At home in quiet Nikko

Tetsu and I have spent three hours fiddling with the dumb router or server or whatever it is that gives us Wi-fi!  I even had Takumi helping us and I was snapping photos of the modems (is that what they are called) and the cables and asking him what to put where and what it all means.  It is so frustrating to be using all these machines and not even know what they are called let alone what they do!!!  Poor Takumi in another time zone tried to give us advice from afar.

And would you believe, we never did figure out what had gone wrong for those three hours.  Enough plugging and unplugging and pushing buttons resulted in the Wi-fi working again but why we don't know.  We are now very tired with all the technology confusion we had...

So back to everyday life after the excitement of the quilt show.  Oh, M.G.M wanted to know if I had a close-up of the border on the Hide and Seek quilt and actually I had taken a picture of the label and a bit of the border is in it, so here you are.

Let's see...  One evening I came home from something and Tetsu had just come in from a dinner meeting where he had been given a boxed lunch.  Sorry, I took my picture after he had already started eating.  It looks like a crab head that HAD been filled with something on the bottom left, sashimi in the middle, a dumpling and pickles at the left top, fish next to that, maybe ham or chicken slices in a salad, fried chicken and a deep fried shrimp at the bottom.  But what actually caught my eye was the very pretty dishes that had been used to make this lunch box.  Dishes?  No!  That is a pressed plastic tray all decorated up to look like the many small colorful dishes that make up a true Japanese meal.

Later I took a picture of just the pressed plastic tray minus the food.  So pretty!

I have been trying to get in 15 minutes of sewing either in my sewing room or downstairs at my quilting chair.  The quilting is going slowly but it is a long term project.  Upstairs in the sewing room I have been working on a quilt kit that I ordered for myself as a Christmas present. 

It came with wool strips that I have now cut up and begun sewing.   Here are some of my strips with an added black triangle.

These will be my 4 borders...  Now to sew the main part!

This week I was invited to the elementary school for a "Thank you party" for the volunteers.  I am actually not a volunteer, I get paid for my crosswalk duties, but the school still wanted to express gratitude so I was included in the party (and so was the local policeman).  The kids sang a song to us, gave speeches and we all played a game together in the gymnasium.  Here we are all getting instructions in the game while sitting on the gymnasium floor.  I also came home with thank you letters and some flowers.

I'd better go help Tetsu get the computer room back in order.  He was horrified by all the dust under the desk when we were unplugging things and he's decided that the furniture needs to be rearranged!

Part 6 - Final photos of the Tokyo Quilt Show

Okay...  A final section called "50 Quilters".  I think the quilts in this section are made by quilt teachers, designers, quilters who have published books and who are well known throughout Japan.  It was only in this section that the names of the quilters were labeled in Roman lettering.  Yeah!

 This was called "Eternity" by Keiko Morita.  Beautiful colors!!!

I really loved this quilt.  I surprised myself this visit by being drawn to clean looking modern quilts.  This is "TOKYO - Winter" by Yoshiko Kuribara.  The embroidered buildings, the black poinsettia, the colorful fashion, the very small bit of the colored Christmas tree...  I just liked a lot about this quilt.

This was called "Tree of Happiness" by Noriko Inafune.

I took this picture because it was another quilt that was very original in its use of the Log Cabin block.  A thin, almost flange-like strip of color was added to the black strips in these blocks.  The quilt was called "Thunder Crest Street" by Teiko Saito.

Okay...  You've got to stop and look at this quilt while.  This may have been my favorite quilt in the quilt show just because I could spend so much time looking at it and it is so FUN!!!  I think we were directed to this quilt by Cynthia and her friends when we ran into them.

"You have to go look at the number 47 quilt called "Hide and Seek!"

Each section of blocks had just ONE different figure in the section.  We spent a long time trying to find the "odd man out" in each section.  While you are looking, take note of all the embroidery and the beading that went into making this quilt.  "Hide and Seek" by Megumi Mizuno.

 Yes, I think you're right.  The stronger pink ribbon here is the odd man out.

Ooh.  The ice cream block was hard...  Keep looking...  Do you notice the half moon sprinkle on top of one is flipped upside down?

 Spools of thread...  Ah there it is...  One spool has a tail of thread hanging off it!

 Well, this one is no challenge.  The one onigiri has an sour plum in it rather than all the seaweed.

 Candles... And one has gone out!

Cats..  They all look alike!  Which one, which one?  Aha!  only one cat has a ribbon on its collar instead of beads.

And a final snowman section.  And these look all alike too...  But wait.  Only one has a mouth!  Wasn't that fun!  I could have looked at this quilt for hours.

A kimono quilt called "What I Dream Tomorrow" by Eiko Okano.

 And a quilt called "Wind God and Thunder God" by Yoko Sekita.

I loved the way the fabrics were used at a slant to make it seem like rain was pelting down on the town.

This was called "Fireworks" by Etsuko Ishitobi.  There is just a hint of a firework burst coming off the edge of this quilt.

 I have admired this quilter probably every time I've been to the Tokyo quilt show.  This quilt is called "Harvest Time is Coming Soon" by Noriko Nozawa.  I don't know how she gets that beautiful border onto her quilt...  It must be machine embroidered and any other of the white embroidery parts too are filled in by exact stitching... 

I'd love to see a demonstration with her at work.

