"Treasures of Yamagata" quilts arrived for Quilts UK

Peaceful Heart Quilt Group from Yuza-machi, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, have sent their challenge quilts to be shown at Quilts UK, Malvern, in a couple of weeks. These will be in a separate section rather than with the main competitive quilts, as they aren't part of the competition. Some have been in the UK before - at Quiltfest (click the link to see them).

When I visited Yuza (the town where I used to teach) in 2006, I took challenge fabric bundles for all the quilters and set the theme of "Yamagata". You can see some of them as work in progress in this Youtube clip - there's a set of screeenshots and description here.

The fabrics included a Kona Bay gold print with cranes and pines, a tone on tone with a blue forest trees design and a semi-ombre fabric shading from purple to tuquoise in bands (made for a Quilters' Guild challenge). Here I am in Reiko Domon's studio in July 2006, on a very hot and humid evening, folding up the fabric packs (thanks to Mags Ramsay for the first two photos!) - I folded and ribboned the bundles once I'd arrived, so they wouldn't get squashed in my luggage.


Look out for the new quilts in the Yamagata set at Quilts UK, Malvern! All the show visitor details are available on the Grosvenor Shows website.