Quiltfest days

Val, Quiltfest's organiser, has had a few people asking when I will be there. As I have a lot of work on this month and will be away quite a bit, the only dates I can commit to are Saturday 13th (at the Museum gallery) and Sunday 14th (Trading Day at the Town Hall).

Please see the Quiltfest wesbite for all the main info.

Saturday workshop at Serendipity, Bovey Tracey

I'm teaching a workshop at Serendipity on Saturday - the "Hinagata Kimono". This is a miniature sewing sample of a kimono, something that was used to teach girls how to sew nearly a hundred years ago. The one we are making will be hitoe (unlined) - this is achieveable on one day and gives the chance to learn various ways of neatening off the inside of the kimono too. Sorry, the workshop is already sold out. I'll post photos next week.

These are some of my old hinagata (Japanese online sellers often put a lighter in the photo for scale!)

Western clothing was made too -

- and household goods (these are all about Barbie doll size) -

Futon and quilt
Mosquito net


Yogi (kimono shaped quilt)

Linda's Japanese block sampler quilt

Linda Harroun sent me photos of the sampler quilt she made from "Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match". She writes -

Dear Susan - your book called to me. I'd never been interested in Japanese fabrics before. This project helped me hone my appliqué skills and I learned Sashiko. Thank you so much. Linda Harroun in Colorado Springs


It looks like there are some very pretty fabrics used in Linda's quilt. The koi block looks like it is applique. I like her combination of applique and sashiko on the moon & cloud block very much.

Thanks for the photos!

Javhlan's kimono quilt

This lovely quilt featuring the kimono blocks from "Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match" was made in Portugal by Javhlan Byamba. She writes -

Some years ago I bought your book on Japanese quilts. I was very happy to start making some kimono blocks. If you have time please do check my blog. http://patchworkinportugal.blogspot.com/

I am not an experienced quilter but I made a big kimono-shaped quilt for my husband.

If you visit her blog, you can see detail photos of the individual kimono blocks. The way she has carefully selected a wide variety of Japanese prints and used them in the kimono blocks, cutting the pieces to show off the fabric really beautifully, is quite stunning.

I spotted that we have similar tastes for our kimono block fabrics too - there are three bocks using a Hoffman oriental print with a fantastic cloud pattern (first one is on the far left on the second row) and the Kona Bay fabric she used for the block in the middle of the top row, featuring the crane, is one I used for the garden section in my "Butterfly Dance" quilt.

Thanks for sharing the photos!

Japanese design sources for theming a quilt

A fellow quilter contacted me about Japanese quilt designs -

hallo Susan

I am attempting to make a quilt with reference to a festival I saw in Japan. I am including Kamons and have found your books very helpful. what I would like is a bit more knowledge on the meanings of Japanese symbols and Kamons.

I thought the links and information I sent her might be useful to other quilters. There's never enough space in my books to include as much info as I'd like to about every design motif!

There's some useful info links via the Immortal Geisha website, which I'd recommend as a very good resource for links and info about Japanese designs, because most of the members are into kimono, so motif meaning and seasonality is of great interest - first section here is the "Motif Central" forum -

http://www.immortalgeisha.com/ig_bb/viewforum.php?f=64

There's alot of info in this part of that forum too -

http://www.immortalgeisha.com/ig_bb/viewforum.php?f=18

This topic has alot of useful links within it, particularly for things like seasonal design motifs -

http://www.immortalgeisha.com/ig_bb/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2518

The problem with most of the kamon sites I know of is that they are in Japanese - this one lists kanji crests by name. You could try a combination of viewing the crests through the links in the "alphabetical" Japanese list by clicking on them or try viewing the site through Google's language tools, but if your computer hasn't got Chinese/Japanese characters enabled in it's Regional settings (under the Control Panel), the text won't display correctly.

http://www.otomiya.com/kamon/index.htm

Here's the same site via Google language tools - the translation (especially of the alphabetical headings) is a bit odd but useable -
http://www.otomiya.com/kamon

The other problem with kamon is that most books of kamon, with English text, don't list the designs by family name. You are more likely to find family name/kamon design links via Japanese sites, where the idea is to order goods, kimono, hanko seals etc. with your family crest on it. The main book I use most only lists by Japanese motif name, in kanji and katakana syllabary, but again that isn't much use if you can't read Japanese because you can't read the motif name, even though the book title, intro and contents list (which is incomplete!) are in English. Another point about a lot of the design books I have collected is that they are either expensive art books or out of print - or have Japanese text.

