Back to the blog!

As it has been for everyone, life has been quite frantic and strange for the last few months. Now I have a bit more time to sort out the photos properly, it is time for me to revive my blog. You can still follow my artist page on Facebook and my photos on Instagram of course, but it is always easier to find things retrospectively on my blog - which I will explain later on.  We were at Nagoya castle back in January when we first heard about the 'new illness' in Wuhan, so traveled back to the UK wearing masks... and having no idea of how things would change so suddenly.

At the beginning of March, Yuza Sashiko Guild, along with Reiko sensei's sister and brother in law, came to Scotland for a trip that included teaching and exhibiting at the Scottish Quilting Show at SEC Glasgow and again at Dornoch Fibre Fest, near Inverness. We managed to pack in visits to Edinburgh Castle, the Kelvingrove Museum at Glasgow, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's House for an Art Lover, Stonehaven and Dunottar Castle (just the outside), Tomatin Distillery and Urqhart castle as well. Quite a trip!

Reiko sensei taking photos of my antique boro display at SEC, where we shared the exhibition space.

Yuza Sashiko also launched their first book in English in the UK during the tour (I have copies for sale online).

After we waved them off at Edinburgh airport on 16th March, things started to change here very quickly and the UK went into lockdown on 23rd March. Things are still not back to normal and they are not likely to be for a long time.

As a result of the precautions we are all having to take now due to COVID-19, all my face-to-face teaching and all our shows have been cancelled - all the quilt shows, and all the World Textile Days. This has changed life for me a great deal, as I was used to traveling a lot! Fortunately I set up my online store last summer, so getting geared up to sell 100% online hasn't been as hard as it might have been. At the start of lockdown, I made sure I got plenty of threads and materials in stock. At that time, I was concerned about shipping from Japan. I mostly use FedEx, but some of the places I buy from use Japan Post, which has suspended all the economy shipping services. The 370m fine sashiko threads are shipped by Japan Post, which took quite a lot longer, even for the express post, so I made sure I ordered the complete range this time!

I have started an online newsletter (you can sign up here) and have been coming up with new products and new combinations of products (like these kogin thread sets, themed after seasonal colours).

I've also got the stencil and pattern booklet pack I designed for Today's Quilter in stock, along with many other new things, including my latest preprinted sashiko panels for Olympus Thread Mfg. Co. (Japan), some fabulous new designer hanafukin sashiko panels and lots of new hitomezashi kits and panels too.

I have been busiest during lockdown stitching boro...

My next book, The Book of Boro, will be published by David and Charles on 10th November 2020.

It has 20 projects, large and small, inspired by items from my personal boro collection (I've been collecting for nearly 30 years now, which I find hard to believe!), plus all the techniques you need and, of course, a history section about where boro comes from, how it was made, the boro revival and more.  I will be taking advance orders towards the end of the summer.

Now that the first and second pages edit are done and I only have the proof to check (when it arrives), I've returned to sashiko. I am just starting on a sashiko sampler stitch along, and will be posting instructions and photos here, as well as on Facebook and Instagram, very soon. It will be free and there is no need to sign up to anything - just get your sashiko supplies together and join in, at your own pace. The idea for the sampler is to use my preprinted sashiko panels, but if you have The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook and Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match, you could mark up your own panels instead. Hopefully I'll get one of the sampler quilt tops completely finished before starting the stitch along. It will be free to join in and you will be able to follow it here or on Facebook, where you can join my sashiko group, The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook (named after my book), to share photos and chat with other stitchers. I also want to do some short video tutorials, which will be on YouTube. Keep checking here for stitch along posts!

Yuza Sashiko Guild - first book in English

Reiko Domon posted some photos this morning of the new Yuza Sashiko book, The Magic of Yuza Sashiko, which their guild have just published.  I haven't seen it yet but hope to get my copy soon.  Yuza Sashiko Guild will be bringing copies for sale when they come to the Scottish Quilting Show at SECC in early March and also at Dornoch Fibre Fest, and we are planning a book signing session at Kaleidoscope books in between those events. I will share more info as I have it.  Hopefully I'll get some copies to sell on my website too.

