Festival of Quilts 2 - My New Kimono

This is the kimono I bought from Susan Briscoe at the Festival of Quilts.  You can see why I was tempted, it is so "my colours".  In fact Susan's entire stand seemed to be draped in the tones of autumn, wonderful golds, oranges and rusts, all shimmery and silky and gorgeous and complemented by Japanese traditional indigo blues.  I'm not sure how I escaped with buying so little actually.

The kimono Susan labelled as,
"1930s meisen silk kimono - may be blended with other fibre"
and I'm more than happy to take her word on that!  I've found two definitions for the fabric/style:

meisen : The "meisen" style silk kimono was the most popular garment at the beginning of the Showa era. It is very different from fancy Furisode or other formal kimono, but this is one of the kimono which people wore everyday at home. The people over 60 years old feel so nostalgic seeing this kimono. The principal characteristic of meisen is its interesting surface decoration made by pre-dyed threads. As the fabric is woven the surface decoration appears as a shimmering, soft-edged pattern. The technique is related to earlier methods kasuri (ikat), in which threads are resisted before dyeing and weaving, and e-gasuri ("picture-ikat"), a Japanese innovation in which threads are resisted, rather than direct-dyed, with the use of a stencil.
Because of the events such as World War I and the Kanto earthquake( 1923 ) there was an intensified demand for silk garments, and as the result, by the beginning of the Showa period, the production and popularity of meisen kimono was at its height. Meisen kimono were affordable, durable, smart attire for everyday wear loved by everyone.  

Meisen fabrics are strong, amazing silks made from the cocoon of the silkworm. Meisen pieces are highly collectible as they were only made from the 1920s -1950s.

This is a length of silk that I could not leave behind.  I am thinking of using it as an obi with this kimono, or with the gold one I bought in Tokyo in May.  I shall have to have a trying on session and get your opinions, but for the moment I am just stroking it and admiring it.  As well as the wonderful colours it has such a great texture, beautiful.

Festival of Quilts 2010 - Quilts to Inspire and Delight

These are some of the quilts I admired at Festival of Quilts last week.  I have taken the notes from the Twisted Thread Catalogue of Competition Entries.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did and I congratulate all the entrants for their wonderful and inspiring work.

This is "A Moment In Time" by Sue Rhodes of Heathfield, The fabric was hand dyed and screen printed cotton sateen, pieced bargello-style, with machine trapunto and free machine quilting.  A sea-lily falls onto an ancient sea bed, breaks, and becomes enclosed forever, trapped within fossilised bands of rock strata.

Below is "The Snow"  by Sue Hunt of Solihull, and a detail of the quilt,  Hand printed, pieced, hand and machine quilted.  I took photographs of my garden in the snow, also Edward Elgar's piece "The Snow" words by Alice Cooper.

Next I admired the Winner of the Quilters' Guild Challenge the theme of which was "Summer In The City".  This is by Cherry Vernon-Harcourt of Saffron Walden, A whole cloth quilt, Procion dyed fabric.  Screen printed and scraped with discharge paste and procion dye.  City coastal lands are the inspiration for this quilt.

Birgitta Debenham of Dorchester appealed to my love of Japanese textile style with this wonderful piece, "Seven Stars", Whole cloth shibori: stitched resist, pole warpped and painted with metallic fabric paint, machine quilted.  Applied beads and pailettes.  Cotton/polyester batting.

Detail of "Seven Stars":

Coats Crafts sponsored a showcase of quilt "Diversity in Europe" and I liked this piece by Svava K Egilsson of Iceland called "Magic-Bridge".

 

My next quilt to share is rather an unusual choice for me but I thought it was wonderful in detail, softness and concept.  It is Jennifer Hollingdale's "Button Up", linens and cotton shirting, recycled pieces of clothing, vintage button cards, buttons and tape - scree printed images of buttons, cut-up, reassembled, machine pieced, hand quilted and applied, buttoned together using rouleaux loops, 118 x 118 cm.

Here is a little closer look:

Finally, a quilt that was of special interest and a particular source of inspiration for me as I will be visiting Marrakech later this year. If only I am able to create something as wonderful as Pauline Barnes of Sutton Coldfield's "Marrakech", Hand dyed fabric, Thermolam, various fabric incl. sheers, matallics, silk etc.  Print, apint; applique, quilting, and stitching all by machine.  The buildings are covered - inside and out - with tiles, plaster work, filigree, mosaics.  An abstract look at this 'busy' architecture.

