Sashiko and kasuri block sampler

Cynthia Nanto, who blogs as Wabi-sabi Quilts, sent me a photo of her gorgeous version of the sashiko and kasuri sampler from 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match'.  She wrote -

I have really enjoyed your sashiko books as a supplement to the sashiko I learned while living in Japan 2011-2013.  I have been working on my sashiko sampler quilt from your Japanese Blocks to Mix and Match book for a year now, and finished it today.

She has included some other sashiko designs she learned at Blue and White in Azabu-juban and the gorgeous deep indigo cottons are the real thing, vintage fabrics, some from the Boroichi.  Including vintage indigo and katazome stencil dyed cloth gives the quilt real depth of colour.

There's more about the quilt here on her blog.  Love it!

Japanese Quilt Blocks - Australian Style

Helen Mutch came to my sashiko retreat in Maleny last March and sent me this photo of the quilt she's made. It's gorgeous! Helen has combined blocks from both 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' and 'Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks' with sashiko blocks she made on the retreat. I wonder if it is possible to spot some of her blocks in the post via the link :-) ?

Helen wrote -

'I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, especially your enthusiasm for all things Japanese. It certainly opened my mind to wonderful Japanese fabrics and designs.

'As you can see from the attached photo that I made your sampler quilt. It’s not a particularly good photo and does look a lot better in “real life”. I love doing sashiko and have incorporated it in other projects. Some of the blocks from your book kept my mind buzzing but I also loved doing those as well.

'Now I need to put it together and was wondering how you quilted it. First of all what type of wadding did you use and secondly did you just ditch stitch the quilting or incorporate quilting inside each block?

'Looking forward to your reply so I can get on with the quilting, though the weather at this time of year isn’t at all conducive to sitting inside with a quilt over my knee!!'

:-) This isn't the first time I've been asked about the quilting on my sashiko kasuri & kamon sampler from 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match'. Here's the 'quilt' from the photo in the book. At that stage, it was only a top and wasn't quilted - there just wasn't enough time to get all the patchworks hand quilted before publication, and I really wanted to hand quilt them. So you can't see any quilting lines on the photo.

I need to revisit the quilting and add more, as so far it is only quilted in the ditch between the blocks, and in circles around the sashiko crests. I want to add extra quilting close to the main outlines in each crest and in the ditch on the other blocks, but nothing that will overpower the patchwork and sashiko designs really - just doing the job of holding the quilt layers together a bit better.

Helen's quilt has a lovely border fabric that we got from Bev Perel at Maleny Magic Patchwork, who organised the retreat. I think the whole bolt sold out in a few hours! I thought it would make the ideal border when I get around to making a version of the quilt using the easier patchwork blocks from both books with sashiko blocks from the first one (or maybe even using the applique designs from the second book as sashiko motifs). My remake won't be as long though, just 5 x 5 blocks not 7 x 5, as I want to get the weight of it down for baggage limits when I fly.

Thanks for the photo Helen - we could do with some warmer weather up here (although we already have the rain, thank you!)

When I get to the border...

The golden brown toned sampler quilt is having it's border made and added today. After much deliberation, I added sashing, using part sewn seams to give a woven illusion and fussy cutting each stripe strip to make the sashing look (I hope) slightly 3 -D.


The sampler arrangement was included in 'Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks' as one of the computer-generated mix and match ideas and the arrangement worked out onscreen is more or less what I made.


Originally, I wasn't going to use any sashing, but assemble the blocks like the sashiko Kasuri sampler from 'Japanese Quilt Blocks'. The photo below shows that quilt at Malvern in 2007, when it was awarded a Judges' Merit - pretty good for a quilt which (still) has only the absolute minimum amount of quilting, just enough to keep all the layers together, time being of the essence!


'Sashiko Kamon' works without sashing because the same plain blue tsumugi cotton (from Euro Japan Links Limited) is used for all the dark blues, both in the sashiko blocks and the patchwork ones. It is woven with a deep indigo blue weft and a black warp, and under certain lighting states looks black. The golden brown sampler doesn't have this unity - all the appliques are on woven taupe fabrics, while the blocks, especially those with very small pieces, mainly use prints. I played around with assembling the blocks on screen, and decided to go with the sashing. It ended up a bit narrower in proportion than shown in the drawing below, as the width of the stripe and therefore the pattern repeat dictated the sashing width.


Striped tsumugi cotton is a favourite of mine for borders and would seem the natural choice for this. I used a brown tsumugi for the border on the 'Hakone Yosegi Sampler' from 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' -


It worked very well here IMHO (and in the opinion of the judges at Quilts UK 2009 too), but I hadn't used striped tsumugi for the sashing - instead, the sashing alternates between a plain tan cotton and another Japanese woven fabric which is rather like a tsumugi but not quite, having a two tone weave but none of the hige (slubs). Yes, the block borders and setting do drop 1in between each column, to accommodated the slightly longer isometric blocks at the top and bottom of alternate columns. The outer border fabric also pops up in some of the blocks.


I thought the latest quilt needs something a little more. Like this - yabane (arrow feather) pattern, which is one of the blocks in 'Japanese Taupe...'


I am using a slightly warmer brown tsumugi stripe, without the blueish tones in the block above (which will be going into another sampler with the cooler dark blocks). To get the most out of the bias cut strips from a bolt just 14 1/2in wide, the length of the strips has been reduced to 9in cut, so I could get two from each diagonal strip, otherwise there would have been a lot of wastage.

BTW, I've added a narrow 1in border in a faux patchwork print to lift the quilt centre a little and stop the sashing attempting to merge with the outer border.

This morning's big descision will be for the arrow shafts. The finished width is only 1/2in. Do I use a subtle print (like above) or do I attempt to use another stripe, and go for that optical illusion of roundness again? Can it be achieved on such a narrow strip without wobbling off the stripe? I'll sew from the shaft side, not the flight, so I'll be able to see what's going on with the stripes all the time, but can I pull this one off 96 times? That's the number of arrows in the border - no great significance to the number, it just worked out that way! I'll post later and let you know how I get on. Wish me luck!

(The post title references Richard Thompson's song 'When I get to the border' - that's Richard Thompson OBE now! :-))

3rd Prague Patchwork Meeting

My "Kasuri Sampler" quilt is on its way back from Prague after the big patchwork meeting last weekend. The photo shows it hanging with "Irori" at the Great Northern Quilt Show at Harrogate last year. I didn't expect it back so early, as I thought it was coming back when Jana visits Festival of Quilts in August, so it is a nice surprise and it can go straight back in with my talk & workshop quilts. I've missed having it around! My friend Jana Lalova won seventh place in the themed category "Emotion" with this quilt - I've just had a look at the quilts online and noticed the prizes in that category were very impressive, with the first three prizes being Brother, Janome and Bernina sewing machines!

You can see more of the quilts on the Bohemia Patchwork Klub site - click the thumbnails to see much larger images, as usual.

Kasuri Sampler at the 3rd Prague Patchwork Meeting

My Kasuri Sampler will be going off on a journey in a few weeks, to the 3rd Prague Patchwork Meeting - click the link for show info. I am going to attend the 4th meeting next year, where I will be teaching sashiko. Jana Lalova, who has translated "The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook" into Czech, invited me to teach there and I'm really looking forward to it.

We discussed sending one of my quilts for this year's show, as a kind of advance view for next year, and I thought the Kasuri Sampler, from "Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match", would be ideal. It has already been shown several times in the UK - as part of Quilts UK in 2007, where it won a Judges Merit ribbon, and it toured the Grosvenor Autumn Quilt Festivals with other quilts from "Japanese Quilt Blocks..."