March sewing

I have been rather haphazardly sewing this week.  Some days upstairs on the sewing machine, some days in front of the TV hand quilting. 

The sewing machine endeavors include making signature blocks for the wedding reception quilt that I have planned for Leiya.  I think she is planning to have 60 guests...  I have made up about 80 blocks for guests to choose from when signing. 

I even got Tetsu involved cutting up freezer paper blocks and then ironing the paper onto the backs of the signature blocks which I hope will make it easier for people to sign the blocks...  I am actually thinking of combining the signature blocks with some four patch blocks once I get back to Japan with all the signatures but I haven't really thought it all out.  I am making progress though!

When I get a bit bored of making the same signature blocks over and over I start in making pinwheel blocks for that Kitty embroidery quilt that has been somewhat shelved.  I need 46 pinwheels and I think I have 40 right now.  After that I will start in on some rail fence blocks.

The quilting going on downstairs is now in its final stages and if I find time tomorrow I will put some binding on to this baby quilt.  My fingers are sore!  I haven't done so much steady quilting in ages though I must admit that hand quilting is a very relaxing pastime.

And one more project I've been working on has been to tear apart a kimono that has been in my closet for years.  I have a purpose in mind but I'm not really sure the finished project will be successful or not.  This will be a "wearable" piece if and when it gets finished.
 

Random photos again

I guess it is time for another random post.  I have so many non-related pictures in my files!

A few of my friends and I went out for lunch this week, to celebrate one friend's birthday.  We went to a Thai restaurant and had a special meal with Thai curry, salad rolls, tamyankun soup (I have no idea how to spell that) steamed fish in lemon sauce...   Delicious all!  This was the platter that the salad rolls were set on.  The owner of the restaurant also does vegetable carving and there were beautiful roses made of beets, a wreath of pumpkin...

When the owner heard that we were celebrating a birthday, he whipped out this icicle radish which was carved to say "Congratulations!"  I suppose his radish can be used to adorn birthdays, graduations, anniversaries etc... 

I spent a few hours with the city's traffic safety division, instructing the 6th graders at the school where I do crosswalk duty on the rules of Bicycle safety.  We set up road signals and the 6th graders went through the mock course learning how to check for oncoming cars, cross railroad tracks etc.  I think the students were rather bored by the whole thing as most of them have been riding bicycles around the neighborhood for years but they will all be bicycling to middle school from April and thus the city tries to make sure they know the rules.

I took this picture one morning near the crosswalk when some of the children were walking to school.  It had been cold the night before but the morning was warming up and there was a mist rising from the streets and sidewalks.

Also at the crosswalk one morning, a couple of girls were complaining about the weight of the tote bags that they had to carry and I looked inside to see what all they had.  I was rather surprised to see that both girls (twins) had Smartphones in their bags.

"I didn't know you kids were allowed to carry Smartphones to school.  Have the rules changed?"

"Ha-ha!  These aren't Smartphones!  They are colored pen cases!"

Sure enough, the "Smartphones" opened up to reveal pens.  They really looked real in the tote bags though!

When visiting my friend last week, she offered me the choice of Haagen-Dazs sweet bean with chestnuts mochi ice cream or cherry blossom bean paste mochi ice cream.  As sweet bean ice cream is rather common in Japan, I chose the cherry blossom ice cream and it was delicious!

We are heading into the cherry blossom season and there are a lot of seasonal foods flavored with cherry blossoms in Japan!

We were visiting OTHER friends this week (doing a lot of socializing these days!) and their grandchildren were visiting.  We got to their house at lunch time and the four year old was just beginning to eat some soybeans that Grandma had made.  I took an interest in these trainer chopsticks...  Can you see how there are three white finger holes in the chopsticks?

This isn't a great photo but I was trying to show the finger holes. One for the thumb, one for the index finger and one for the middle finger.  Although Japanese mostly eat with chopsticks, there is a right way and a wrong way to use them and more and more young people tend to scoop with chopsticks or twist their wrists around or stab at food.  If someone looked at my hand position closely they would probably say I don't hold my chopsticks correctly... but it gets the job done.  I had never seen trainer chopsticks in use but the little girl was very skillfully eating her soybeans one by one!

Grandma and Grandpa had ordered a special Girls' Day cake because March 3rd is Girls' Day in Japan.  What a pretty cake with the two girls' names written on the chocolate heart.  Our friends' 4 year old grand daughter was very excited about celebrating Girls' Day!

