Kindergarten quilt

I finished the kindergarten quilt.  It is all quilted and has the binding on.  I've even sewn on the pom-poms rabbit tails!

Hmmm.  I want to take this to the kindergarten next week and, as I say, it is done.  But...

Do you think those children are too light?  I do.  I didn't notice until I was sewing them down but the fabric I used for the hands and legs and faces is very close to the background fabric.  Even if it wasn't, I don't think that light pink color shows up well anywhere...

Should I leave as is?  The room or the hallway or wherever the quilt will be hung isn't going to be very large and close up this is a pretty nice quilt.  But from afar, do those children look more like floating ghosts?

I could try to sew around all the children with dark thread... sort of coloring book style...  It is a lot of work and I'm not going to be around for the next few days (so I won't be posting either!).

The other way I could do it is just use a dark fabric pen... one with a very fine tip, and just draw the outlines of the feet and arms.  That might give the figures more definition.

And please don't tell me that the children need faces!  I don't think I'm up for that and the book where I got the pattern didn't have faces....  The rabbits are supposed to but if the children aren't going to have faces then I guess the rabbits don't need them either.

Any suggestions?

Blah... blah... blahhh!

Hmmm.  What is going on around here?  Not much. 

Our TV broke so we're trying to decide how we are going to replace it.    It looks pretty funky right now with psychedelic sparkly green and pink designs all over the screen.  The sound works.

Funky.  That reminds me of a popular Japanese vocal group name, which I know absolutely nothing about except for the strange name.  Come to think of it there are quite a few odd named groups in Japan.  But since I don't listen much to Japanese music I can't tell you anything...

The Funky Monkey Babys  -- 

 Kis-My-Ft2  --

Kinki Kids --

Sexy Zone --
Where do these names come from?

I suppose the older generation (MY older generation) shook their heads when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came on the scene...

Still...  I can't see being known as the Sexy Zone would be anything to brag about...

Parts

I have been contemplating the kindergarten quilt that the kindergarten principal asked me to make.  I gave her homework to applique a few hearts and she handed me 24 a week later!  What was I going to do with 24 hearts?

In patchwork and quilting, my strong points are perseverance and nimble fingers.  My weak points are definitely planning and calculating!  I looked at those hearts and for the life of me couldn't figure out where I wanted to put them nor how I was going to get them sewn together in the quilt size requested.  RATS!  This was MY project.  I had not planned to get anyone else involved in it.  I measured and scribbled figures onto scratch paper. 

To keep from being in a complete standstill I made more parts for the quilt.  Rabbits.  (The kindergarten keeps rabbits.)  But the rabbit blocks were a different size from the heart blocks. 

And I made up a wonky block with the kindergarten name.  Another strange shaped block.  My mind was getting more confused. 

Finally I conceded that my brain wasn't flexible enough to compute correctly and I called Mrs. Furui.

"Do you have an hour to help me?  I want to bring all the parts I've made for the kindergarten quilt over to you and I want you to tell me how I can put them all together!"

And that's what I did yesterday morning.

I just plopped all my quilt parts in Mrs. Furui's lap and handed her some more fabric and watched as SHE measured and computed and came up with a plan for me to follow.

"Add a bit to the sides of the rabbit blocks.  Use the hearts as a border, with the rabbits in the corners.  Put the kindergarten name in the center and cut up your main fabric in these measurements. Afterwards you can iron down your trees and children wherever you like."

The way Mrs. Furui explained it made it seemed like a feasible task and I came home and made up the quilt top last night. 

That was easy!

This morning I was still wanting to add a little whimsy to this quilt and I dug out some fabric that had some children's motifs. 

I used Heat and Bond and cut out the butterflies and tricycles (I decided the cars weren't applicable to the kindergarten and sun was yellow whereas Japanese children think of the sun as being red.)

Those tricycles are small but I guess they will be fun to spy.  Mrs. Furui isn't going to like the butterflies...  She isn't a butterfly fan... but the kindergarten kids are big on catching bugs so I'm going to put the butterflies in...

Nothing has been sewn down yet, but I think this is the way I'm going to go!
 

History

This may be a long and boring post.  Tetsu was asked to write something for our mother church in Morioka as they are celebrating their 100th birthday.  As I seem to be the writer in this family he gave the job to me and hopes to translate whatever I've written.  Tetsu does not read English and if he thinks Google translate is going to be sufficient he has another think coming.  ANYWAY, I did my job and wrote something.  And here it is in complete.

*********

When I arrived in Japan 38 years ago, a senior missionary suggested I join her for Sunday worship at Tatesakabashi Church.  Weekly the two of us would bicycle over to the church that stood overlooking the Kitakami River and outskirts of Morioka.

I happily attended church services, though because of my lack of Japanese language, understood almost nothing.  To me, the removing of shoes at the church door, the wearing of slippers, the taking of roll, was all new and very Japanese.  Instead of pew Bibles, most of the worshipers brought their own Bibles and sometimes even their own hymnals whereas in my American home church all those things were provided.

