A Gift From Korea

A visitor brought a gift from Korea.

Inside a frame are four hand embroidered thimbles. Yes, they are made from silk and with very fine embroideries. 

THESE thimbles are displayed in the frame, but real thimbles that are used in Korean needlework and quilting look the same.

I will not dare to use such fine work to push needles into thick layers of quilting!

In Korean they are called Golmu. You can read more about them here.

A birthday card

I made another embroidered birthday card.

It was nice to work with other colours than green!

Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival - 7 More quilts?! And more things?!

By now you are probably fed up with Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival.

Yes? Stop reading now.

Don't know? Well, here is a summery for you; this post contains:

• the winning quilts
• other quilts
• kogin
• whitework
• boutis
• Japanese embroidery

No? Then read on.

The Grand Prix, Best in show, went to

a quilt in indigo blue

三坂悦子＊Etsuko Misaka

Second prize went to this absolutely STUNNING quilt - a masterpiece if ever I saw one!

渡辺章子＊Akiko Watanabe

The prize for handmade quilt

川上亜矢子＊Ayako Kawakami

This quilt needed a lot of planning and fussy cutting

鬼塚美佐子＊Misako Onitsuka

Here a sample of the clever use of kimono fabric, to dress the lady in - a kimono!

市村静子＊Shizuko Ichimura

Every quilt show has some indigo quilts

古谷敦子＊Atsuko Furuya

A charming village quilt

植松章子＊Akiko Uematsu

Red and white is always striking

出家晴美＊Harumi Shukke

Amish quilts are popular, even when they are machine quilted

小圷サト子＊Satoko Koakutsu

Look how you can use the Buttonhole stitch on the machine for a nice accent.

池敬子＊Keiko Ike

A Japanese quilt show is not a show without a taupe quilt. This one features Tokyo Station, in celebration of the station's 100th anniversary.

内藤千鶴子＊Chizuko Naito

Handquilted Baltimore Album quilts are also popular

上坂和美＊Kazumi Uesaka

A lot of perfection and work has gone into this quilt.

清田澄枝＊Sumie Kiyota

Here is a quilt to inspire my friend of Hokkaido Kudasai! 

How many Mondays' worth of count would you need before you finished this quilt, Pamela?

田中福子＊Fukuko Tanaka

This famous artist never fails to amaze the crowds with her charming, lively and witty quilts.

関田陽子＊Yoko Sekita


NHK (the TV broadcaster) has recently shown a series of documentaries about Japanese fabric. In one of the programmes they focused on Kogin, the embroidery used to reinforce farmers' clothes in Aomori prefecture of northern Japan. At the show there was a display of such clothes and stitching. Some of my readers will recognise these items once on display at the Amuse museum in Tokyo.

If you want to try your hand at Kogin, Carolyn Foyley of caro-rose-creations has worked an impressive number of patterns and kindly made them accessible on her blog.

Famous embroidery artist Ayako Ohtsuka had some of her beautiful items on display

So did boutis expert Kumiko Nakayama Geraerts

Finally, a display of impeccable Japanese embroidery by

A word of warning, there will be one more post from Tokyo International Great Quilts Festival, but it's about things you take home, such as shopping!

A birthday card made from orts

I made a very simple embroidery for a birthday card for my aunt.

It was an effective way of using up the stray lengths of perle 8 and the left over beads from my travel projects.

I don't know about you, but I find it hard to judge how much thread I'll be needing for a seam. Often I am left with a length that is too short to use, and too long to throw away, if you see what I mean. Such snippets of thread, or (long) orts,  are just right for a Lazy Daisy chain stitch flower.

From now on I will collect my stray ends in a jar and eventually make an orts embroidery.

What do you do with your left over thread?

Look what I was given!

While in the UK I had the opportunity to meet embroidery oracle Pamela Allen of Hokkaido Kudasai.

Although Pamela and I both live in Japan, our homes are so far apart it has been difficult to meet there. By chance we were both in London at the same time this summer, and after various setbacks i.e. seriously delayed trains, me running out of pay-as-you-go airtime balance, heavy rain showers, we finally found each other amongst the crowds of central London.

Oh, what a delightful person! We had a great time chatting and I felt as if we had know each other a long time.

Anyone who has followed Pamela's blog knows her love for Japan and Hokkaido, but especially her passion for needlework. Pamela is so open minded about stitching and tries her hand at all sorts of techniques. She is also fast and blogs about one finish after another. Right now she has a series of Christmas ornaments that she made, mounted, photographed and prepared for one-a-day postings on her blog while in the UK. You see, she is organised as well!

Look what she gave me:

Isn't it a delightful scissor fob? Pamela has combined her skills of embroidery, beading and cord making.

THANK YOU, Pamela for the beautiful gift, and for taking time out of your hectic schedule to spend a few hours with me. Next time I hope we can find each other in the crowds of Tokyo, maybe at the quilt show in January.

