Hello, dear readers. It’s been a while. In January & February I traveled Japan. More about that coming soon In March we launched our wholesale import business and showed at the San Francisco Quilt Guild Show In April I wrote a bunch, then stopped because there was so much more work to do with the…
Category: textiles
Textile Trading in Osaka
Tokyo has the biggest quilt show in Japan, but many of the fabrics in those quilts start out somewhere else. Home to the bulk of the Japanese cotton trade for the past 300 years, Osaka is where next year’s trends are designed and next season’s designs are sold. In 2016 my husband and I decided to…
Tokyo Great International Quilt Festival 2017 part 3
Some photos were taken in a hurry as I rushed from the booth to lunch, or back again. Closeups are all I have of these beautiful quilts. The geometry is complex and amazing. When people who don’t quilt think that quilters are old grannies who sit around making simple blankets, I want to show them…
Tokyo Great International Quilt Festival 2017 Part 2
I’m writing this while sitting in a Tokyo hotel, but I have so much more to tell you about this trip. Since leaving Tokyo Dome I took a train up to Takayama, another train down to Osaka, flew to Hirosaki in Aomori prefecture, then back to Tokyo again. Three weeks on the road and I’m almost ready…
Tokyo Great International Quilt Festival 2017
The Tokyo Great International Quilt Festival is big. So big they hold it in a baseball stadium. So big it goes on for DAYS AND DAYS, even longer than the Houston Quilt Festival, which seems like forever when I’m working that show. This time I only had to work two days, and I got to sit…
Quilt Show at Meguro Gajoen – Tokyo – June, 2016
I love happy accidents. As June sweltered on, I had a few spare days in Tokyo to do as I pleased and wander about. Still working out the subway system, I took a few wrong turns and unexpected detours, but any excuse to stretch my legs or see a different part of Tokyo seemed fair….
Visit with Japanese Quilter Shizuko Kuroha – Tokyo, June 2016
We met in Kuroha sensei’s shop, Nuno Space, hidden away in the Tokyo suburb of Chiba. The shop is tiny and we sat at a table in the middle of it, sipping green tea for an hour or two before she was scheduled to teach a class. Kuroha san (as she is fondly known throughout…
Sashi.co – Interview with Keiko Futatsuya
I first stumbled onto Keiko Futatsuya’s work two years ago while searching for botanically-dyed sashiko thread. She was working with Hida Sashiko at the time, but has since moved on to produce her own work as an independent artist and designer. The quality of her work is amazing, and has developed over time to reflect…
Indigo Unraveling – Kyoto Blue 京都の藍
What is it about indigo textiles that bring up so many sensations? The depth of blue, new or faded; the stiffness of the fibers from repeated dips in the dye vat; the fuzzy nap of fabric from years of use; all of these add to indigo’s allure. It’s alchemical, magical, practical, and deeply, vividly, a part of…
Flower of the Forest – Takayama 高山市
Taking the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagoya is a thoroughly modern ride. The high-speed train glides along while the view of lush farmland interspersed with citiscapes rush past. And of course, there’s Mt. Fuji. Transferring at Nagoya to the Hida Express, the journey is somewhat different. The train chugs along, ever upward into the mountains,…
Kimonomomo is going to Japan!
Yes, I’ve been before, but this time it’s different. This time I will be conducting interviews, learning new skills, and sharing it all with you. However, before I set foot in the airport, there are a few things I need to take care of… Scheduling interviews. I’m working on this now with help from artists,…
Why is kimono fabric so narrow?
There is a lot of confusion among Westerners about this issue. We are accustomed to cutting patterns for clothing, quilts, and crafts from 42″-44″ wide bolts, so the idea that a bolt could be so much narrower–12″-15″–seems, well, foreign. Considering the width of a basic backstrap loom, the narrow fabric makes sense. Backstrap looms are easy…
A love for both the common fiber and the extraordinary textile @KimonoMomo 