Instead of stained glass windows and polished pews, the narrow wood and plaster sanctuary had long opaque windows on either side of the room and there no adornment except for a paper poster of Jesus welcoming the children.   The worshipers sat at hard wooden pews softened by handmade cushions, men sitting on one side of the center aisle and women sitting on the other side.  It took me the longest time to figure out which husband belonged to which wife because they never sat together!

(Do you spot me rebelliously standing on the men's side?)

In my own American church I had never seen the narrow shelf on the back of each pew which served as a desk and was barely wide enough to hold a small notebook and a personal Bible.  Each week the Japanese worshipers would arrange their notebooks and Bibles and pens on the narrow desks and take copious notes from Osumi-sensei's sermon. It seemed to me that Japanese believers took the business of their faith with great seriousness and intensity.

During the winter, the small sanctuary grew even smaller with the addition of a large black wood burning stove which sat right in the middle of the center aisle and throughout the service, Osumi-sensei's wife would occasionally throw in a log to keep the fire burning.  A large copper kettle burbled on top of the stove and after the services, we worshipers would gather closer to the stove and enjoy a cup of hot tea.

Tatesakabashi church's Sunday service was long by my American standards and at one time I must have posed the question to the senior missionary about what the point was for me to be going to a long church service that I couldn't even understand.

"Well, when I don't understand the sermon I take the opportunity to pray for each person individually in the sanctuary. With the long service I usually can pray for everybody!  It blesses me and though they don't know it, it blesses my fellow believers too."

(Two of the long time members.  In those days the older women still wore mostly kimono.)

I've always remembered that very short lesson from a senior missionary to me, the fledgling one. The small organ near the altar was a pedal pump organ and it wheezed away accompaniment to the warbly, elderly voices of the congregation.  Osumi-sensei would preach with much waving of arms and a big toothy grin.  You could just see how thrilled he was to be filling his congregation's hearts weekly with the Word of God.

I few months after I started attending Tatesakabashi church, Tetsu and I began dating and Tetsu being non-Christian would meet me on Sundays AFTER church at a nearby coffee shop.  In a few months he was meeting me at the church gate and pretty soon he was waiting for me at the front door.  It didn't take long until he was coming to church with me on Sunday mornings and two years later he was baptized at Christmas.

(The day of Tetsu's baptism ceremony.  The church held a small party in the kindergarten for him.)

Tetsu and I announced our intention to marry early the following year and our engagement ceremony was held in the Tatesakbashi sanctuary with Tetsu's mother and aunt attending (the first time for either of them to be in a church!)

(Can you figure out which is Tetsu's mother?  She was wearing the purple kimono coat.  She and Tetsu have the exact same smile!)

And a few months later the church members planned and arranged our absolutely wonderful wedding and reception!  Watermelon, handmade sandwiches, homemade pickles!

(Our wedding was held at the Christian center where I worked because the church was too small.  After the ceremony everyone cleared out into the parking lot and the church members quickly put up chairs and tables for the reception in the same room.)

Tatesakabashi church has taken care of us in difficult times too.  Tetsu and I had moved to a different prefecture and started our family but when our first daughter died weeks after her birth, Osumi-sensei hurried to our side to participate in the funeral and help us through our grief. Months later Osumi-sensei officiated at the placing of ashes into our new family grave site near other Tatesakabashi church members' graves.

 (We'd actually moved around twice since our marriage when our daughter died and all three pastors of the churches we'd attended came to be with us at the funeral.)

Our last memory of Osumi-sensei was not long before his passing.  Tetsu and I visited him in the hospital but he seemed asleep and unaware of our visit.  As we were leaving, his daughter, shook him gently and asked him to pray for us.  With a voice strong and clear, Osumi-sensei asked God's blessing on us.  We felt we had seen a miracle at the end of a long and faithful life.

Though Tetsu and I haven't lived in Morioka for over 35 years, the church members have kept us in their hearts and yearly send us birthday greetings.  The Watanabe family's faith began in Tatesakabashi church and we rejoice with you all on this 100th anniversary.

 **********

So that's my recount of my first years in Japan belonging to the Tatesakabashi church.  Now... to get this into Japanese!

New best friend

Do you know the mixture of excitement and despair when you start up a new computer?  This week my moods fluctuate back and forth as I try to make sense of the new computer that was handed to me by the delivery person who rang my doorbell a few days ago.  I finally gave up trying to deal with my best computer friend of 7 years who was getting a bit cranky.  I'd spent money trying to fix it, I'd had Takumi replace and organize things that got lost in a system recovery process, but we finally decided that the purchase could wait no longer.  Takumi picked out a computer for me and I pushed the BUY button.

Computers these days come with a lack of explanation and instruction manuals. It seems you can get all the information you need on support websites and through You-tube videos.  That is if one can get so far into the computer as to access networks and in my case, figure out the language.
 

My computer speaks Japanese.  I prefer to talk to it in English.  It needed some intensive language lessons (also to be accessed though the Internet) but of course I had to be able to read the Japanese to get to that point.  And non-computer speaking Tetsu, in ANY language, wasn't much help.  I've waited a few days until Takumi could get back to me and could put things into a computer order that I understood. 

