Made to Order

I haven't been very good about keeping my camera handy after my trip to the Tokyo Quilt Festival.  I seem to have been sewing but didn't take any pictures of the process...

Back in December the kindergarten principal approached Mrs. Furui and me wondering if we could head a project to make a bag for the pastor's wife who is being transferred to another church next month.  The principal wanted a hand-pieced patchwork bag that the non-quilting kindergarten teachers could help make, with a Biblical theme... (and maybe blue).

That is a somewhat limiting project as we didn't know how many teachers (there are about 30) were going to participate, and a bag isn't very big.

While going through some of my books for another project, I came across a pattern for a wheat stalk.  It wasn't particularly striking and needed a bit of imagination to even see the wheat when the block was made.  I'd leafed through same book for years and years and never even noticed the pattern and I didn't much like how the book's resulting bag was made up.  Still, we were at point zero for ideas and so I took the book to Mrs. Furui's and conferred with her.  She wasn't impressed either and we considered dove shape blocks, Bethlehem Stars etc, but decided that beginning quilters were going to have trouble with inset seams or curves... So we were left with the wheat stalk block.

"Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground..."  John 12:24

Mrs. Furui made up the templates.  She took it to the principal and explained the sewing steps.  She suggested colors (as otherwise we might have gotten back pink and blue wheat stalks).  And she gave a deadline.  "No later than the middle of January!"  (We only meet up once a month for sewing.)

The middle of January came and 16 blocks were returned to us.  Now... what to do with them?  We squeezed in an extra sewing day, just the two of us last week and when looking for background fabric from my stash I came across an OLD piece of fabric, maybe a foot square...  maybe not even that.  It had wheat stalks on it!

"Now that's pretty.  And appropriate.  I remember making a quilt with this fabric back when Leiya was in kindergarten (20 some years ago).  And this is all that remains.  Oh well.  Maybe we can add an inside pocket or something from this scrap."

I stuffed the scrap into my handbag and headed for Mrs. Furui's.

Together we planned a bag using the 16 blocks.  And Mrs. Furui measured and cut (with very narrow seamlines) enough triangles (directional) from that scrap of wheat fabric!  Which I sewed together. 

(Let me comment that Mrs. Furui and I probably would have had an easier time making the whole bag by ourselves...  Beginner quilters, never having piecing lessons, didn't understand about sewing on marked lines or seam allowances or anything.  The final piece was pretty roughly shaped.  "Maybe it will all work out in the quilting?  It's the thought, and many hands, that count.)

I spent the next day machine quilting around the wheat stalks and added a bit of decorative stitching around the top.  This is where I should have taken photos but I forgot.

Once the piece was three quarters quilted I sewed the two edges together and then hand hemmed the backing seamline.  And I finished quilting the top of that connected edge with the piece in a cylinder shape.  I'm rather proud of that accomplishment!

The bottom got some decorative quilting also and I took the bag back to Mrs. Furui the next day.  Obviously this isn't finished yet as it needs some binding and the addition of some leather handles... Mrs. Furui is working on that now.

The other ladies in our patchwork group were much impressed at how all the colors and fabrics matched up just perfectly.  (And the main fabric IS a dark blue plaid.)

"It looks like it came from a kit!"

Which we took to be a compliment.  I'll try to get a finished photo before the bag is turned over to the principal.

Snow scenery

My story about the TV antenna hasn't ended. 

Last Friday night the antenna fell down when the ice and snow came crashing off the roof.  I took it in stride and set a nice dinner table AWAY from the TV where Tetsu usually wants to sit.  But he came home and fiddled with the TV and managed to get a singing program (which he hates) on the screen.

"I got the TV working!  We can watch it during dinner after all."

How important is that TV to him?  I convinced him that even HE didn't want to watch the singing program and that we should have dinner in the dining room like cultured people do...

