Needle-turn applique

Among other things, I have been doing hand applique.  Needle-turn.  And I'm not very good at it.  But I have a few tools that have helped things along quite a bit.  This may be old stuff to most of you, but I thought I'd post about applique.

Applique is not one of my great loves but I've done quite a bit over the years....  I haven't been too satisfied with the results but I have the experience.

In recent years I've put aside needle-turn applique for freezer paper applique, but that takes so much preparation.  On my latest quilt, the Pine Burr, I've decided to go back to needle-turn, the main reason being that Lorraine (my comrade from the quarry... we experienced the earthquake together from inside a stone quarry) sent me a Quilt Party board.

For any who don't know what this is, it is a combination ironing board and sandpaper board about lap size.

Here is the ironing board side.

And here is the sandpaper side (I know, you can hardly see the sandpaper) for grabbing the fabric when tracing templates.

And covering the sandpaper is a moleskin sheet.  I guess that is what it is called...  It comes in handy for transporting small pieces between the moleskin and the sandpaper but actually the moleskin's purpose is for marking applique pieces.

No.  That is not a roller cutter there.  That is a hera... I have a feeling that is a Japanese word.  It is a Clover brand sewing utensil and this one happens to be a roller hera.  (There are some that don't roll).  It is a tool that just "embosses" onto the fabric and because the moleskin gives when a sharp implement is applied, the fabric gets marked but the moleskin sheet is left unmarred.

Here is the same piece of fabric on the moleskin (I know... the color changed but it is the same piece on the same board) with the crease showing.  That crease gives the appliquer a head start on the needle-turn.

 The fabric goes under almost on its own.

Okay.  Applique piece sewn down.  I'm not real proud of my handwork but that's as good as it is going to get.

I'm working on my second border strip for the Pine Burr quilt.  A LOT OF LEAVES!!!  I wonder why I do this to myself.  Remember applique is not my forte!  Basically the leaves are being randomly appliqued.  Where I've used batiks I add a notch or two to make the piece more "leaf-like" (the batiks don't fray as much).  I've got a L~O~N~G~ way to go on this...

I am grateful for my Quilt Party board and the roller hera.

Thank you Lorraine!

Sports Day

This weekend I had a busy Saturday because the elementary school had their Sports Day event.  Sports Day is probably the biggest family event of the year in Japan... though it can actually turn into a number of days depending on how many Sports Day event one needs to attend.  There were some years when I went to four different Sports Day events in one season; one for the kindergarten where I teach, one for Leiya's elementary school, one for Takumi's jr. high school and one for the district residents!  It got to be a bit much.  Now I have this elementary school Sports event (I'm invited because I'm the crosswalk guard... I go in full uniform)  and the kindergarten event in a couple of weeks.  And I don't do much these days except just watch and cheer and enjoy!

On Saturday there was much fun with families pitching camping tents and parasols around the perimeters of the playground.  Flags were flying, booths selling snow cones and fried chicken were set up.  I was settled under a canopy with other "honored guests", politicians, policemen, PTA leaders and numerous neighborhood chairmen. The actual Sports Day lasted for most of the Saturday but I came home a bit before noon carrying a boxed lunch that the school had provided for the guests. 

And events were things such as class dances, races, tug-a-wars, bean bag toss, etc.  The school tried very hard this year to add a bit of chance into the events so that the "athletic" students didn't always come in first. 

There was also a clever play on words about the Bamboo Princess (a favorite Japanese fairy tale) and a tug-a-war using bamboo poles.  The 5th and 6th grade girls all came onto the field wearing summer kimono.  Only in Japan!  Such sedate looking girls but they could really pull those bamboo poles!

This is the season for sports in Japan!

Turning Leaves "ohirome" (unveiling)

Yesterday Mrs. Furui and I took the Turning Leaves autumn quilt over to the hospital and got it up on the wall.  We happily set up our ladder and adjusted and readjusted the quilt height, admiring it all the while.

"Hmmm~mmm~mmm...  Isn't anybody going to flock over to us and rave about our wonderful quilt?"