Noriko-san's work

I was so blown away by all the comments on the dress I bought!  I haven't felt so pretty in a long time!  My blog friends have really convinced me that the choice was good and I will confidently attend this upcoming wedding feeling I have lots of friends backing me!  Thank you so much!

I have stayed close to home since the shopping expedition though my mind is still on wedding plans or rather plans for what Tetsu and I are going to do in Detroit AFTER the wedding.  I am really not very good at planning things and I am dragging my feet.  Tetsu frowns and says,

"I don't understand the problem.  We are going to America and you speak English.  Even if there are confusions you can communicate.  Just book some places to stay and figure out how to rent a car..."

But I've never done any of that...  My travels have been limited to going back and forth from my California home...  Ah well.  It will work out.

I met up with my good friend, Noriko-san and we had lunch together downtown.  She lives about three hours away so we don't get together all that much and this time too was lunch and coffee and a spin around the mall.  Noriko-san brought her most recent patchwork projects to show.  She has a private exhibit every couple of years and she threw together this Anne of Green Gables quilt in a hurry...  She said that she's had enough of redwork for awhile!

We could only spread out the quilts in the aisles of the mall so the pictures aren't great...  This Anne quilt was from a kit that Noriko-san had bought and she also had given Mrs. Furui and me the patterns nearly 30 years ago.  Well, at some point the patchwork group Mrs. Furui and I lead made the quilt for the Children's Hospital, but I know I don't have the patterns anymore...  And it has taken Noriko-san this long to finally make use of the kit she had!  She said she didn't use one pattern and instead redworked the Bible verse Psalms 90:14 which is one of her favorites.

"Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives."

This was another quilt that Noriko-san brought to show me.  These are McKenna patterns that a blog friend had sent to me years ago and though I had made a couple of the patterns with friends, I hadn't made all of them.  Last year when Noriko-san came to my house to visit I asked if she thought she'd have time to make all the patterns and she jumped at the chance!  I also raided some of my batik fabric stash and handed scraps over to her and she went home and made up the whole quilt!  Actually however, that pattern for that poppy block got lost somewhere in my sewing room and I never was able to find it though she asked me to look through my bookshelves...  We finally gave up and Noriko-san made up her own poppy block pattern! 

Noriko-san and I go back to before Leiya was even born when we started doing patchwork together with Mrs. Furui.  Noriko-san has gone on to have her works published in well-known Japanese quilt magazines and quite a lot of her work contains Bible themes.  It was good to see her latest work and also share about our families and faith.
 

Dress shopping

In case anyone hasn't noticed, I am not feminine nor fashionable and I am very thrift conscious (putting it nicely).

Last week I went out shopping with Marlene to buy myself a dress to wear at Leiya's upcoming wedding.

I rarely wear dresses.  I am a jeans and fleece type of person.  I wear the same black tennis shoes to absolutely everything.  My wardrobe is the same going to church, walking the dog, teaching, visiting friends. 

I already had the idea that my normal style wasn't going to be appropriate wear as mother-of-the-bride and when I'd been in Detroit helping Leiya choose her wedding dress, I had scoped out the possibilities for my own outfit.  It wasn't really a great time to go dress shopping because everything even slightly formal was tending towards the Christmas season on reds and blacks...   Leiya's wedding is in May...

And besides, I already had a nice black dress that I had bought one summer when Takumi took our family to a formal night club in Los Angeles.  I LIKED that dress and I have never worn it again!  I'll wear my formal black dress!  Why not?!  In Japan the mother of the bride (and the mother of the groom) would wear a black kimono with elaborate embroidery along the hem.  Black is a formal color!

While chatting with Tony's mother (Leiya's future mother-in-law) I asked her if she had thought about what she was going to wear.

"Not really...  Probably not a long dress..."  (Whew, good!  I wasn't too thrilled about wearing a long dress either.)

I piped up.

"I was thinking of wearing a black dress I have..."

"Black?!  Oh my!  I don't want anyone to think I'm not happy about this wedding.  I'm definitely not going to wear black!"

Oh...  Okay, I guess I've been out of the States too long...  Black is out for a wedding.

I didn't want to try and buy a dress in Japan, one, because it is too expensive.  Two, because I find it hard to find clothing that fits me.  So the last day that I was in Detroit, Leiya and I hurried into a dress shop and I found a paisley dress that I thought would work.  A little on the playful side but it was that or the black dress... 
 
I got back to Japan and showed Marlene my dress.

"Nice dress.  But it won't work for a wedding.  Too casual.  You'll have to find something else."

Rats.