The TV reception has been sporadic for the rest of the week...  Finally Mr. U, our carpenter friend, came by with a new antenna on Thursday and climbed up and down his ladder to set up the contraption.  He informed me that he had purchased a super-duper, extra large antenna and that we wouldn't need to have it reaching above the treetops as our other one had done.

We had been told years before that as our house was situated next to a forest that we, and everyone else at the edge of the forest, needed an extra-tall antenna.  But Mr. U didn't think so.  He said that the new super-duper antenna would solve all that problem.  He even got into a mini-argument with my neighbor who pooh-poohed the idea of setting up such a short antenna when he too had been told that only extra tall ones would work in our neighborhood.

My neighbor conceded that Mr. U could only try and hope it would work and Mr. U went on up to the roof.  My job was only to serve tea after the antenna got set up and until then I went back to the sewing room.

Finally Mr. U came into the house announcing the job done.  We turned on the TV.

"Hmmm.  I wonder what's wrong..."

The TV only got one channel.  Mr. U decided we needed another booster or something and started off to a home improvement store but found that he couldn't get his huge truck out of the icy parking space!  Mr. U was NOT having a good day!  He borrowed my car, went to the home improvement store, bought his part and climbed up and down his ladder for the the next two hours.  Finally, the TV was getting its channels and Mr. U extracted his truck from the parking lot by extending the crane on the back of the truck to a forest tree and pushed himself out...

Mr. U had not been gone 30 minutes when the TV started flickering and by evening we were back to one channel.

Yesterday we were snowed in and the TV no longer was getting any reception.  I guess Mr. U is going to have to come back and eat his words...  He may have to figure out how to reset that antenna up above the treetops again.

And while it was snowing yesterday I walked over to the cemetery across the street to see what that unmarred scenery looked like.  Almost no cars out on the roads and no one of course at the cemetery.

 The little stone lanterns on either side of some of the larger grave-sites had roofs of snow on them.

 And all the statues were wearing snow caps and a fluffy mufflers of snow.

Most of the snow has melted today...  The TV is getting limited reception...  The roads are icy in the early mornings so I will be slipping and sliding at the crosswalk tomorrow.

Last of the Tokyo Quilt Show photos. Whew!

I am snowed in today, with no TV reception (the antenna is still out of working order, but that is another story...)  Thankfully the Internet is still working and I can blog and use the iPad and even if those went out I can SEW.  Bad weather doesn't keep me down!

So back to the Tokyo Quilt Show.

One beautiful quilt was called "Sweden House" by a quilter whose name I can't read again!  Maybe "somebody" Miyoshi.  ARGHH!!!  Japanese names are impossible!!!  Anyway, the label next to the quilt said the quilter had visited Sweden twice, once in June and once in December and she chose to make her quilt in winter scenery and colors. 

Queenie (from Sweden) said that this was a very accurate depiction of Swedish homes...  And even a Maypole there on the bottom left of the quilt.

I can't go by this quilt without commenting on it!  Cats galore!  (That would have been my title for it.)  The quilter, Mioko Suzuki named it "Together with Mom".  There are lots of mommy kitties there nursing their kittens and everyone else is having a field day at a party

Julie said that this quilter submits cat quilts each year and they are all in this detailed hand appliqued, embroidered style.  Interestingly, (to us), the applique is raw edge HAND applique rather than needle turn, which gives the cats a nice frayed look...  I probably would have thought that quilt police might insist on needle turn or machine applique but seeing this quilt made me realize again that there is no completely "right" way.  Either way, absolutely beautiful work!

This quilt was an eye catcher and also won an award.  It is called "23 Vegetables and Vitamins" by Fumiyo Fukushima.  The label said that she had been trying to sketch some vegetables that she'd been given when she got the idea of using her colored pencils to make a quilt putting her different colored vegetables into the pencils.  Look closely and you can see all types of vegetables in there!

Actually this snapshot is for my own "to do someday" files.  In the back of my mind I had thought I would try and buy some fabric with trees on it while I was at the quilt show.  But as explained before I never really got close enough to look through any of the bins for fabric let alone compare with other booths' bolts and fat quarters...