They asked me to write a couple of pages for the book, explaining how I got interested in sashiko and kogin, so I've pasted the text for that below.

Yuza Sashiko - special stitching from Shonai

My links to Yuza Sashiko are down to a lucky chance. I was a Visual Art and Drama graduate from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, with a vague interest in Japanese art and design. It was my dream to go to Japan. When I was accepted onto the JET Program in 1991 to teach English in Japanese schools, I requested to teach in a small town in the north. I had never heard of sashiko - I thought the summers in the north would be cooler! I quickly fell in love with Yuza-machi, a town set in such beautiful countryside.

My hobbies there didn’t include sashiko or quilting, but I bought some of Eiko Yoshida’s sashiko books in the local bookstore. I had one small piece of Yuza sashiko, a gift from my student Kumiko Konno, made by her grandmother. My home was behind Obiya, the town’s biggest textile and kimono store, where I learned how to sew kimono, which I needed for my other hobby - tea ceremony. Through my job and hobbies, I got to know people in my neighborhood. I became interested in Japanese textiles, kimono, patchwork and quilting. Together with our homestay student from the USA, Matt Wandell, I explored places around Yuza-machi. When I returned to the UK, patchwork and quilting became my big hobby.

In the 1990s, communications were not as good as they are today. Keeping in touch was not easy and my Japanese reading and writing is terrible. Fortunately, I had several friends who spoke and wrote English. They kept me in touch with life in Yuza-machi. I was able to return to Japan for the Millennium New Year holiday. I revisited many places, including the town library, the town council and the new Yuza Junior High School. Every office had a beautiful piece of Yuza sashiko on display. I had never seen anything quite like them before, with many small patterns on one piece. Because I loved embroidery and hand sewing, I immediately wanted to learn how to stitch this special sashiko.

It was still the New Year holiday, so on 3rd or 4th January 2000, I had my first big encounter with Yuza sashiko patterns through Mayor Onedira. When I told him I would love to learn Yuza sashiko but didn’t know how, he immediately got out his mobile phone, explained that his friend’s wife taught sashiko, and called Chie Ikeda. Half an hour later, I was at her home, surrounded by the most beautiful pieces of sashiko. I was amazed - it was like a dream! Before I came home, I had another lesson with Ikeda sensei. She was so patient. My first attempt at hitomezashi was full of mistakes and I had to unpick and redo it several times. She gave me a sampler so I could learn more patterns.

In 2001, there was a big cultural exchange visit from Yuza-machi to Stratford-upon-Avon in the UK (they are twin towns), with a mini matsuri festival celebrating the annual traditions of Yuza-machi. Hideo Abe, my friend from Yuza Town Council, contacted me and said that Reiko Domon, my former next-door neighbor, would attend with members of her quilt group Peaceful Heart. I arranged an English tea party with Hathaway Quilters in Stratford where the Japanese quilters did a show and tell of their work. Domon sensei asked me to make two small quilts including sashiko for their exhibition, and the start of our long quilting exchange began. Over the years, I have sent many quilts to their exhibitions, including work by my sashiko students, and they have loaned many to mine.

On my next trip to Yuza-machi in 2002 I met Domon sensei, Ikeda sensei and other sashiko enthusiasts. I made several small pieces of sashiko after my 2000 trip, but now I had more inspirations, understanding how the patterns worked. I started creating sashiko designs for UK quilt magazines and began teaching sashiko while working on my Post Graduate Certificate in Education Post compulsory (a teaching qualification for teaching adults). I also designed kits for Euro Japan Links Ltd.

The first UK Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham was held in August 2003. The president of the Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles, Janice Gunner, who also works with Japanese textile techniques, suggested an exhibition of Yuza sashiko as part of the quilt show. Domon sensei, Chie sensei and other members of Peaceful Heart (who were becoming sashiko specialists) came to the UK and had the first big sashiko exhibition here. It was a great success, including antique and contemporary sashiko, and ‘make and take’ lessons for visitors too, teaching sashiko ‘from hand to hand’.