Ah!  And one of my favorite quilters, Fumiko Nakayama made this quilt called "The Universe".  Carin and Julie and I met Mrs. Nakayama at one quilt show and even got to show her what we'd been inspired to make after seeing her quilts using Mola techniques.  This was another beautiful quilt and I don't think I've ever seen her use blacks and greys in mola like she did here.

Okay.. And to end it all, the following are the quilt show winners this year!

 The second prize went to "The Great Romantic" by Takako Oikawa.  This certainly catches the eye!

And the first prize went to "Harmony of a Welcome Rain" by Sumiko Nagami.  So many shades of Japanese blue indigo here.

This quilt won the Hand-Making award and it was called "Winter Flowers" by Hiroko Tamai.  Yes, the hand work that went into this quilt was amazing!

And this quilt was simply called "Cute" by Rumiko Oiwa.  Lots of colors and movement and beautiful quilting!

Julie and Carin and I had fun again this visit.  Our challenge this year will be Log Cabins.   It was great fun to meet Lynette and Jackie and I am thrilled to have Cynthia as a new friend!

We had our final photo taken in front of a colorful quilt which had a poem set next to it.  "If Everyone Mellowed Out".  The phrase, mellow out, is a translation of being round... thus the theme this year of circles and spheres and rings etc.  Sorry, to translate this poem as "If Everyone Got Round" made me feel like I needed to go on a diet.  Thus the "mellow out" substitution...

If We All Mellowed Out

If I mellowed out...

And the people near me mellowed out...

And the people far from me mellowed out...

Do you still have sharp edges?

I want all of us to mellow out just a bit.

Through quilting,

I want to send this happy message 

to everyone.♪

Thank you for spending all this time at the photo shoot of the  2020 Tokyo Quilt Show with us!!

Tokyo Quilt Show -- Quilts and a bag

Let's see how many photos I can show today.

This was such a beautiful quilt with lots of embroidery stitches.  Look ladies, log cabin blocks inside that star!  This was displayed in the "Japanese Quilts" section.

 It was called Star Play by Yushiko Yamamoto.

 Here is another "Japanese" quilt... more Log Cabins!

This was called "Into the Wind" and many of us admired the different thicknesses of threads in the sashiko embroidery that added a lot of movement.  I think the quilter's name was Yasuko Amashi.

Again, in the Japanese section but with a very different feel, a quilt called "Mt. Fuji, by Yukie Horioka.  I thought this was clean and clever with the different patterns of the red sun and the different pieced patterns under the Mt. Fujis.  Any Japanese would recognize this as a Japanese motif because Japanese always express the sun in red and besides the Japanese flag is a big red dot on a white background.

"Oh yeah!  We are looking at Mt. Fuji with the sun in the background."

I think it was Julie who wondered if non-Japanese saw this as many differently fringed lampshades.  Now I can't get that picture out of my mind!

I shot upwards on this quilt to show how the zig-zags tapered off at the tops and bottoms.  This was called "Cheer" by Ayumi Asano and it was in the Traditional Quilts section.

 These blocks are more Log Cabins by the way!

A complicated quilt made pretty by the embroidered squares interspersed in the blocks.  The quilt was titled "Triangles and Blue and Thread and..." by Yoshie Honda.

We studied the label a bit and finally figured out that the quilted had used drawings of her grandchild's and embroidered them into the quilt.

This quilt was called "Flower Basket" by Masako Takemaku. 

There was a lot of beautiful embroidery going on in this quilt, even in the borders.  This was also in the Traditional section.

This quilt had tiny piecing, applique, embroidery, unbelievably dense hand quilting and candlewicking going on in it!

It was called "Flower Arabesque" by Harumi Noro.  There were too many people around it to get a full photo...

This was a fun quilt made even more unique by the interesting background fabric.  That is a print that has been used with all the zig-zags.  The arcs in this quilt had all different types of houses lined up, sort of like in a neighborhood. 

The quilt was called "A Journey" by Machiko Yamada.  This too was in the Traditional section of the quilt show.

Oh, I absolutely loved this quilt and just seeing it from afar it brought me in to examine it more closely.  It looked like the inside of a kaleidoscope!  It just sparkled!  It was called "Poetry of Parquet" by Matsuko Sugi.

And this colorful Log Cabin quilt found in the Traditional section was called "Rhapsody on a Line" by Michiko Kaneda.

Okay... One more picture with a story.  We hardly were able to spend any time at the bag section of the quilt show just because there were so many people crowded around the area.  I finally did get to walk up and down near the tables and this one bag caught my eye just because I couldn't figure out what the materials were...

It was a pretty bag with lots of stitching, but what were the almost tile-like pieces between the squares of stitching?  I read the label as best I could...  A bag by Kumiko Yamashita called "Made with Minomushi Husks".  Does that make any sense?  Do you know what a Minomushi is?  I do, and I can't think how the husks could be used...

Minomushi translates as Bagworm!!!  Like these worms that make a cocoon and hang from a tree or something!!!  That can't be right!  I turned to a couple of Japanese ladies behind me and asked them to read the label to me.  Did that say what I thought it said?  They were happy to help the three foreigners out but their eyes grew big too when they read the label and the younger of the two brought out her Smartphone to look up if there could be another meaning to Minomushi.  Nope.  This bag used some very rare Bagworm Cocoons!  And there was a time in Japan when the cocoons were used to make precious bags and containers.  Just so you know.  I'm not sure I'd want to carry around a Bagworm purse...  The BAG was pretty...