And then I noticed this large quilt all machine quilted with different stitches right off the sewing machine...  The quilt is called "25th Wedding Anniversary" by Yasuyo Kon and it tells the story of the quilter's marriage.

 What drew me to this quilt was the quilt stitching which seemed to be done with a sewing machine's decorative sewing stitches.  I'm sure a fancy machine with zillions of stitches was used to make this quilt.  But what about the trees there?  Those trees in the background are BIG, but throughout the quilt they were repetitions of the same trees.  Could a computerized sewing machine be able to do such such a large pattern?

And that gave me ideas that maybe I could machine quilt my own trees on fabric instead of combing the stores for just the right thing...  It's a possibility though I'm not sure how one would start...  Must give this more thought.

Okay...  Two final quilts.  This quilt by Hiroko Nakazawa is called "Flowers of the Field" and it won Japan Quilt Grand Prix - Second Place.  It was huge and amazingly detailed.

What detail!  Those are all tiny circles of Liberty Fabric hand appliqued into a design with appliqued clover and embroidered clover flowers meandering through the white space.  Some beauty isn't it!?

And..... Ta-Da!  Here we have the Japan Quilt Grand Prix - First Place award winning quilt by Miwako Mogami called "Wow, Bananas!"  Definitely.  Bananas!

And Ms. Mogami was being photographed and interviewed just as Julie and Queenie and I were making our way past the Grand Prix walls.  The crowds had finally thinned a bit in the late afternoon.  Earlier in the day it had been impossible to get close enough to take any photos.

The three of us did manage to wave down a guard stationed near the quilts and ask him to take our photo ("isn't photographing quilters part of his job?") before we hugged and said goodbye to each other.

An exhausting but wonderful once-a-year day for me.  I got to see Julie, Queenie and Noriko-san and met a new blog friend, Jenni!

I made my way back through the labyrinth of the Japanese transportation system only running into a few snares...  A last look at the train station after boarding the train back to snowy Nikko.  I came home with sore feet and lots of ideas running through my head!
 

Wall quilts and Japanese quilts

Are you getting tired of Tokyo Quilt show photos?  Maybe I ought to just post them all and stop talking so much and get on with life.

Here we have a sample of the framed quilts exhibit.  All of them were smallish and weren't quite so overwhelming.  Let's say "doable" if one had the creative mind to begin with... which I don't.

I just loved the colorful umbrellas in the otherwise grey wall quilt here.  It was made by "somebody" Hosomi and was called "Rainy Days".  (This INTERNATIONAL quilt show really needs to get more English onto their placards.  Some of the quilts had the quilters' names in Roman letters but many of them, like this one, didn't.  This is a pet peeve that Julie, Queenie and I have had from years ago...)

I had to take a picture of this small quilt!  CATS or paw prints in every single one of those tiny cups!  I could have spent a whole hour just admiring this quilt and counting up the cats here.

Julie lent me her finger so that you can get an idea of the size of the cups.
Julie doesn't like her stubby fingers (which looked fine to me compared to MY stubby fingers!)  Do any of you other quilters have stubby fingers?  I have heard that people with stubby fingers are very good at doing intricate work and I like to think so and have come to terms with my ugly fan-like fingernails.  Hey, they work!

Or... we could go this way and use fake fingernails to make our hands lovely (not for me thank you...  though I am attracted to the colorful possibilities nowadays.)  What an interesting way to display fake nails.  Oops the quilter was decorating the QUILT with the nails but either way it is an interesting concept.  I was so busy admiring the nails I didn't get the quilter's name.  My apologies!

Onto a few full size Japanese feeling quilts.  This one was called "Yamato no Haru" something about Spring of Yamato by Eiko Sugii.  She writes that she was trying to depict a cherry tree beyond a round window.

 A close up of the cherry blossoms.

This quilt won an award and is called "Hana Sashiko" by "somebody" Onozaki.  Sashiko is a Japanese thread art that in itself is time consuming and beautiful and Ms. Onozaki made a very large quilt with all sorts of pattern sampling.  My photo is only a small corner of the whole quilt.

