It used to be that Mrs. Furui and I got together weekly for patchwork (when our kids were in kindergarten and grade school) and then we shifted our schedule to once a month and met with other friends to make a yearly quilt for the kindergarten bazaar. About 10 years ago Mrs. Furui started doing volunteer work at the University hospital and she began focusing on making decorations for the children's ward's waiting room. Our patchwork group let the kindergarten mothers take over the bazaar projects and instead, under Mrs. Furui's guidance, we worked on various large seasonal quilts for the hospital waiting room.
But since Covid-19, our group has sort of faded to non-existence and we no longer meet nor have any patchwork projects going. Mrs. Furui, however continues to head a HOSPITAL volunteer group (many more people with many more sewing skills) and year round they make things out of fabric, yarn, paper, beads etc. and usually they hold a fund-raising market at the hospital. (Unfortunately the hospital is way too far away for me to get involved and I've only been there two or three times).
This Christmas Mrs. Furui's group was making presents for the children, including Christmas cards that the children can decorate and give to someone.
Look at all these pretty stockings that got made! Mrs. Furui proudly told me that her group had used up ALL the velvet fabric that she and I had one time rescued from the kindergarten's throw away pile...
We had already made two Christmas Tree quilts (one for the kindergarten, one that I have hanging on my wall) and Mrs. Furui had kept the left over the fabric in hopes of making use of it someday. Well, she sure did! 100 stockings got made that are going to be filled with treats and given to the children hospitalized during Christmas. Well done!!!
And this is the little card that the children will be given to decorate with stickers and washi tape etc. The "tree" is a folded piece of construction paper backed in yellow which lays flat and a message can be written on it. The circle with the writing is provided as well as stickers and "jewels" and the star. The person who receives it gets a standing Christmas tree message! Isn't that cute?
I came home from Mrs. Furui's with a set of snowmen circles myself... Now to find a good box!
No wonder Mrs. Furui never gets around to making her own quilts! She is always busy making something for someone else!
I know that a lot of non-Christian Japanese celebrate Christmas and therefore appreciate the stockings, snowflakes, snowmen, and other secular motifs. But I was surprised to see the Advent calendar, which seems pretty explicitly religious. How does this go over with the gift shop shoppers?
ReplyDeletea lovely entry to read, a lot of happiness brought to many people
ReplyDeleteGreat ideas to support kids. I'm impressed with all those lovely stockings.
ReplyDeleteWhat great craft ideas! Your friend is clever and has a lot of energy. You two make a good team!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed seeing all the creative things that were made. In another post, could you talk some more about how Christmas is (or isn't) celebrated in Japan, perhaps by different age groups or different religions?
ReplyDeleteBeautiful post! I don't know how tech savy your friends are but My quilting friends and I used to get together every week in person but now we get together on Zoom instead. It is the highlight of the week! Maybe you could work something like that out with your quilting friends. Another upside has been that friends who have moved away are able to join us, too.
ReplyDeleteI love your Advent Calendar. I forgot to put mine up this year, before I knew it, it was 9th December....perhaps next year.
ReplyDeleteSo Santa's Factory is at Mrs Furui's house?! Great use of that stash of velvet, and the calendar is most unusual. The Christmas card/tree is another clever idea. There is going to be so much joy over the holidays.
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