One way to approach making a quilt with reference to a particular festival is to google the festival name and any images you can remember. What festival was it? That might set you off on an approach to a design. For example, if I was making a quilt with a particular festival as the inspiration, I'd look for images relating to it and add in seasonal or geographical references. There might be the kamon of the local clan or temple on banners or costumes, colours of dancer's costumes etc. as starting points. Here's a couple of images of the Yamagata Hanagasa Matsuri that could be a starting point for a design -

http://www.photojpn.org/matsuri/tohoku/hana2.html

The ubiquitous clothing for summer festivals are yukata (cotton kimono), so including yukata fabrics or blue and white prints will give an instant "matsuri" (festival) feeling.

Re using kanji on anything, go carefully! http://www.hanzismatter.com/ shows many examples of weird Chinese/Japanese kanji combinations.

More photos from Nantwich

Carol sent me some more photos from Nantwich. I'm glad she had her new camera with her! Here I'm demoing making the miniature hinagata kimono.

She also took some extra photos of the quilts. These are higher resolution, so please be patient if they slow down the blog loading, but if you click on them, you can see much more detail in the quilts. The photo of "Kyoto Dreams", the small wallhanging with the Utamaro geisha and Japanese room, has lots of detail in the photo. You can almost see the individual beads in the centres of the cherry blossoms.


As well as quilts, I used the "anti trip" chairs (covering the quilt stand legs) as a convenient place to display some cushions. I have quite a lot of cushion covers and they take up a lot of room to display on a table, plus somehow they never look quite right. It would be great to have a sofa as a demo space sometime!


Here's a photo of the reproduction fabric I mentioned in my last post. I love it! The second fabric is from the original quilt which inspired my (hoped for) recreation.

Nantwich Fabric Sale quilt display

I took everything needed for displaying the quilts - except my camera. One of the quilters from Wrexham Quilting Circle, Jane, kindly took these for me (you can see one of Jane's quilts in "Compendium of Quilting Techniques" (UK edition)/"200 Quilting Tips Techniques and Trade Secrets (USA edition), in the section on English paper piecing).

As I took the Oriental Log Cabin Sampler quilt to Chester Ps & Qs last Wednesday, as a sample for the Log Cabin workshop I'm teaching there in March, it ended up in a different bag and I forgot to take it today as originally planned. However, I don't know where I could have displayed it anyway! Two metal quilt stands measuring 3 metres each had quilts on both sides and there were also smaller quilts on both sides of the two lighting stands.

I would like to add more quilting to several of these quilts, including "The Denman Kannon", "Kasuri Sampler" (side by side on the right in the first photo), "Butterfly Dance", "Kamon Sampler (left above), "Super Strips II" and "Takarazukushi" (second photo from top). Hmm, that's most of the quilts on display...! There's room for a bit more quilting in the border of "Fish and Chips" too. Perhaps those are projects for next winter.

My demo for today was a bit different, as I was making a hinagata kimono, a miniature kimono sewing sampler that shows all the steps for making a real hitoe (unlined) kimono but is only about 18ins long. I'm teaching this next Saturday at Serendipity quilt shop in Bovey Tracey, Devon and thought it would be nice to have an extra workshop sample. Plus I had a yard of a Kona Bay print that seemed just right for making hinagata. Although the background is black, I sewed this using cream thread, so the stitching can be seen.

Today seemed busier than previous years and I couldn't get away from my demo table very much. There was a little time for shopping in the afternoon, when I got several great Japanese style fabrics for backing some forthcoming quilt projects. I like to keep a good selection of backings in stock so to speak, so I can use a different one on each quilt, keeping it appropriate to the quilt theme and colours whenever possible, and enabling me to identify individual quilts from the back. So long as any joins aren't down or across the centre, where the quilt it likely to be folded, I don't worry about having a pieced back.

The best find of the day was a repro stripe print that is the best solution I've found for the Turkey Red utility quilt project. I had already found another possibility, but this one is even better. I'll post a photo once I've unpacked the car - it's raining right now and I don't want to get soaked!

I've been promised some more photos, so will post those when they arrive.

Nantwich quilts preview

A few of the quilts that are packed and ready for tomorrow -

Nantwich Fabric Sale on Sunday

The annual fabric sale is fast approaching. I am planning to have a miniature kimono sewing demo as well as some sashiko on the go.

The car park at the hall is pay and display, which applies on Sunday too (don't get caught out, as the car park attendants do check on Sundays). It was cheap all day last year.

The snow has melted, so we should be able to get out!