I wrote a patchwork bag book in 2003 and I suggested to my editors that we should have a big sashiko book in English. So ‘The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook’ (2005) includes all styles of sashiko. Yuza sashiko stitchers contributed many works. I made small pieces of kogin and Nanbu Hishizashi to illustrate the history chapter, but I didn’t really know the technique, so in 2006, I had my first kogin lesson with Keiko Abe in Yuza-machi, and in 2014, through Izumi Sato’s sister-in-law, I met Yoko Sato in Hirosaki and had another kogin lesson. My kogin obsession resulted in ‘The Ultimate Kogin Collection’ (2019), but my first sashiko love will always be Yuza sashiko.

Yuza Sashiko (Guild) was founded in 2008. They visited the UK in 2010, 2014, 2016 and 2018, each time teaching at one of our larger quilt shows. I arranged for their work to be shown at many quilt shows in the UK, including the quilt challenges ‘Treasures of Yamagata’, ‘Dream of Shonai’ and ‘Maruike-sama (the magical blue pool at Mt Chokai)’, where they have combined sashiko with patchwork and quilting in innovative ways. It is a wonderful thing that a traditional technique can be preserved and transformed, and used as a way of spreading happiness and friendship around the world. Let’s share Yuza Sashiko and stitch together!

Ganbatte kudasai! Work hard!

World Textile Day in Llanidloes next Saturday

We're returning to Llanidloes next Saturday (17th March) for World Textile Day.  This is the 10th anniversary of the start of WTD, when there were only three traders - me, The African Fabric Shop and Textile Traders - in one gallery at the Minerva Centre in Llanidloes.  It has all grown a bit since then!  Details are here.

Our theme this year is 'Working Together' and I'll be giving the morning talk, all about how sashiko is being passed 'hand to hand' in Japan, looking at the work of Yuza Sashiko Guild among others.  Yuza Sashiko is also celebrating it's 10th anniversary this year, which is a nice coincidence.  Their next exhibition in Japan will be during Golden Week in Yamagata city.  More details of that soon...

Join us for textile fun and treasures on Saturday!

Back to Yuza-machi

We came to Yuza by shinkansen and limited express train ('Inaho' or rice ear) via Niigata on Thursday.  I had a cold and we were still feeling a bit unwell with jet lag and recovering from our New Year's sickness, so we took a cab to Ueno station and got there early enough for Glyn to get his favourite Tokyo Banana cakes.  Souvenir cake shops are a big feature of Japanese railway stations.

I was travelling incognito because my cold had become a nasty cough.

The landscape changed as we travelled north.

It got quite snowy.

After Niigata, the train runs along the coast, in and out of bays and through tunnels.

Reiko, Chie, Keiko and Sakuraba-san were there to meet us.   There was also a sashiko planning meeting that afternoon, for the new Yuza Sashiko book, which will be published in spring 2017.

In Yuza, it snowed that evening.  But the snow didn't last too long.  On Friday morning, we went to Yuza Sashiko's weekly meeting at their new meeting place.

 Here are some projects in progress by different group members.  The first is a kotatsu table cover.

The sashiko is arranged to look good from all four sides.

The striped cotton is cleverly used in the patchwork.

Each section of this noshi panel will be filled in with a different Yuza Sashiko stitch.  Reiko filled in some parts of the outline freehand.

The new room is not too big, with a nice fresh feeling and lots of light.

Keiko is making a very interesting design, overlaying a wool tartan from MacNaughton's in Perth with a pattern by Hokusai.

We met Suzuki-san for the first time when we visited in 2014 and she had been doing sashiko for about 2 years.  Her new hanten jacket is lovely and the stitches are so even.

Another noshi design, almost completed.

Auditioning a patchwork border.

Reiko's award winning quilt came home from Scotland.

More later!