Works in Progress before summer vacation

I have a sewing day today so I'm bound and determined to get off this computer and go work on some projects upstairs! 

On the WIP table are the leader/enders quilt blocks to be finished, a fabric post card for my mother (maybe next year I'll do photo postcards for her...  I'm running out of ideas!) and the NHK Partnership quilt block to think about for the Tokyo International Quilt Festival next year.  The theme is "Music".  Get the details for joining at Queenie's Needlework blog.  I'm one of the most unmusical people in the world so I don't know if I'm going to come up with anything in the next two weeks (the deadline is in August but I'm off to the States in two weeks.)  Music... Music...  I'm so bad at ideas....  But I really loved being a part of the Partnership Quilt last year and would love to participate this year if my thinking cap will just start working....

In the meantime...

I put the dark border on the Antique Squares quilt.  Now for some simple quilting in the grid lines and this will be finished.  NOT SO!  I'm making things difficult for myself again...

"What if I relieved that heavy border with a fringe of lace?  Wait...  I don't have any lace on hand...  What if I put an edge of tatting around the squares?  I've got ANTIQUE tatting/crochet thread of my grandmother's.  That box in itself is an antique and the thread isn't getting used anywhere else...  It might go nicely with the antique blocks...  Is tatting a LONG～～ edge all around this wall hanging even possible?"

So I've spent three days tatting and haven't enough edging for even one side.  But I guess it is possible.  The tatting is not very fast going, though maybe worth the effort.  The trouble with tatting is that when I make a mistake it is very difficult to go back and correct.  Unlike crochet, everything has to be cut out and reknotted.  Making a mistake puts me back at least 30 minutes... 

 Unless I get hopeless tied up in tatting thread I will continue making edging in the evenings... 

Antique squares

I finished hand appliqueing my 2 inch squares to the grid wall hanging I've been making.  Though I had wondered if I was going to have enough squares to fill all 162 places, it ended up that with a bit of searching through the bag, I did.

Those are all antique fabrics there from at least 50 years ago (except for the flowers which I pulled fabric for from my scrap bin.)

Though I had thought that I wouldn't have enough different fabrics for every single space, I was surprised when I went back to the bag to find that I'd overlooked some of the squares.  At first I had just pulled interesting fabrics... then I went back and pulled "boring" fabrics (checks and solids), and then I went back and pulled a square and laid it side by side with others to see if I'd already used it or not.  I was surprised to find very slight differences in what I'd assumed were the same fabric.

For example...

.... this maroon dot fabric...

...and this one.  They look the same (even in this photo... but the latter square has more dots to the square.

I could have sworn I'd used this clover-like indigo fabric somewhere else...

...but when I went back and looked I found only this indigo fabric with the same shaped flowers but spread out more on the square.

I was absolutely sure that this fabric was already sewn on and lo and behold...

...here it is in a different color!

And then there was this one which was already cut on the bias and so I used it as is...

Checks too were so similar that I had to keep comparing the squares side by side.  This simple blue check...

...and this simple blue check.  And then there were gray checks that were nearly the same and purple ones.  So you can see how I was able to add the last squares without including any contemporary fabrics.

Now to figure out a border...  Right now I have two that I'm auditioning.

On the wall I like the dark border...  It seems more vintage and in tune with the antique fabrics (the borders are NOT going to be authentic.)

But in the photos the moss green seems more subdued and doesn't overpower the squares ...  It isn't anything close to vintage though...  a lot of colorful dots...

I guess I'll keep going in and out of the sewing room until I get a strong impression one way or the other.

On the quilting front...

What's going on on the quilting front? 

I helped my friend T-san put together the blocks she was making into a baby quilt.  T-san is going through chemo therapy now and the applique was getting to be too much for her.  As she finds quilting easier I took her blocks and fabric choices home and made up a flimsy for her.  T-san chose the quilting pattern and I marked the lines and got a quilt sandwich back to her yesterday.  Such pretty fabric choices!  The quilt is going to be wonderful.  I'll get a photo when of it when we get to the binding stage.

