Last Week: Japanese Stitching

     Last week, I  squeezed in a workshop from our local West Michigan Quilter’s Guild titled “Sashiko : A Good Fortune Wallhanging”. The workshop was given by Sheila De Rose  who specializes in Japanese quilting  and Japanese design.  There were only four crazy people taking a class the week of Thanksgiving so we received  lots of extra attention. Sheila has traveled to Japan and is very knowledgeable in all aspects of fabrics, patterns and needlework of Japan.

      She brought in her fabric boards and I loved the shibori and the actual sashiko fabrics. I had thought sashiko was just the blue needlework stitch on white but there is actual sashiko fabric.

Sheila with one of her fabric boards

Shibori board

Sheila DeRose quilt shown during lecture

Sheila Derose Sampler

Sheila has a new book being published called “The Art of Elegance” coming out soon. She did an excellent job at the night lecture of explaining the Japanese use of color and design principles. I really enjoyed it.

The start of my wallhanging and, yes, I did measure and try to match seams! I can still do it if I need to. The piece will have sashiko stitched centers over a star pattern. Now I have two wintertime hand stitching projects to do. Why was I interested in this class? Long ago, I started a fabric collection of Japanese quilting fabrics and just never knew what to do with them but truly wanted to use them authentically. Now, I know how.

But time to get to work this morning on the Christmas presents. Anyone else making presents?

Be creative, my friends!