Here's all the info straight from the flyer -

Quilters and Fabrics

January Sale

Nantwich Civic Hall

Cheshire, CW5 5DG

(Market Street, Parking Available*)

With exhibitions and demonstrations including:

Quilt Display by Susan Briscoe

Alsager Patchwork & Quilters

Sew & Sews

Barbara Chainey

Pinfold Textile Artists

Beartown Quilters & PAtchwork

& and additional new Quilt Display Areas

Plus many stalls with fabrics and related items

Sunday 24th January 2010

10a.m.to 4p.m.

Admission #2.00 (partners & children free)

Admission ticket raffle at 2.30p.m. (must be present to win)

Between 3 - 4p.m. - even more bargains!

Enquiries at Homecraft Quilted Designs

Tel:0208742 3685 or mcgohlish@googlemail.com

Snow mountain demolition

Progress! Rubbish collected today and snowplough came back to remove the 4ft high snow mountain blocking my drive.

As it looked like the road might be clear enough to drive out in the next day or two (hopefully!) I started digging out the car again, but there is about 10 inches of snow minimum directly in front, and about 16 feet to the road, so have give up again...

Temperature is just below freezing.

Snowplough is here!

This is today's big excitement! The snow plough has arrived!

Whether it will be able to clear the road or not remains to be seen. There is a car inconveniently parked in the cul-de-sac turning head, which might cause a few problems.

Hope it can get some of the road cleared.

Today's dollop of snow

Fine snow has been falling all day and most of yesterday. Depth varies - along the top of the wall there's at least 12 inches of snow, with the drifts up to three feet or so.

For the third time, Wrexham Council have failed to collect our bins. With Christmas, we have had nearly four weeks with no refuse collection. If they can't get the bin waggon up here due to the roads, I wonder whose responsibility that was? Still no grit at all. Phoned the council earlier (how interesting that refuse collection isn't listed in their big page 304 advert in the phone book!) and the official advice is now to leave the bins "out", they will collect when they can. I hope no one manages to skid into them then... How come the oil delivery can get up here but the bin waggon can't?

The snow in the back garden is deeper.

Kate's koi obi

My fellow kimono enthusiast Kate has completed her mofuku nagoya obi remake. Obi is the sash worn with kimono, nagoya obi have the part that wraps around the body already folded in half and stitched in place, and mofuku means it was (originally) mourning wear - quite a lot of mofuku obi with very beautiful woven patterns turn up for sale on vintage kimono websites, at reasonable prices for some very pretty weaves, but need a colourful remake like this to really be wearable (other than at funerals!)


Kate writes -

I printed off a lot of koi pictures and took the bits from each one that I liked. I think the head was taken from one I loved on Ichiroya. I just drew it up on a piece of A3, it wasn't too hard (trust me, I am no artist at all!), trying to get the tail to curve in the right way was the hardest... (Susan) gave me advice on how to fill in the scale pattern, and gave me lots of support in general since this was my first sashiko project! I really enjoyed doing it especially because you see results quite quickly (and I'm impatient...). I spent a while looking for the right obi (the woven pattern) as I knew the sort of design I wanted, with either wild waves or segaiha.

I did a practice version, which helped no end. If I never do the scale pattern again, it will be too soon!

That means Kate will have to try the urokozashi pattern again! I didn't like those kinds of hitomezashi patterns the first few times I tried them (I thought sorobanzashi was really just too hard) but, once you've tried them a few times and got into the right frame of mind for stitching them, these patterns are so versatile and actually quite quick to do, plus you can bend them around a pattern. When I originally stitched my Koi (based on a print by Hokusai and now a kit with Euro Japan Links), Reiko Domon suggested I should have used urokozashi (scale stitch) for the fish body, but I thought this would make the design too difficult for beginners. The black and white detail is from the indigo and white version I stitched later.


The koi scales on the "Denman Kannon" allowed more room for detail - but this time urokozashi would have been too small, so I made a variation on two larger sashiko patterns.

I used it to make the outer ring on the halo instead.

If I do a medium sized version of the koi sometime, I definitely want to try urokozashi, like Kate did. It looks so effective.

Why I don't like snow, by Takenoko

"It is too cold on my paws, nothing smells right and there's just too much of it! Wake me up in spring - I'm hibernating!!"


"I only took two steps outside and the snow was up to my middle!"

These are the pawprints of a cat who has taken one step forward, then stepped backwards quickly...


"My house is snowed in!"


"There's too much snow in the garden..."

"There's snow all over my favourite bench too... it might look soft, but its just COLD."


"Please do not disturb". The doorknocker is frozen...