I also finished the quilting on the McKenna "Out to Lunch" quilt.  So pretty!  I think the berries on it are supposed to be huckleberries but I'm calling them blueberries because my blueberry bush looks like it is going to give us a lot of blueberries this year!

The grid applique quilt that I'm working on is growing slowly.  I found the pattern in a box of quilting and applique books a blog friend sent me and the pattern is called Charming.  The pattern photo is quite bright and cheery with loads of colorful prints being used, but as I'm limiting myself to the antique squares that I inherited, the colors are a bit muted (but I like that too). 

By the way...  Do you notice that the above pattern is holey and taped in numerous places?  I left it by my sewing chair and one morning woke up to find it scattered all over the living room in pieces!

"I'm using this!!!!  Who tore up my pattern?!"

All four cats who were within chair distance looked up at me innocently.  I can't scold anybody as I don't know who the culprit is.  This has actually happened to me a couple of times.  If anyone wants to borrow a pattern be prepared for tape and holes!

I have a feeling that I'm going to run out of squares pretty soon...  What would you do?  Add squares from your stash (it's not like I don't have a billion 2 inch squares already cut and ready to use!) to fill the grid or leave the grid unfilled in places?  I need to make a decision pretty soon as I think I only have about 20 of these antique squares left.

Part of me wants to fill the grid as planned.  Part of me wants to keep the fabrics purely antique.  Decisions, decisions.

Creativity

I stopped in yesterday at a little house in my neighborhood that "takes care" of older people during the day while their families are off at work and school etc. I think there must be about 8 grandmas who come on a fairly regular basis. The "center" was having their Culture Day which means they were displaying the arts and crafts that some of the grandmas have been making and I was just amazed at all the things! Gee! I wish I were old enough to join their class and learn some of their crafts! They very proudly showed me the patchwork they had sewn, the baskets they had woven, the flip-flop slippers that they had made. Really amazing what some of these people at age 80 and 90 can do!

The teacher just seems to borrow books from the library, basically learn the craft by book and then supplies the materials and gives hands-on instructions. She said some of the people are so gung-ho and fast that they run out of supplies before the end of the day is out! I love the slippers. I saw the process being done, but I sure wouldn't be able to make one of these without a lot of trial and error!

The grandmas very nicely gave me a couple of the baskets that they made out of a bamboo sieve and Japanese paper. The paper is from an old account book (found at an antique shop) written nearly 80 years ago by brush and charcoal, and cut up and applied like paper-mache to the sieve and then stained in persimmon juice! It looks like some very expensive antique yet the grandmas just make them in their spare time!

What inspiration! Ah! I hope when I'm 90 I'm still working with my hands and being creative!

A Worn out quilt

Hmmm. I don't seem to have anything thrilling to say this morning. Maybe because I'm in a bad mood. I realized about 20 minutes ago that I was supposed to have gone to an "important" meeting (not in my book so maybe that's why I forgot) last night and it is still too early to call people this morning and apologize. Just because I'm over 50 doesn't mean I have to assume all my forgetfulness is due to age but I do seem to have these convenient lapses more often!

So instead of spreading grumpiness around I'll show you an extremely old quilt and ask what you think I should do about it.

This is my first completed quilt made under supervision. It even has a date on it, Nov. 12, 1986! That means it is 22 years old. That's about right. Before this I had made a couple quilts from book instructions that were horrors. They were such monstrosities! (I'll go looking for pictures of those.) After Takumi was born I started feeling stressed out from lack of adult conversation and when Tetsu ended up between jobs he offered to watch Takumi to let me get out of the house once a week. Tetsu had even heard of a quilt class being offered at our church so for a few months I attended a real class and had some female companionship accompanied by handwork.

After one or two small clutch purses, the teacher suggested I make a baby quilt (I had the baby!) and so I started making squares from old fabric that someone had once given me (from a grandmother's collection!) and old shirts and aprons of my own. Once I got the blocks done I just asked the teacher to buy me some fabric that might go with it, I really had no idea about colors, contrast etc and was just interest in the sewing process rather than the designing.