So Marlene and I went shopping.  I avoided the very expensive department store in the city just because I knew there would be NOTHING there within my budget (and my budget was minimal).  We started at a medium priced department store but right away things began to spiral downwards...

"Size?  Um...  In the States I can manage an 8 or 9.  In Japan?  Size 13?" 

"Sorry, we don't carry size 13."

"Okay, let's try 11.  Uh. NO.  These dumb dresses don't even zip up!"

It is very depressing to begin feeling slightly elephantine...  Nothing fits or if it even zips I have to hold my breath and push flab back into hiding.  I was ready to give up immediately though Marlene kept prompting me to "try it on!"

We hit another store with basically the same results.  This is a wild goose chase!

At the third department store I found a pretty blouse that I could envision wearing again someday with my jeans...  Maybe with a skirt I could wear it to the wedding?

"You are NOT going to buy a blouse to wear at your daughter's wedding just so that you can wear it again with jeans!"

Marlene keeps me in line.

After a few more tries we came upon a formal dress shop that I was ready to walk by just because I could tell that the prices had a couple more zeros than I was willing to spend.

"Try it on!  Just get an idea of what you could look like."

I tried on a blue dress.  Hey!  Nice!  It DID look nice.  And it zipped up.  And it was comfortable.  But it was just a plain blue dress.  No pattern, no lace, nothing fancy about the style.  Just blue.  Maybe a bit boring even.  And WAY too much more than I was willing to spend.  I wasn't even a great fan of blue... except for blue jeans...

I pointed at a turquoise dress whose color I liked.

"Try it on!"

Hey!  Nice!  And it fit, and it was comfortable...  but I looked at the price tag and about choked!  $750!  That's almost what I paid for Leiya's wedding dress!  Get this off of me!  I am not buying any dress that costs that much!

"Marlene!  Would you honestly think of paying that much for a dress?"

Marlene admitted that maybe she'd never got quite that high. 

Marlene took pictures of the blue dress and the turquoise dress so that I could send them to Leiya to get her opinion.  And later I did send them and added that I probably wasn't going to buy either dress but so far those two were the only ones I could fit in.

Leiya wrote back...

"Wow!!  I love the dark blue dress!  So cuteeeee♡♡♡"

"Really?  So plain!  That one is less expensive..."

"I think it's so bright & cute ♡.  Ohhh so cute!  & elegant ♡"

"Well... if that's the one you want me to wear I'll buy it..."

To make this long story short...  I showed the pictures to three of my other friends over the week, and of course Tetsu too.  And EVERYONE said the paisley dress was out and the BLUE one was in!  By the end of the week I finally realized that I didn't really want to think about dresses anymore...  That I actually had $200 in gift cards that I could use, and that there was a 20% off sale going on until the end of the month.

Saturday I went back to the store, with TETSU!  Now that was an expression of love on his part as he hates shopping even more than I do and just walking near ladies clothing areas gives him a stomach ache.  He came into the store with me.  (He declined to sit in the chair the store clerks offered him and stood by the exit).  He even waited while I tried on the dress again and showed him.

"Great.  It looks great.  That's the dress.  No problem." and he was out of there.

 So I bought the blue dress.  With my gift cards and sale it was back in my budget.

 Whew!  I am so glad that is done!

John's life

Our days with John go by somewhat more smoothly...  I don't really notice much change in him but there must be some because I am not so frantic anymore...  I don't worry about him when we go out on a walk at all...

John joined our family at the end of October and he certainly wasn't the dog we were expecting to have in our old age!  We pictured long walks in the neighborhood and long drives with our doggie in the car.  We thought we were finally going to be able to take our dog with us when we went shopping in the home goods stores...  We pictured this new small dog sitting on our laps and being carried around the house like a furry waist pouch being introduced to guests.

John has been NOTHING like our expectations!  He growled (growls) and snapped (snaps) and lunged (occasionally lunges).  He did not like his new home at all!

Somewhere along the line our vet got word that we were having major problems with John and since that time Maya-sensei has been coming to our house regularly.  She works with John a bit, gives advice and suggestions, and in return we spend the hour talking about John and her work in English giving her a chance to use her English skills.

I also decided to keep a "John's Life Journal" so that I could report accurately on how we were fairing and I print it out so that Maya-sensei can read some English and get some new vocabulary...  John's life isn't very interesting though so I am running out of new vocabulary for Maya-sensei...

It is interesting to look back and see how I felt about John when he first arrived and how I write about him these days.

