Tuesday's workshop - Japanese Art Quilt - Boromono

My final summer workshop at Gresford was on Tuesday and the subject was Boromono - literally "rag thing" - patchwork. I have quite a few old Japanese boromono or ranru (tatter cloths) in my collection and the random, accidental abstract art look to the multiple patches and applique mends on these old cloths inspired a two-layer quilt recently.

The quilters made a strip of patchwork using their ruler's width as a cutting unit and we went from there, working intuitively, with very little measuring! Every boromono will be unique.

This is Jo's - including some beautiful fabrics collected on her travels (Indian silk) with Oakshott fabrics and batiks. Work in progress -

and almost finished - this is Jo's first patchwork too!


Charlotte also used a lot of stripes, checks and shot cottons. The vivid green is a scrap of Japanese sashiko cotton. She thought about including some denim, but decided it would look better without.

She is going to use yellow ochre sashiko thread to quilt it.


Jackie's boromono mixed a more traditional colour palette of blue and white, including an African wax batik that looked very much like traditional Japanese sarasa cotton (patterns adapted from Indian chintz).

All three boromono together at the end of class.


My boromono and some original vintage boromono -