Once the quilt was all together I did a simple quilting pattern and at that point I knew I was caught for good! I went on to make a much larger sample quilt under the teacher's direction but then Tetsu found a job in a different prefecture so I was on my own again for quilt making.

As I say, this quilt is old and the fabrics are older! I still have a whole bag of these old fabrics already cut into squares. The quilt is dissolving away into dust and in places it is only held together by my quilting stitches. The cats have attacked this too and so even the newer fabric is ripped in places. Right now the quilt sits on an ottoman so it is still getting wear. I suppose I should put it away so that it doesn't suffer more damage but for some reason I keep it out. I don't think Takumi will ever have any great nostalgic feelings for it and it looks so bad that I'm the only one who could love it now or in the future.

I saw on someone's blog, some cushions and stuffed animals made from antique quilts and thought "Well, I've got the "antique quilt" right here. I could just cut this up into pieces and make a cat cushion or something."

But cushions don't hold my attention as much as quilts and there are only so many cushions that one can have. But it might be a nice way to go for an old quilt...

What do you think? What do any of you do with old, worn out quilts?

Spring has sprung!

Yeah!  April is warming up!  We are so glad that we can start putting away fluffy pajamas, room heaters and knitted caps.  

Tetsu has changed the snow tires off our cars!  The daffodils are out!  

The forsythia are blooming!  I can hear nightingales in the mornings!  Pheasants are running across the lot behind us!  Yeah spring! 

 

I decided I needed to get a post written while I can because at the end of the week Julieta-san and her mother and brother are coming for a visit!  Tetsu is in full cleaning mode and he has a plan to wash one or two sets of curtains everyday until they arrive.  He is also out planting flowers near our front door to give the house a welcoming appeal.  We will have Julieta and family at our house for one day and then we are off to an onsen over night (they are only in Nikko for two days) but we've been excited and planning for their visit for months!  Hopefully I'll be able to write about their visit in the next post.

Actually, the cherry blossoms have already come and gone in our part of Japan, but as always the trees were beautiful though the blossoms fleeting.

My friends and I went out for a day of sketching and enjoyed riceballs and snacks while we played with watercolors and pens.

The elementary school had their entrance ceremony for the incoming 1st graders and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom that day.

This year there are only 10 first graders in the school.  Japan's population is shrinking!

Our daily morning walking at the cemetery where we were the only ones there to enjoy the bank of cherry trees.

And here you can see how the falling blossoms start looking like snow on the ground...  No, it really wasn't cold enough for me to need that down jacket, but it WAS 5:00 AM in the morning and I was too lazy to change out of my pajamas and I just wore the jacket over all...

After the cherry blossoms, the rape blossoms begin to take over the countryside.

On the quilting front, I finished the applique quilt I've been working on.  I'm not sure this was a success or not.  My purpose for making this quilt was to duplicate an old quilt I'd made 10 years ago with antique flour-sack fabrics (they were given to me nearly 40 years ago from an older woman who had had them passed on to her from her great aunt!).  Anyway I wanted to make a modern version from batiks and dyed fabrics that I have used and collected an abundance of scraps.  For that purpose this is really a nice showcase quilt, however instead of using the original pattern, I eyeballed the old quilt and just started in, realizing half way through that my squares were too small and my spacing too narrow.  This led to the overall quilt being smaller and though I had hoped to be able to display the two quilts side by side, they dont match up...  I had spent weeks making the tatting for the first quilt but with this one, I still had leftover tatting lace from Leiya's wedding veil from 5 years ago, so I put that to work for this quilt.  This is the modern batik version,

And this is the quilt from 10 years ago with antique fabrics.  M-san is also making a version of this quilt so stay tuned for her creation in the near future.

Luka got a drastic haircut!

Taiga is enjoying being barefoot!

And that's about it for the month...  Lots of end of the year meetings.  Lots of new school year meetings.  

Happy Easter!

Weaving

I know... I know...  I said I wasn't posting for a few days.  We are off on a three day trip up north from Saturday which means I have lots of things to do before we go...