Saturday Dec. 8 

6:00 - no walk.  John was moody and growling.  He seemed happy when we got home and THEN he wanted a walk.  Nope! After breakfast. 

Tanya - walk with John at 8:00.  No problem. 

Tanya - 12:30 walk. Tanya and Tetsu - 5:30  BAD!!! I took John out of his circle and passed him to Tetsu.  In the genkan I reached down to pick up some gloves and John turned and attacked and kept lunging at me.  Tetsu took him for a walk. John was in a bad mood and growling all evening. 

But then, this week, three months later there is this entry.

February 22, Friday 

I was out for most of the day and Tetsu and John spent the day together.  Tetsu said he took John to a wide open field and since it was a very warm sunny day, the two of them sat on the grass (and then napped on the grass) and John wandered around but didn’t go far away.  In the end John and Tetsu laid out on the grass and enjoyed the good weather. 

Has John changed or have we only become better at reading him? He still barks incessantly when someone is visiting and this raises my stress levels as I am trying to teach and have conversations with people through all the noise. Maya-sensei suggested we put him in the bathroom farther away from the guests and to ignore him while he barks. John HAD learned to stop barking when he lived at her clinic for nearly a year so I guess he CAN learn.

Yesterday's entry.

February 27, Wednesday 

John stayed quiet in his circle for most of the day except for his morning, noon and evening walk. (Twenty minutes each). He is very cute walking briskly beside me and he looks at me often while we walk (probably expecting treats).  He gets treats when he pees immediately after coming outside, he gets treats whenever a car goes by and he doesn’t jump or bark at it. He still growls when getting put back in the circle but today he didn’t lunge or try to bite… 

I enjoy walking with John. Tetsu thinks he is very cute. If John starts growling we just flip the quilt over his circle and ignore him for awhile. One very good thing is that John doesn't hold a grudge and within 30 minutes his mood changes and he is happy again.

Don't you love that sideways glance of John's.  He looks like he is saying, "Yeah, yeah, get on with it!"
 

Sewing (some)

I am getting a bit of my own sewing done these days...  I should hope so!  My sewing room is a grand mess!!!

Upstairs on the ironing board I have embroidered blocks from the kitty quilt I've been working on and also some filler blocks for the same quilt.  Unfortunately this quilt is low on the priority list and I may have to pack it all away and make room for the other projects that are creeping over the table and onto the floor...

Downstairs I have occasionally been appliquing flower parts onto the someday Circle quilt that I started last month. 

Good glory!  All those little spiked pieces about killed me!  And I think there is another flower with the same spikes that will have to get done in the future!  At any rate, the first set of 8 flowers has been appliqued to this quilt...

I actually got way-laid on the applique because I've been hand piecing the little ribbon squares for the baby quilt I'm making... And that quilt has priority right now as I need to get it done and quilted and sent on to the baby!  I am sewing the blocks together by machine today but I am already thinking about a pieced border... which will take more time...   Should I make something that maybe will be prettier or stick with the schedule?

And I also want to start making squares for a signature quilt which is going to be next on the priority list as I'm hoping to take the squares to be signed at Leiya's wedding in May.  I need to get myself busy with that quilt too today!!!
 

Julie's quilting

Among the many workshops offered during the Women's Conference last weekend, Julie was in charge of a quilting workshop.  I came in as a sort of assistant to the 8 or 10 women who joined the hour long workshop.  Julie had made up small kits which included a square of plain fabric, four triangles of fabric with Japanese patterns, a square of batting and a square of backing.  She also had thread, needles, pins, sand paper and quilting motifs at the ready.  After a short demonstration on how to tie knots and how to do a running stitch, the ladies set about sewing triangles to the plain square.  Some of the more proficient even got to tracing the quilting motif to their patchworked square/triangles piece but most of the ladies were still sewing on triangles at the end of the hour...  Julie's comment...

"I guess I sew faster than most people...  An hour wasn't enough for this project."

I did later sit with one woman who quilted as she listened to the evening's speaker and she did get her mug rug bound and finished.  Thanks to Julie, one more quilter born!

The example of introducing quilting at the Women's conference is an old one.  Nearly 40 years ago when I was newly in Japan and working at a Christian center in Northern Japan, my missionary mentor attended this same Women's conference for a weekend.  When Martha returned, she brought along patchwork patterns from a workshop that had been offered on patchwork and the Bible.  One of the participants at the conference, Sandra Shigeno, had led a workshop with patterns that she had gathered on teaching Bible while sewing patchwork.  I think that Martha didn't actually take part in the workshop but she asked if she could have a set of the Bible patterns to bring back to me, whom she knew did patchwork.