Festival of Quilts 2010

I've posted about my visit to the Festival of Quilts at Online Quilting, both about the wonderful quilts I saw exhibited there and about the various purchases I made (well, it's rude not to isn't it?) and here I want to share the Japanese goodies I brought home from Birmingham.
My first stop was at Susan Briscoe's stand where I bought some lovely vintage kimono fabric pieces which I am going to use for some fabric postcards, all gorgeous autumnal leaves on a sashiko background (hopefully).

I've never made a doll but I couldn't resist this kimono-clad doll kit from Step By Step Patchwork Centre.

And I negotiated for two free FQs with the purchase, I feel a bag coming on!

There were other trade stalls selling Japanese fabrics but I have to say I was surprised at how much variation there was in both price and quality.  It was worth having a good look (and feel) around before settling on what to buy and I'm very happy with what I brought home.

I enjoyed seeing this Japanese-inspired jacket in the exhibition, I hope you can see the detail in the photograph.  The garments, "Gifts 'Round the World'" by Elizabeth Shapland  included curved piecing, applique, beading, hand-quilting with speciality threads and Japanese-style knotted insert strips.

A great find came at the very end of the day, just as I was heading towards the exit.  A stand filled with Japanese fabrics, all half metres, all £3 each.  On the stand were a young couple from California who come over to Festival of Quilts each year.  A shop in Chichester also stocks some of their gorgeous Japanese fabrics.  It's The Eternal Maker and is, of course, on my must visit list now.

It was difficult to select just a few fabrics (and they could only take cash so I was limited) but I was inspired by the indigo and terracotta quilt on display on the stand and so I went for these:

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. 

Festival of Quilts 2010 - Part 1

Here's my first photo report from the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England.  The next one will show you where my credit card got battered.
I travelled to NEC with quilting/textiles friend, Trish, who did a brilliant job with the driving (especially in the torrential rain all the way home after an exhausting day) and Pam and June, excited to be attending FoQ for the first time.  We had a great day but today I am shattered and ache in places I didn't know I had (not just my purse).

There are some whinges about the show - particularly why was the trading area so cramped and also confusingly arranged in blocks rather than rows?  Overall though it was a good show with a rich variety of quilts and textile creations on display (fewer than usual I thought, maybe somebody will correct me on that one).  Here are my photos of the day:

Susan Denton's atmospheric landscape quilts attracted my attention.  Here are "Field Walk" and "Winter Allotments"

It was a delight to meet up with fellow blogger, Suzan, at lunch time (and very welcome to sit down and chat for a while).  I have to say I was impressed with the way the catering was organised, no table-bagging but rather a table made available as we got to the till with our lunches and drink.

The next piece to thrill me was this gorgeous piece by Lia Flemings, delicious.

Time for another sit-down and Trish and I went off to stand E42 to make a Morsbag.  How brilliant this project is, take a look at the website for all the information, patterns and ethos.

"Mission:  Impossible 2" (below), exhibit 764, was the amazing work of Kumiko Frydl of Texas, USA, the winner of the Miniature Quilts class.
The judges' comments read:  "Stunning!  Precision personified.  Wonderful detail" and many people spent a long time peering at this exquisite work nearly unable to believe the 128 point Mariner's Compass was really pieced (paper foundation), reverse appliqued and then freemotion quilted.

Added 23 August from "comments":
Dottymo said... Thought you would like to know. The miniture quilt 'Mission Impossible 2' won BEST IN SHOW. 

Exhibit 822 caught my eye, probably because of the Japanese influences initially.  The garments, "Gifts 'Round the World'" by Elizabeth Shapland of London included curved piecing, applique, beading, hand-quilting with speciality threads and Japanese-style knotted insert strips.

One of the quilts I would have loved to take away with me, one I could both admire and live with, was "Moonstruck", below, by Jean Chesnek.  I found the colours, curves and quilting to be very pleasing and was interested by the idea of rust-dyeing.

Finally today then, Christina Henri's "Roses from the Heart" project.  Since 2003, Christina, a conceptual artist from Tasmania, has focussed on the lives of convict women transported to Australia.  Her mission is to gather and exhibit 25,566 bonnets, one for each woman and including those women and babies who died on the way.  I'm sure you will have read about this project but to see all those bonnets spread out on the floor initiated an emotional reponse and I was moved to contribute.

 

If you're off to the Festival of Quilts this weekend I hope you have a great time and I look forward to reading all your thoughts and responses - it's a very personal thing isn't it?!