First of all I will recommend anyone to read Julie's excellent account of the visit. Click here for her first instalment.
This is the official guide, unfortunately all information except the title is in Japanese, but you can read the address to the website. I must admit that the organisers have put in some effort to make this year's show a bit more accessible to overseas visitors. At last there is a hint of 'international', with some staff speaking a bit of English, however, there is still much that could be improved. The guide, and the website, for example. Let's hope for next year...
Anyway, as Julie has already explained a lot of the quilts on display were by famous quilters, both from Japan and overseas, and in those display areas photography was not allowed.
Julie then went on to write about the Mini-Mini Quilt challenge. She explained about the rules and showed a pick of her photographs.
Here are some that I took, I wonder if you can spot the three pieces of challenge fabric (see Julie's blog for details):
This felt just right as more and more Seasonal displays are popping up everywhere in town.
Julie and I then went on to see the Miniature quilts. In this challenge the quilts should measure 50 x 50 cm, and you need to enter your quilt in a category, Traditional, Contemporary etc, but there is no general theme.
Quilters often make their own theme though, for instance travel, food and flowers are popular. Let's begin with some animals:
'Maneki neko', these cats of good fortune are appliquéd against a pieced background.
More and more are interested in Mola.
There were several entries where fluffy fabric had been used.
This elephant evokes the quilter's memories of a trip to Sri Lanka.
安部由香 Yuka Abe
界亜希 Aki Sakai
Flowers were also abundant on these Miniature quilts.
Camellias
Details of embroidery. I was drawn to this quilt like a magnet as it reminds me of my own Kafferepet!
Exquisite flowers are growing here. See how beautifully the background wall can be seen through the cutwork.
植田慶子 Keiko Ueda
This quilter, whose name I can not pronounce, has made a stunning quilt to commemorate a trip to Venice.
城取佳恵 Yoshie Shirotori (?)
I am sorry to say I did not take a photo of the winning Miniature quilts (grand prix and semi grand prix).
More quilts tomorrow.
23 comments:
Thanks for the wonderful report. I look forward to your next installment.
Great post and wonderful pictures. I didn't get any pictures of the winners either and I think the ones you posted were far better and more interesting. Thanks for letting me see these twice (once sitting down)
Thank you Carin for showing these quilts - I specially like the whole cloth quilt with the cutwork in it - the Venitian quilt is exceptional - love the bike - somebody just stopped at this palace and went in....
Coming up soon!
I wish we had been able to take pictures of the 'famous' quilters' work; it is hard to write about them without illustrations and I am not sure if these 'senseis' have their own websites we could give links to.I would have liked to ask my readers if they think Kathy Nakajima's beaded roses were coasters, or shown them that Yoko Saito has made quilts that are NOT taupe. Alas, my blogging will stick to the rules, as I took no sneaky snapshots!
Don't you think it is the Venetian count who lives there that has left his bicycle outside? Or does he usually move around by gondola?
How fun! I wish I could have joined you!
We missed you! It would have been great to see the show with you.
When I returned home I had lots of problems with Blogger, and wasn't able to access my blog. I thought it was my computer that had given up. Thanks to your email to Julie I learned that the problem was with the server and they have now fixed it their end.
Thanks for sharing these beauties, love the mola quilt!
These quilts are wonderful, I specially love the mola and the white "boutis".
If you liked the mola then you should go to Pinterest and search for Fumiko Nakayama who is the Mola queen. She was actually one of the master quilters with a large display area at the show. We were not allowed to take pictures there but Julie and I spoke to her as she was sitting signing her latest book. Ms Nakayama has turned Mola into something new, The Tale of Genji, Capital cities of the world and People of the world are some of her themes.
Hi!
See my reply to Annet's comment about Mola. The white 'boutis' was so pristine and expertly made it ought to have won one of the top prizes.
Thank you for sharing. I love all of them.
Good to hear that. There are more quilts soon in next blog post.
Thank you for sharing the photos. The mini quilts are so good and the fabrics well camouflaged within.
It is impossible to have a favourite from the larger quilts - so many styles, so much stitching involved but I just had to mention the 'Maneki neko' which are so cute.
I agree it is impossible to pick favourites, I am glad I am not a judge. The meneki neko are charming but did not attract a lot of attention from the Japanese crowd. There were tour groups of Austrailans though and I think they enjoyed the Japanese style quilts and the traders who sold Japanese fabric etc.
Beautiful quilts, although my favorite was the crowd stoppers, to sad that you couldn't take a picture to the entire quilt. Thanks for sharing part of the quilt show.
I regret now not waiting more patiently for a chance to take a full picture. If you check out this link
http://queeniepatch.blogspot.jp/2012/11/embroidery-on-quilts-at-yokohama.html you will find a picture of Ms Sakai's quilt for 2012. It is light blue and beige and FULL of charming details.
Thanks for the info. Just had a quick look and already saw some pretty quilts. Unfortunately Pinterest doesn't allow you to see much if you don't have an account, the last weeks there's a big black bar at the bottom of the page telling you to log in to see more!
The detailed cut work quilt looks amazing, I also like the Venice one and the mola.
The white Boutis quilt was impeccable, and looked great as the wall behind was coloured.
It is an achievement to made such detailed work of Venice on such a small quilt.
I came over here thanks to Julie. Thank you for taking the trouble to share so many of the exhibits especially as I like many others think we will never get to attend this show.
I am so glad that you feel I have 'brought the show to you'. Too often we have no chance to visit a show but would like to see the typical quilts of another country or get inspiration from something unusual.
Happy quilting!
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