I was excited to get the patterns and more excited to have the teaching plan for Sandra's patchwork and Bible class.  I went so far as to contact Sandra (in the days before internet and email) and she kindly gave me permission to use her patterns and plans for my personal use and for teaching others.  Using Sandra's New Testament patterns I have made quite a few New Testament quilts and have taught the patterns to many friends.  Even now there are two of the ladies who come to my house for English who have made New Testament quilts.

As far as we can work out, Julie also attended that women's conference some 40 years ago and though she doesn't remember meeting Martha, she did become inspired by Sandra Shigeno's Bible patchwork and Julie also brought home the patterns.  She too has made the Bible quilt (the whole quilt!) and taught others the patterns.  Even though Julie and I only met 7 or 8 years ago through blogging, we were connected to each other through Sandra (whom I've still never met though we exchange Christmas cards!)

This year, Julie brought along her Bible quilt and another quilt based on the Psalms to be displayed and Julie was also asked to speak a little about her patchwork and how and why she started.   I have made the bottom seven blocks in New Testament quilt I've taught.

Here is the Psalms quilt that Julie made using Psalm verses she cut out from a printed fabric.  She made the quilt to match the other Bible quilt.  She had stories to tell about how she designed the applique centers.

 One of the printed blocks...  Her use of fabrics makes the quilt shine!

By the way...  Julie has attended every Women's conference except one in all the years that she has been in Japan!  She is the most well-loved member of the conference and people flocked to her young and old.  She blesses those around her and in turn everyone looks out for her, wanting to be helpful, wanting to return a bit of all that she gives others.

I also asked Julie to bring along her Quilt Diary which I had glimpsed at when she brought it to the Tokyo Quilt Festival in January...  I wanted to get a proper look and I wanted to hear the stories involved in her treasured Diary. 

Ever since Julie began quilting, she has taken photos and written down stories of all her quilts in her diary.  It is ragged and falling apart and the width of the book as doubled.  It now needs to be held together with a piece of elastic!  Julie wonders what she is going to do when she gets to the last page of the book... and she isn't far from it!

A master quilter's hand.  Julie is left handed by the way.  It is this hand that has worked the hundreds of needles through countless quilts over the many, many years!

I'm pretty sure this is the first page of Julie's diary...  the date says begun 1988...  I'm annoyed that I cut off the bottom of the page in which recorded the finished date but I think I remember that it didn't take her even a year to finish it... (Julie, if you want to give us that information it would be appreciated!)  This too was a pattern that Julie got from Sandra at the Women's conference.  She made a pin cushion at the workshop, went home and cut up left-over fabric from all the clothes she had made for her 6 children.  How could you make this Cathedral Window quilt with 6 children under your feet!

 I boldly asked Julie which was her favorite quilt, or at least which quilt stuck in her mind the most.  She turned to this page which is a Boy Scout quilt she made in 1991 after getting signatures from boy scouts at a scouting Jamboree.  Interspersed through the pieced blocks are boy scout marks used all over the world with the World Scout mark in the center.

Julie's Quilt Diary is also what brought the two of us together.  Julie turned to this page to point out a quilt that she had made for her son in 2010.  When she visited her son and gave him this quilt for his birthday, he suggested that she really needed to keep a blog of all the quilting that she has done.  Not familiar with the blogging world, her son set up a blog for her and on a sidebar randomly chose a few blogs that she might like to read to get an idea of what one could blog about.  He must have searched blogs by American's in Japan, who are Quilters and Christian...  Anyway, he found my blog and just typed it in for Julie to check out.  WHICH SHE DID!!!  WHICH LED TO A BLOGGING FRIENDSHIP!!!  This is the link to Julie's blogging My Quilt Diary.

I was tickled to find a quilt that I own in Julie's Quilt Diary, the vegetable table runner!  If you read the story in the diary you will see that I had made a simple quilt for Julie using the Chinese characters of her last name Fukuda and I included Psalm 128:2 because Fukuda means "Happy Field".  I got the produce from Julie's field!!!

And this is Julie's most recent quilt made for her grandson and finished in the early hours of New Year's Day this year.  By the way, Julie is a completely hand pieced, hand quilted quilter.  No sewing machines for her!  Isn't she amazing!  This last entry isn't going to be the last for long because while at the Women's Conference she was putting in lots of stitches on another quilt for another grandson!  Its photo and story will soon be included in Julie's wonderful quilt diary!

Our dear Julie!