I visited the Kogin Institute in Hirosaki on January 31, 2017 after visiting the Tokyo Quilt Festival, Takayama, and Osaka. It was a pleasant flight from Osaka to Hirosaki, with the view of snowy mountains most of the way, and many, many empty seats. My companion Toyo looked around the plane, counted the passengers, and…
Category: travel
Pardon the long absence, it’s been a busy year
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…
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…
After Tokyo, a bit of Takayama
The hustle and bustle of the Tokyo Quilt Festival was overwhelming after a while. Two days wandering Takayama with my friend Keiko seemed like a good way to settle down a bit and catch my breath. Except for the trains. Oh boy, the trains. There aren’t a lot of direct trains to Takayama, and my…
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…
Postcard from Houston International Quilt Market 2016
Wow! What a busy show this year. I’ll keep this short because I’m off to build my booth for Quilt Festival and the preview night is tonight… and I need more coffee. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this little window into the show. Some of the quilts in the video are from Japanese…
Quick Sashiko Tips and Quilt Show News for October, 2016
Summer has wrapped up and we are heading into autumn. For me this means a LOT of work, including sewing and getting ready for quilt shows. BIG quilt shows. I’ve been a vendor at the Houston International Quilt Festival in Texas for a few years now, but this year I finally made it off the…
Travel Notebook Excerpts – Tokyo, Japan – June 2016
I sat in various coffee and tea shops and trains along the way, testing out a portable keyboard I bought in Shinjuku and observing the pace of life as it swirled around me. Here are a few excerpts from my last week in Japan. I hope you enjoy them. June 11 – Shinjuku – Nihonbashi – Meguro Vintage…
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…
A love for both the common fiber and the extraordinary textile @KimonoMomo 