In a Whirlwind ...

Dear Friends,

I return to the land of online connection and blogging in a whirlwind of cherry flower petals.

 Among the back streets of Tokyo there are quiet temples,

 mature trees with impressively healthy growth of new flowers, directly from the trunk.

Some petals 'fell' on a piece of embroidery I did while away.

This is now being damp-stretched and I will blog about it when it has been mounted and is fit to face the camera.
I am lagging behind TAST and need to get those WIPW projects out of the closet...

Hope to be in touch again soon.

Christmas 'quilts' from my stash - 5

This is not a quilt, but a piece of embroidery:

It was made by a much loved great uncle of mine when he was about 95.
When he became a widower and had to move to an old people's home, he was bored and lonely. The staff suggested that he should take up needlework. Although he had seen his wife and daughter fill their home with cross stitch craft, he at first thought it was an unmanly past time for himself. However, once he had started he was 'bitten by the cross stitch bug', and produced lots of wall hangings that were sold at the OPH's charity events.
He said that keeping busy with the embroidery was the best way to stop brooding or feeling lonely. I feel as if he is in the room when I display one of his embroideries (I have several) and this one is a must to have on show at Christmas.
It is so charming with its large stitches and simple colours.

I wrote about the hanging Christmas mobile before. You might also remember a bridal crown I bought last summer. More recently I blogged about an angel and some other felt dolls. These ornaments are now hanging from 'washing lines' stretched across the room, as I do not have a decorated tree in the house.

Merry Christmas!

TAST #82 Spanish Feather Stitch

I've been very late in posting my TAST stitches recently so now I have to ask you:

Ain't I quick? I've already filled my sampler with two rows of the TAST #82 stitch, Spanish Feather Stitch!

This stitch is not new to me, I've tried it several times before and always disliked it strongly. Once I even wrote in the margin of  my  '100 Embroidery Stitches', a small booklet published by Coats Craft UK with Anchor Embroidery Stitches. 

My scribble says: 'Fäster ej i tyget', meaning 'doesn't grab the fabric'. Well, of course it doesn't, as this part of the stitch is not taken to the back of the fabric!!! Silly me!

I guess what I wanted to say was that the thread did not lay flat on the surface but slid along the next stitch. I think even at one time I had to couch down some of the unruly 'corners'.

This time I had no such problem. Why not, I asked myself, and think it is because I have used Pearl #8 which has a good twist and behaves better than what I might have used on previous occassions.

Thank you Sharon for making me try the Spanish Feather Stitch again, mastering it and now liking it a lot!

For more of Sharon's TAST stitches, go to Pintangle.

I've seen the beauty of Lyng, thanks to Carolyn

I'd like to dedicate this blog post to Carolyn Foley of caro-rose creations.
Carolyn blogs daily and her posts are always worth reading, be they about her cute grandchildren, art of the world, Australian life or, of course, textile. She is a teacher, not only to her students but to us all, and she has some great tutorials on her blog.

Now I don't know anyone who is as good at digging up information as Carolyn.
In December last year she had on her blog a series of angels, one for each day of Advent. On Dec 4th she showed an especially beautifully embroidered angel. It was from the  Lyng altar cloth.
Lyng is a small village in Norfolk, UK. Every summer I visit Norfolk and immediately thought I'd try to go and look at the altar cloth during my stay this year.

So a few weeks ago, together with friends, I went in search of St Margaret's of Lyng. The church is lodged in between the village pub and some of the cottages and not that easy to find access to. Like so many of the numerous old churches in East Anglia it is an important symbol of the village but in need of funds and a lot of Tender Loving Care.

To our delight we found the old altar cloth that is displayed in a glass case on the wall. So why is it not in use?

It is a 'patchwork', made up of several old vestments.
It seems likely that the church was completed in the early 1300 and the vestments might have been presented to the church at some time.
According to Patricia Hallert's pamphlet 'LYNG ALTAR CLOTH', 'Between 1558 and 1678 during the Protestant reigns of Edvard VI and Elizabeth I, many parish churches cut up their vestments to make them into frontals or cloths for the Communion table. Lyng cloth is cleverly constructed from three different vestments, all dating from the 15th century and of English workmanship. From 1678 onwards Lyng church terriers record an 'ancient carpet for the Communion table', which was the altar cloth.'
Furthermore, Ms Hallert notes in her pamphlet that there is a record of 1933 of the cloth being framed and hung.
In 1985 the altar cloth underwent restoration at the Textile Conservation Centre by Wendy Toulson and  has thereafter hung in its glass case on the south wall of the chancel.

As you can see, the reflections in the glass make it hard to see the beauty of the embroiery.

For better pictures and more facts, please go to the link that Carolyn has on her blog, Medieval Church Art.

However, there were other textile delights in the church. Look at the charming kneelers.

Carolyn, thank you for always giving us so much information, and inspiration to go textile trekking. Please keep up the good work!