Friday, February 1, 2013

Tokyo Dome quilts - Part 3

Wa quilts

If you are wondering, what is "Wa", 
It is not the exclamation when you see these wonderful quilts, but a word that has come to mean "harmony and peace".

Those who have been reading my blog a while know about my love affair with kasuri and many of these quilts contain LOTS of kasuri fabric.

I looked at kasuri fabrics in some of the shops and, judging from the prices, many of these quilts are worth a small fortune in material alone!

Kasuri Diamond Flower.

Toinie Nagano













Here is a detail of the same. 

All those hexagons!
(Irene, that would take a lot of Wednesdays)!









A close-up of "Our Beautiful Earth  North Ground I.
















"Chrystal Snow"

By Akasugi-san





















Kazaguruma, or pinwheels, by Motoyama-san.














The title of this was a bit too hard for my poor Japanese to figure out or my husband to explain. The kanji for the quilter's name could also be read more than one way ...("Soma ni mangoku").
See why we need names in romaji!! My guess is Tanida-san.   The whole quilt is stitched in Sashiko.


This one by Yamamoto-san also was quilted with sashiko stitches and some embroidery.


 By Endo-san. I didn't get the title.


"Flow of Time" by Ono-san.  This has some amazing detail and lots of kanji in applique.

This also has a time theme ... something like being thankful 365 days. It is made by Masukawa-san.
There is a lot of kasuri in this too and you can see the kanji for spring, summer, fall, and winter, along with pictures of rabbits with seasonal poses ... mosquito coil, blossoms of the season, kite flying, moon viewing and the like.


"Blown by the Wind" by Mawatari-san. (Another hard name to figure out)
I was more blown away by the quilts in this category.
And here is one more I failed to record but is too pretty to leave out. 
There is one lovely thing about all these quilts, they were all hand quilted. I feel that even though this kasuri had been cut into many pieces, the handwork showed respect to the hands that had dyed and woven that fabric so long ago.

More to come.....

12 comments:

  1. Oh Julie, you knew I'd love those hexies. What a marvelous job that person did on that. All of those quilts are "to die for." What expert workmanship. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. I love that material and how they look in a quilt. I got some japanese taupes to use in a project and love the idea of making a bed quilt since the materials are heavier than regular cotton. I got packs at a good price, but the yardage is expensive here, too.

    Debbie

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  3. Thank you Julie! I too was blown away by these Wa quilts. Thanks for posting these photos so that we can revisit the show again and again!

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  4. Gorgeous! I love Blown by the Wind especially.

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  5. Beautiful!! I love the quilts. What a special treat!

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  6. Yes, beautiful, stunning, perfect. I like Flow of Time by Ono-san, but each one is so detailed, if I rteally had to choose, it would be too hard. Wa quilts, thank you so much for sharing with us. Greetings from Jean.

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  7. Absolutely amazing quilts! I would love to see these in person. I could spend hours studying them..sigh!

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  8. Julie, your photos are so excellent. Thanks for capturing the more traditional quilts in the show. Those are of course my favorites. WOW!!! I really want to attend next year. Thanks so much for sharing, I'll post a link to this in my next post!

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  9. Thank you for showing us these. I felt a response in the pit of my stomach, these quilts are so marvellous. Japanese quilts always stand out at shows - I feel the makers go the extra mile and the long mediatitive hours in the making shine out from the quilts.

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  10. Wow, Kasuri Diamond Flower is fabulous. I can see why you love the kasuri fabric. "Blown by the wind" is amazing. Also, I am glad you included the last quilt - what a lovely blend of blues.

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  11. Thanks so much for the tour! It took me a while to get to it but I really wanted to enjoy it and not rush, and it took me this long!

    WOW! Fascinating and awe-inspiring. I can't even imagine how "Blown by the Wind" was even put together?! CRAZY! I'll bet they look all the more wonderful close-up. I was unfamiliar with Kasuri and now I have to look it up. Something tells me it has something to do with the Japanese indigo dye history but that's just a guess. Very intriguing.

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