BUT  I had such a fantastic day yesterday that I wanted to go ahead and post photos...  So what if the house doesn't get vaccummned, Choco doesn't get a bath!!!  I'll do those chores tomorrow!

My friend Keiko-san called and asked if I'd like to accompany her a couple of hours to visit her cousin and to go to Costco.  Well, we'd just gone to Costco a week or so ago so no, I wasn't really interested in shopping in Costco.  But visiting her cousin?  Keiko-san has tried to explain to me what her cousin does... something to do with old kimonos and dying...  It had always sounded interesting so I joined Keiko at 9:30 and off we drove for a couple of hours.

It turns out that Keiko-san's cousin and wife have a little shop, and a weaving school.  Keiko-san's 93 year old uncle is in charge of dying fibers and threads.  I walked into a gallery, museum, workshop and fairyland all in one!

Threads, threads, threads!  Some cotton, some silk.  All colors of the rainbow!  Some dyed in variegated colors which is the specialty of the grandfather's.

It was like a chemist's shop with all the powders and colors.

Here is the scale that the grandfather uses to measure his magic powders.

Threads hanging to dry.

There were all sorts of tools and "machines" that I'd never seen before.

Boxes and boxes of wooden spools of thread waiting to be made up into a loom set-up.

And here is a warp set-up ready for loading into a loom.  As I understand it, it is the making up of the warp (the lengthwise threads in a loom) that takes the time and skill and special tools before the weaver can begin work.

And then here is a glance at the weaving workroom!  There are 40 looms here and students get set up on a loom and work weeks and months to make the special sort of fabric known as Saki-ori (I think that was what it was called.)

Of course weavers can work with just thread, but it looked like most of the looms were being woven with silk fabric strips.  And it sounded like many of the weavers had purchased old kimonos at flea markets and cut them into thin strips either with scissors or with a roller cutter.  (I proudly could say that I knew exactly what a roller cutter was.)  I guess if the strips are being cut then this really isn't Saki-ori which is the tearing of fabric... so maybe this type of weaving has a different name.  Sorry about that.  These strips of silk turn into...

...this!  Doesn't that make your heart sing!  I want to try!!!!

One weaver had cut up a patterned kimono and was weaving the strips in with complimentary threads.

 And a beginning weaver had started with some regular floral cotton fabric that had been torn into strips.  Plain ol' clothing can be recycled into something absolutely beautiful!

"Would you like to try?"

"Oh!  Definitely!"

"I knew this was going to happen.  You just stay here and learn how to weave and I'll go shopping at Costco.  I'll be back in a few hours."  Keiko-san knows my love for handcrafting and threads and fabric.

I got set up at a loom that seemed to be readied for people like me who just want to give it a try.

I learned the basics of foot control ad shuttle movement.  And I started at it!!!  I am a weaver!

 The strips were torn fabric from an antique cushion cover.

 I took great pleasure in watching my progress and admiring how the variegated threads made interesting patterns through the loom comb.

All these beautiful colors in the threads!

 Can you picture me alone in this brightly lit workroom surrounded by looms, listening to mine make squeaky noises as I pushed the pedals back and forth.  Outside the window I had a view of a cherry tree in full bloom and occasionally the soft sound of passing rain was mixed with nightingales singing from the tree branches!  Can you imagine anything more heavenly!!! 

 The tree was gorgeous!

 My loom and these very large thread spools.

After I'd woven up all the antique cushion strips, Keiko-san's cousin chose a dark cotton fabric and showed me how to tear it up into one long strip.  It doesn't look very interesting just as a piece of fabric.

But after it is woven!!!  Look at how all those colored warp threads show through!!  I spent a blissful three hours at the loom and by the time Keiko-san came to pick me up I'd made quite a beautiful strip of fabric.  Now what to do with it I don't know...

When I showed my creation to Tetsu last night I added...

"Anytime you want to buy me a loom I'd be perfectly happy to have one!"

Too bad Keiko-san's cousin lives so far away!!!