Nope.  No flockers.  It seems that we are the ones who get the most joy from our own quilts.  Oh well.  I went over the quilt again with a sticky roller to remover any cat fur.

The quilt sure looks pretty up on the wall!  And hey!  That blue bench that we thought would be so out of place with the quilt (notice that we think of the blue bench as being out of place, not the quilt) actually picks up the blues in the quilt perfectly!

The Turning Leaves quilt blocks were made by the volunteers at the Children's Center at the hospital led by Mrs. Furui.  I put together the blocks and did the machine quilting.

And the little left over block quilt went up on another wall and small though it is, it adds a spark of brightness to the hospital corridor.

McKenna Ryan quilt kit

Last week, Mrs. N came alone for a day of patchwork.  The other two ladies have been under the weather but Mrs. N is gung-ho about getting more and more things made. We decided to leave the Works In Progress and do something else that day.  Liz in Canada had sent me so many beautiful McKenna quilt kits and a couple of them had separate bird blocks that seemed just perfect for a small project.

In just a couple of hours, Mrs. N had her pattern traced out on fusible paper, the fabric applied and cut out, the collage made, the border added on and she even finished the free-hand quilting.  I think that is pretty great for not doing a fabric collage before!

A Japanese history lesson

This weekend Tetsu and I took a spur of the moment day trip to the town of Ashio, on the other side of the mountain from us. Probably every grade school child in Tochigi has taken a field trip to Ashio to learn about the side affects of environmental pollution but I'm afraid my Japanese history/social studies knowledge is not very good.  I only knew vaguely about Ashio town.

The town itself is located in a deep valley that from the mountain pass leads into another prefecture.  Though I have passed through the valley often over the past years, each time we drive through, the atmosphere seems dark and lonely, with a pressing in of solemness and grayness.  I don't know how to explain it.  The countryside is lovely.  The mountains are green, a river runs through the base of the valley...  However, even not knowing the history of Ashio I think visitors still feel the invisible darkness in the atmosphere...

Ashio was once a technologically advanced, bustling town.  Almost a city!  It boasted a copper mine that had been active since the early 1800's when the miners tunneled away with hand held tools.  In the late 1800's the mine started using a modern methods or mining and refining... an electrical trolly system and a ventilation system.  Compressed air drills and electric lighting raised the copper mine's output making the mine Japan's pride in the modern technological world.

However not long after the modern mining and refinery methods were begun, the fish in the river began dying, the fields which used the river water wouldn't produce crops, the peasants suffered from life-threatening ailments.  The trees along the mountains sides began dying, the mountain topsoil slid into the valley, the river flooded... wiping out villages.

The town leaders formed an envoy to speak with the Japanese government, but they were assured that there was no poison in the air nor in the water nor in the village.  What small amounts of chemicals were discovered were within permissible levels.  Due to one far thinking town leader, Tanaka Shozo, who made it his life work to enlighten Japan on the aftereffects of pollution, a dam and water resevoir were constructed, filtering of the air was begun, reforestation was started in earnest... and laws were changed.

The copper mine continued to be mined until the 1970's when it was finally closed down...  All 1250 kilometers (over 400 miles) of tunnels!  That's a big mine!

I went to the touristy copper mine location without knowing much of the above information, though I could see for myself the grey, nearly deserted town of Ashio.

The few tourists visiting this day boarded a small trolly that took us a very short distance into the copper mine.

From there we disembarked and followed arrows and signs that provided a brief history of the mine with realistic mannequins posed eerily here and there showing how the mine was worked in different eras of history.

(The mannequins are a bit scary looking... I remember Leiya coming home from an Ashio field trip saying she didn't like the mannequins.)

The small length of mine that Tetsu and I walked was sparsely lit and dripping with water seeping from the rough tunnel walls.  Hmmm.  I have found another place I would NOT like to be in during an earthquake!  Even the tourist part of the mine didn't look very safe.  But it was interesting to walk through...

Afterwards Tetsu and I went up to the abandoned refinery and checked out a small museum.

The mountains surrounding the area actually look green and forested but that is because of regular volunteer reforestation and environmental activist programs.  Although nature may return to what it once was in another hundred years or so, I doubt that the town of Ashio will ever be a bustling one again...