I fear that part of my problem is that my brain isn't processing some basic things anymore.  On the other hand, I dislike the "intuitive" systems that computers use because my argument is that what is intuitive for one person is incomprehensible to another.  I know from experience that my intuition on some things is not at all what is intuitive for a Japanese.  Even in my own home, my intuition and Tetsu's are pretty different!  So computers telling me they have a simple "intuitive" system just makes me disappointed in myself.

But!  Today I am posting from my new computer!  We are speaking the same language.  The keyboard has some minor differences from the QWERTY keyboard (the @ mark and the parentheses  are somewhere else) but I have figured out how to get photos into it (and hopefully out of it onto this blog post...  we'll have to wait and see if I can really do that!)

And the better I understand the inner workings of my new computer the happier I am.  My "intuition" tells me that we are going to be very good friends!

Graduating

Last week was graduation week for kindergartens and schools in Japan.  I attended the kindergarten graduation last Tuesday and the elementary school graduation on Friday.  (I had to go to the elementary school's in uniform.)  Every year, no matter kindergarten or grade school, the children do a short "remembering" call, all choreographed with different students calling out their memories of good times.  It is a moving performance eliciting tears from teachers, parents and of course the graduation students themselves.

I brought home sweet bean paste buns from the elementary school and photos and flowers from the kindergarten.  And the pre-school children sent me home with a tissue flower bouquet and some hand drawn pictures.

No, your eyes haven't gone haywire...  I blurred out the above photo.  But I wanted to show how the kindergarten class graduates...  Pretty fancy, huh?!  Hats and tassels and all!

And I thought this an absolutely fantastic rendition of me in this budding artist's work.  It's not like I was posing for the portrait or anything.  My reading glasses chain must have really made an impression on this child.  And my flyaway curly hair!

Spring vacation starts tomorrow for all the local children.  They get about two weeks off before a new school year begins.

Iris Folding

I took a break from machine quilting to think about the fabric card I make for my mother each month.  Last month I waited until the very end and didn't have much in the way of ideas.  This month I wandered around the web trying to find something pretty.  And I found one!!!  A little gem of a card was on a blog called What-Nots and the blogger had done a tutorial on Iris Folding which I had never heard of before.

Iris Folding originated in Europe and really is done with folded paper... but someone figured out that what can be done with paper should be reproducible in fabric. With a few tweaks it works!

So... this is my post card.  I am so pleased with it!  The name Iris Folding comes from the idea of the iris of a camera and each fabric scrap is the blade of the shutter. 

I started with 1 1/2 inch strips of fabric and ironed them in half. 

After that they are TAPED to a paper pattern in consecutive order until the multi-colored spiral is created.  The spiral is lifted off the paper and the final outline (in my case the flower shape) is ironed/bonded down.  I suppose it would be easier with paper and cardboard...  My only glitch came with free-hand sewing through all those layers of fabric which made quite a bit of bunching and slipping at the edges.  And there was all that tape (masking tape) to sew through too which gummed up the needle a bit.  But nevertheless, within an hour I had a very nice card made.  I would say one of the more successful! 

This is not a difficult project at all and there seem to be lots of patterns available on the Internet.  Some fancy papers would be really fun to work with (though I've named my project for my mother Fabric Postcards).

Give it a try!

Plum blossom park

Yesterday Tetsu went off to Costco in a neighboring prefecture and on the way home stopped at a famous plum tree park that was having a plum blossom festival.  Not much information in today's post but a lot of flower photos. If you've seen one plum blossom you've seen another but they were all so beautiful!

The park seems to have been established over 150 years ago and there are over 3000 plum trees planted and 100 different species.  The weeping plum in the background was very pretty though maybe not so photogenic.

 Pink plum blossoms...  That's all I know about this photo.

 And variegated pink plum blossoms.

There seem to be plum blossom princesses chosen from the city who hold the position for the year and they were posing here and there around the park for the tourists.  (And don't you think it interesting that their kimonos are all the same and orange...  With all the pink blossoms I don't think orange particularly is the color of plum blossoms, but I'm not Japanese.)

Another princess of sorts.  The city of Mito is famous for its fermented sticky (smelly) soy beans which were traditionally wrapped in straw bundles... thus this character's unique hairstyle  A straw bundle of beans (natto).

Oh dear...  more plum blossoms.  I can't chose which photos to post so I'm posting them all.  That's not true.  I took 80 photos over the course of two hours.

Yours truly.  Tetsu wanted me to go stand with the plum princesses but I felt the gap was too pronounced...)

 Ah... darker pink plum blossoms.

 Lighter pink blossoms...

 And even lighter.

 In the background there is a famous feudal lord's home.

My own feudal lord.

Here was part of the park looking down from the hilltop.  By the way that photo was taken in diorama mode.

 A lot of young families enjoying the nice day.

And as evening set I found some crocus patches peeking out from under a few trees.  Not long until spring!