This German looking village all made with Japanese yukata (summer kimono) fabrics all printed in a tradtional  Asa no Ha (hemp leaf) pattern.  This was made by Satomi Tominaga and is called "Fachwerkhaus".

 

And finally for today, I wanted to show this striking dark blue quilt made of dyed Japanese fabrics.  It is called "Birth of a New Star Nova" by "Somebody" Umawatari.  (That can't be right... but again, no Romanized lettering.)  For one, the use of white fabrics and colors made this quilt sparkle.  For another, the piecing isn't just in a expanding circles but has a zig-zag design that gets fainter as the rows expand.  And finally the use of the quilter's striped fabrics really spoke to me.

In some places the quilter used her strips to draw the eye outward...  the stripes are on the vertical.  But in other places... especially in the longer strips towards the edges of the star, the quilter used the stripes on the horizontal which really gave the whole quilt a twinkling effect.  I absolutely LOVED this quilt.

I think I have one more sets of quilts I'd really like to blog about.  More tomorrow.

People, people, everywhere!

This year is the fourth time I have been to the Tokyo Quilt show.  Many, many years ago my non-quilting friend, Kaoru-san and I went to the show together (actually she led me there) and met up with another non-quilting friend.  All I really remember of that trip was that the main purpose for the three of us was to NOT get separated while we there (I think this was before cellphones... or at least before I had one).  The number of PEOPLE at the show was/is mind-boggling and what with the heat generated and everyone removing coats the moving around space was even more scrunched.  Even back then I learned WHEN GOING TO THE TOKYO QUILT SHOW DRESS IN LAYERS THAT CAN BE STUFFED COMPACTLY AWAY!

Then three years ago I went to the Tokyo show with Mrs. Furui and five other patchwork friends.  I followed my own advice by wearing a lightweight down jacket and that was the year that I met Julie and Queenie for the first time.  But my patchwork friends gave up fighting the crowds rather early in the game and of course trying to keep track of 6 friends even with cell phones was a hassle.

Last year I went to the Tokyo show by myself still wearing the same lightweight down jacket (stuffs into a bag well) and Julie and her husband met me at the station and led me to the show.  I remember how nice it was to compare notes with Julie and Queenie about the different quilts and Queenie researches everything before she goes so it is like having a walking tour guide.  Last year I plunged through the crowds into one merchant's booth and purchased a small kit but that was as close as I could get through all the people.

Then this year I made the trek all the way to the show by myself (in same lightweight jacket) but the uncertainty of traveling must have worn me out and just looking at the mobs of people was exhausting.  (Or the additional few years of age has worn down my stamina).  Part way through the visit I needed to sit down and take an aspirin!

The Tokyo quilt show is held in the Tokyo Dome and parts of the bleachers are set aside as rest areas.  As you can see, a lot of people besides me needed to sit down and rest!

Down one of the many shopper's aisles.

A sea of people...  An ocean of females.  (A few brave husbands.)

But after a rest and an aspirin and a visit with Noriko-san I met up with Julie and Queenie again and my energy returned!

So many areas to see at the quilt show.  One section I always like to visit is the youth and children's exhibit.  I'm not sure what the age limit is for this section but there were some pretty cute quilts!  Oops.  I'm afraid I can't read the child's name on this quilt....  Somebody Funaki.  And the quilt was called "Dressed up in Sparkles and off to a Party" (my translation).  Lots of sequins and beads on this quilt.

This is called "Chiku Chiku Club Cuddly Brown" and was made by 18 students from 1st graders to 1st year jr. high students.  This seemed like a very nice project that many students of all levels of ability could take part in.  

And anything goes with this project!  Beads, buttons, rickrack, and tassles!

At one point when Julie and Queenie and I were just trying to find a quiet space to chat between exhibits we were approached by a quilter who recognized us from our blogs!  What fun is that!!!  I felt like a celebrity! 