I put my camera on sepia mode to photograph the crumbling refinery chimney that spewed out poisonous fumes over the mountains... thus causing the forests to be wiped out and the eroding.

And the abandoned refinery...

Actually Tanaka Shozo's battle against environmental pollution has come into focus recently with the radiation pollution caused by the Fukushima nuclear plant which was destroyed in the 2011 earthquake.  Much of what we have recently experienced, much of what the government is saying today, is not so far off from the concerns that multiplied in the town of Ashio.

Update on Bianca's quilt

I have been getting up to the sewing room maybe twice a week and I did get all my blocks made for Bianca's quilt and I did put them all together.

I hope Bianca will be pleased with the colors and fabrics.  She had pointed me to a lot of blue-greens but I used some purple pre-cut strips that I had and it really made the quilt purple!!  Well, actually I know that Bianca likes purple so I think this will be alright.  I will be adding a blue-green border to this and maybe that will bring the color back around to what Bianca was expecting.

I'm hoping to get the borders on tomorrow.

Choco in the autumn

The higannbana are in full bloom, one of the heralds of autumn.  Time to get out sweaters and feather comforters.

Choco enjoys the autumn season because she gets a bit more freedom than other times of the year.  The water is basically gone from the rice fields, the edges of the fields are trimmed back for easy access, some of the fields have already been harvested and they make for good running spaces.  (The farmers don't get nearly as upset if a dog runs through their already harvested field as they might if the dog starts dashing through the rice crop.)

There are small man-made streams between the rice fields to provide flooding when needed and Choco will daily take a dip in the stream either to cool off or to get a cold drink.

 In the early morning, the shadows are long~~!

 Tetsu caught a good picture of both Choco and me smiling!

Scrunchies

Leiya was asking me when I talked with her on Skype, how to make a Chou-chou....  I think we call them scrunchies in English...  Leiya has had access to my sewing machine for the month (she is returning to Ohio today or tomorrow) and she was trying to make scrunchies and remembered that I'd put up instructions on my blog years ago.  As I racked my brains trying to remember the sewing process, Leiya pipes up,

"Mom, are you in robotic mode or is the Skype connection bad today?" 

It seems that as my brain whirled I kept stopping in mid-sentence and freezing up...

It would have been nice to just point Leiya to the old blog post, but unfortunately when my blog was hacked, although I was able to retrieve all the posts and pictures, the Search function was disabled so it is no longer possible to look things up on the old blog.  Which is sort of a shame as I'd often type in a word when looking for something and come up with the right past post... in this case, "Scrunchies".  Search function is a convenience of the digital world that I've come to depend upon, but since it is no longer there on the old blog...  I cannot find my scrunchies' post.

Might as well do it again.

Start with a strip of fabric at any desired length and width.  This was probably three and a half inches wide.  The elastic was about 12 inches long that I doubled (as it was pretty old, flimsy elastic).

 Sew the ends of the strip together.

Take the top part of the ring and fold it over a bit in the middle so that it won't get caught in the seams when being sewing.  Think of making a hot-dog.
 

Bring the bottom "bun" fabric on the ring over the "dog" and start sewing along the edge.  Don't catch the inside fabric!  As you sew a bit, you pull the inside folded "dog" along with you until you get to the beginning of the loop again.

Leave a couple of inches for turning...  Oh, I forgot, when you sew the bun edges together in that last step, you can add some lace (lace side facing in towards the "dog").

From the opening, pull the whole tube out which means that everything will be be right side out at that point.

 Feed elastic through the opening... tie the ends together.

You could sew the opening closed by hand or you can just sew an edging stitch... around the whole scrunchie or just that opening...  It is so scrunched it doesn't seem to matter.  Of course if you've put lace in it, the edge stitch makes a nice crisp grip to the lace.

Now... Hopefully these instructions will be searchable in years hence when I need them.
 

2013 Raffle Quilt

I finally have pictures of this year's kindergarten bazaar quilt.  I think the bazaar is sometime in November.

