Today is one of those turnaround days when there is a lot to do!
I am ready for tomorrow's workshop with Woodland Patchers in Altrincham (hope I spelt that right), where we are going to make the Super Strips quilt top. I will take my camera, as this workshop always produces some great quilt tops and leaves me wanting to make another workshop sample...
On Thursday, I will trek north to Edinburgh for the Spring Quilt Festival at Ingliston. This is a very enjoyable show and, while the Spring Quilt Festivals (which include the ones at Ardingly (January), Chilford and Exeter (both in March) aren't on the scale of Quilts UK at Malvern in May, there is more than enough to fill a fun day, including a selection of short workshops. My workshop project this year is a little kinchaku or drawstring bag, with a sashiko motif based on the shippo design.
To give you some eye candy for today, here is the sampler quilt Jane Mariott (a quilter from Wrexham Quilting Circle) made using patchwork and sashiko blocks from my "Japanese Quilt Blocks" book. She added extra sashiko squares in the corners, which look very effective, making the corners part of the quilt, unlike my plain, overlapped corners on the original quilt. Thanks for the photo Jane!
3 comments:
I've been playing around with ideas for a new quilt for our bedroom, and when I saw this post I remembered all the gorgeous quilts in your book. I especially love the ones that blend the sashiko squares with patchwork ones, like the one pictured here.
I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about sashiko outside the traditional navy-and-white color scheme. Obviously, anything is possible, but I thought perhaps you'd seen examples and would know if they looked OK or not. The color scheme I'm looking at is more of an aqua/seafoam with rust orange, and the quilt would primarily be the aqua/seafoam.
I enjoy seeing the various sashiko etc pictures that you share on this blog! I'm still enjoying the book, too. One great thing about it is that my husband can pick out designs from it because they don't all feel so girly. Thanks so much!
Hi Kelly,
Your ideas for going outside the deep kon-iro indigo and white combination used in Shonai sashiko sound great to me. I have quite a few very old sashiko pieces in my collection which combine different, paler shades of blue with creamy white sashiko thread, and touches of rusty orange ("persimmon colour" in Japanese threads/fabrics) always works well as a contrast to those blues. Your colour scheme will be gorgeous!
I think another reason I like geometric sashiko designs so much is exactly because they are not girly! After all, most traditional sashiko designs started out as decoration/reinforcement on workwear, with much of the more intricate designs (in Shonai at least) used on men's clothing. Add the very masculine earlier kamon crest designs to that (as in those that were of samurai origin) and you have design sources which are not at all feminine-biased.
Olympus make a lovely shaded aqua sashiko thread (in their 40 metre-long range) and another with rust/burnt orange/ocher/purplish blue (in their 100 metre range). Have you seen those? Euro Japan Links sell both (see website links).
Please send a photo when you make your quilt!
Thanks so much for the quick response, for the links, and the thoughts! I will definitely send a picture if I go ahead with this idea. Thanks again!
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