Jenni is a quilter from Australia visiting Japan and the quilt show with her husband (actually I think her husband chose to visit a museum this day rather than quilt show) and we all excitedly chatted about things she should see or has already seen during her visit to Japan.  Thank you Jenni!  You made my day by coming over and speaking with us!

Another special exhibition at the quilt show this year was on the textile designer William Morris.  If you're not familiar with his fabrics, they are overlays of wood block prints and quite elegant in a busy muted sort of way.  Some of the quilts made using his fabrics were detailed and elegant.

This was made by Toshiko Ikeda and called "Aki no Hizashi no Naka"  "In the light of Autumn"  Soft and elegant!

On the other hand, at first I couldn't understand why this quilt was in the William Morris section... until Queenie pointed out that the feathery leaves in the overall pattern was probably based on the textile design and portrayed in the quilter's own color scheme.  This quilt is called "Acanthus" by Yoko Ueda.  A very pretty quilt but I'm sorry that I shot it out of focus!

Another special section of the quilt show was the Beatrix Potter story books depicted in numerous wall quilts.  I could hardly get near that section of the quilt show and so have only a token photo of the exhibit that was behind a few central walls. 

More tomorrow!  I've got my own quilting stuff to get to work on today!

Log Cabin Quilts

Julie and Queenie and I spent our first hour together looking at the Log Cabin quilts.  It seems that the quilt show producers choose a theme for their master quilters and this year the theme was Log Cabin blocks.  It is amazing what a simple pattern can evolve into with some imagination and a lot of skill!

As you well know, there were gadzillions more log cabin quilts and I chose to photograph these few for no other reason than they caught my eye.  This is called "Bikkuri bako" or "Surprise Box" by Keiko Ike.  Lots of color and movement.

 Some lovely machine quilting in all those stripes.

According to Queenie, the quilter, Machiko Miyatani uses necktie fabric as her family does tailoring.  This quilt was titled "Crazy Bow Tie Quilt and Log Cabin".  The precision on this quilt was amazing.  There was not a warble or warp in the way the whole quilt hung.

 Some very fancy hand embroidery stitches there too.

On the other hand, this quilt called "iro-iro  Colors" by Akiko Fukui was purposely "warped" with all sizes of colorful log cabin blocks and wobbly edging.  So you see, there is no "right" way.

The hand work on this, the tiny quilting stitches and it looked like french knotting along the edges of the squares was amazing.  This quilter also mixed up her fabrics, some wool, of course cotton, it looked like fleece in there and we even pondered if one fabric was terry cloth (can't guarantee that however).  A lot of work went into this!

On the other end of the spectrum was this log cabin quilt made by Ayako Kawakami that was called "Kirara's Garden Party."  It was made into the shape of a heart but you'll just have to take my word for it as there were too many people standing around it for me to get a full photo.  The log cabin blocks are there but with all the other applique and three dimensional work they are hard to spot.

Here is a shot of the edging and yes there are wonky log cabins worked in different shades to make the background for the quilt.  And again, look at all the stitching along each fabric.  I think it was about at this point I began to wonder how many hours these quilters put in a day to make a quilt for a quilt show.  The theme was announced last year so this has been made in only a year?  I can't vouch for that either but it does seem amazing as I spend a lot of time sewing myself but have never thought about putting this much detail into one quilt.

I was really drawn to this quilt and Julie and Queenie and I spent a long time trying to figure out how it had been made.  It seems simple enough with the block letters but with the staircasing in each block, it looked like the blocks had actually been made in rows.  The exquisite machine quilting of checks hid all the seam lines.  From afar it seemed like this quilt was dark grey and white and red and green and blue etc. but as you can see, it is only grey, white and red.  Why my eyes are fooled into thinking there is more color I don't know (is it just me or do other people see the different colors too?)  This was called "Center Alphabet" by Kumiko Fujita.

So that is a tiny sampling of the Log Cabin corner.  More tomorrow!