For nearly 20 years our patchwork group has been making a quilt to raffle off for the kindergarten bazaar.  Some of the quilts were beautiful, some didn't turn out so well.  Interestingly, the kindergarten principal won two of the quilts and a couple of the teachers and staff have won quilts too!  The raffle is a very small, three hour event and limited to just the people who get to the bazaar that day...  We like knowing who won the raffle quilt each year.  Maybe the fun of making the quilt and knowing who will enjoy it, weighs out over how much money the raffle makes.

For many years Mrs. Furui and I manned the raffle booth and actively sold tickets on the bazaar day.  But somewhere along the line we got to feeling that just making an annual quilt was enough work for our group and we should leave the raffle booth to the current kindergarten mothers.  That has turned out to be a wonderful change because the mothers themselves formed a patchwork group completely separate from us and they have made their own quilts and other small handmade raffle prizes.  The raffle has grown in leaps and bounds since our patchwork group gave up the responsibility.

There was one time when Mrs. Okutomi was featured in a well known Japanese patchwork magazine and when she mentioned her start was with our group and that we were making quilts for a raffle, the magazine asked if our tiny group would like to be featured in one of their upcoming issues.  Mrs. Furui and I declined as at the time we felt that publicity would make it impossible to curtail our activities and we were already thinking that we needed to break away from the kindergarten as all our children were in high school or college. I don't think we've ever regretted not having our pictures in a magazine but we never did break away from the kindergarten raffle...

However, this may be the year for major change.  I don't think we've come to any hard-set decision to stop making a raffle quilt but other priorities are stepping in.  This year's quilt is a beauty and it might be nice to go out with a bang!  On the other hand all of us love patchwork and have so much available fabric that it seems a shame to go into "early" retirement.  Maybe our group will continue from afar... Maybe we'll get talked into another year of commitment... It is nice to look back and know that when change occurs it often turns into something better than ever before.  Maybe the annual raffle will grow in leaps and bounds again!

This year's raffle quilt was made by 4 or 5 regular members and a few helpers that took home homework.  The nine-patches were all made from my stash (I was so happy about that, yet it didn't make a dent in my stash cupboard) and then the blocks were doled out to members and buttonhole applique was applied in scrappy colors.  The original pattern was called Cake Walk... and the blocks were on dark fabric.  I'm sorry I don't remember which magazine I got this out of.

Mrs. Okutomi did all the quilting on her domestic sewing machine.  As she lives quite a ways away from us she only gets to our town maybe once or twice a year, so for the last couple of years she has offered to do the yearly quilting as she can't be around to help with planning and piecing.  That change alone has made an enormous difference in relieving the pressure of getting a yearly quilt made.

Actually, when Mrs. Furui and I photographed the quilt we commented that in the pictures it looks so muted... almost like a soft mosaic whereas in reality the quilt has a fantasy quality and is just plain FUN!  I took the same picture in vivid mode on my camera and it captures the flavor of the quilt much better.

I'm going to buy extra raffle tickets this year.  In 20 years of making the raffle quilt I haven't won one yet and I'd love to have this riot of color on my futon!

Full Moon Viewing

Yesterday was "Full Moon Viewing" night... although the first picture was taken a couple of days ago before the full moon... It is so much easier to take a picture of the moon during the day.  (Isn't that a funny thing to say?)

In preparation Choco and I had gone out earlier on our afternoon walk and had brought home some pampas grass.  For some reason, pampas grass is a necessity for Moon Viewing decorating. 

By 7:00 the moon was shining clear in the sky and Y-kun and I went out to take pictures.  (Not very successful so I've blurred one of my pictures with a posterize feature on Picasa.)

After English class, Tetsu and I enjoyed hot tea and sweet bean cakes (not ALL of them.  I'm serving some of these to the ladies who will come today.)

I often buy sweet bean cakes for dessert because Tetsu loves sweet things and at least they don't have lots of butter and cream in them.  But SWEET!  We probably should be watching our sugar intake a bit more but last night we had Moon Viewing as an excuse.  We didn't get out on the porch but both of us saw the moon (on Tetsu's way home from work) and that was a good enough reason to enjoy our bean cakes.