing away to my heart's content.  At the moment I am finding it very hard to concentrate for very long and need to have frequent rests.  I'm sure this will improve, especially when I can manage with fewer painkillers, they make me even more ga-ga than usual!!  Wishing you a wonderful weekend, especially if you're in UK and have three days :-)

Displaying Silk

I purchased some vintage silk while I was in Japan and have now found a way to frame, protect and enjoy it.  I bought an acrylic frame from muji which allows a view of both sides of the fabric, the decorative rightside and the interesting wrongside, with the stitches and pieces of lining.  My photographs are not very good but I'm sure you get the idea.  Now I must go back to watching London 2012, Murray v Federer...

Added 6 August 2012:

1.  Many thanks to sensei Bryan who emailed details of my little piece of silk:

It is a piece of Tegakiyuzen on chirimen.(silk crepe) (Hand drawn yuzen dying.) Probably from Kyoto. I think it from after WWII. Maybe in the 50's as the woven quality of the crepe is very high. It is the shoulder piece from a kimono it seems by the cut marks. It looks like the motif is the seven grasses of autumn.  Very nice piece.

 

and 

 

2.  Congratulations to Andy Murray http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/18907001
 

Shifuku Finished

Last night I finally finished the little bag I started while I was in Japan.  It is a Shifuku (仕覆), a drawstring pouch

and something like this would be used for holding the utensils used for the Japanese tea ceremony.  I have ordered a Chasen (茶筅), a whisk, from the Japan Centre which I will keep in my shifuku, the dimensions of the bag suit it although strictly speaking the chasen is not Dōgu (道具, literally tools).  I shall have to make more bags!  This one is very special.  The fabric is katazome, dyed at Noguchi san's, the indigo master and the drawstring is my first kumihimo.

The shifuku is lined with vintage silk

that sensei Bryan gave us (and the offcuts of which I included in my bojagi).  It is a wonderful momento of my time in Japan earlier this year.  I know it is not perfect (not good enough for something Japanese for sure) but it is made to the very best of my ability, maybe I could dare to say it is Wabi sabi :-)

Edit:  my Indigo Sister, Nat, has written a great post on bojagi, full of inspiration, it's here .

Bojagi Beginnings

It seems a long time since I wrote a post.  Things have been a bit on the down side here recently for various reasons that I won't go into at the moment but if you could send a hug I would appreciate it.
Anyway, on the plus side, I have finally got my head around some of the amazing things I did in Japan and have started stitching again.  I haven't started where I thought I would i.e. with something indigo, but have a lovely portable project which will use all my little pieces of Japanese silk.  Some I bought in Japan, some have been gifts and some I bought here, but all are vintage/pre-loved Japanese silks.
I am making a bojagi, inspired by those made by Jean and Nat.  Jean brought one she had made to Japan with her for show and tell after featuring it on her blog.  It was even more gorgeous in real life and Janine modelled it for us.

I love the prairie points that Jean included in her bojagi and so I am using them in mine.  I started by thinking I would mix my colours quite randomly, but have since decided to piece them in areas of one colour.  I started with the pinks.  I am using YLI Silk thread which is a dream to use and my very expensive Clover Black Gold needles (I'm using #10 applique/sharps) which are lovely although I have already broken one when going through a prairie point in a seam :-(  Nothing is pressed yet, it is very much an organic work in progress.  I am going to start on the greens this afternoon.

For more bojagi yumminess, hop over to Won Ju Seo's collection.

Fabric from Japan

As promised this post is full of all the yumminess I bought when I was in Japan in April.  I shopped in a variety of places, department store, antique market, vintage fabric store... and am pleased with my haul (although I don't have plans for much of it as yet).

I went to Yuzawaya fabric shop with Carin and bought several lengths of fabric 

plus some ready-quilted AnPan Man fabric to make something for Sam 

I just had to have something with dragons as it is the Year of the Dragon and this piece caught my eye

Considering the temptation presented by this wonderful craft shop - they really do have everything - I think I was remarkably controlled!
Near the Asakusa temple Carin and I visited a small kimono shop (new and used) and I bought this small piece of sakura decorated fabric:

I visited an antique market with Carin and bought this length of shibori fabric

I also went shopping with Julie.  We visited Chicago, an exciting treasure trove of secondhand clothing in one of the poshest streets in Tokyo, Omote-Sandō, with stock ranging from the standard battered jeans and T-shirts to the most exquisite obi.  Julie was looking for used obi for a workshop - hoping to see it soon Julie ;-) while I was looking for fabric and yukata.  Neither of us went away emptyhanded.

 

I bought this lovely, lightweight yukata to wear as a summer dressing gown, I also bought one for DH.

A couple of small textiles, cheap and cheerful tenugui

 and a blossom design Japanese handkerchief, a smart Japanese girl is never with one. 

While we were on the Japanese Textile Study Tour Bryan took us to Rogei
He said he'd allow us ten minutes in the shop full of vintage textiles and with a workshop running making gorgeous dolls.  Had he no idea how we women shop?  Needless to say the ten minutes was extended!!  This is the shop where we were described as the Western Ladies Bomb!  The trip also resulted in an example of a great service in Japan the takkyubin.  Our shopping was boxed up and sent to the Indigo Hotel by courier - no lugging big carrier bags around the city.

A delightful shibori koshi-himo which would have been worn beneath the obi but which I enjoy wearing as a scarf.

A selection of silk pieces that were not expensive because they were everyday.  They are going to become a boro cloth or bojagi, something like this maybe -

I couldn't resist these two pieces of vintage silk.  Just look at the exquisite designs and the stitches and patches that still remain in them, so gorgeous

I was very, very tempted by a boro furoshiki.  It was sashiko stitched, patched and had had a life and some I'd say.  It was so full of stories and character but it was expensive.  I hesitated.  I do regret not buying it.
But then I had sufficient yen remaining for the final shopping spree of the trip, Nat and I shared a kimono length of double-sided stencil printed fabric from the indigo master

Which is a good place to leave this post, with the promise that the next one will be about my visit to Noguchi san's katazome studio.

Scrumptious Silk

Here is Bryan not keeping still for a photo again and about to show us how to reel silk.  It was quite late one evening when we had this demonstration and I was spellbound, two excuses for a lack of good pictures.  Fortunately there is a photo-journal of the process here
Bryan raises his own silkworms, one of my Indigo Sisters tried to persuade us that they are good pets!

Myra was the first to get her hands on some silk - that's a lovely shibori scarf around your neck Myra :-)

We had a wonderful time looking at and handling silk that Bryan had reeled and dyed with a variety of natural dyes.  At this point we all realised how rough our hands had got with washing out our indigo dyed cloth and not having time for our usual regular manicures!

We used the dyed silk thread for kumihimo, making braids on the marudai.  Here's Judi working on her braid which used eight fine threads on bobbins and took a lot longer to make than for those of us using just four threads.  NB Nat is not bored, just tired!

This is my first braid.  I enjoyed doing it, finding the moving of the bobbins very rhythmic and almost mesmerising with their little click-clack as they settled.  I also liked the result.  DH is going to make me a marudai so watch this space for more kumihimo in the future.

Bryan showed us the stitch that is used to attach the braids to our little stencilled bags, he did one side....I just had to do the other!  Er sensei, could you just show me that one more time please?

In a wonderful book of Bryan's containing sketches of Fujino in the 1930s there are some illustrating the raising of silkworms:

16th May
Nat sent me these photos of the silk cocoons bubbling gently to start the reeling process and of Bryan working with one of his wonderous pieces of textiling equipment, some original, some homemade and all rather "Heath Robinson"!