Tokyo Dome show part 2

Often we go to a quilt show with an agenda. It might be to meet friends or view particular exhibits or even find a hard-to-get item in one of the shops.

After finding our partnership blocks and those of our friends in one of those 63 quilts,

we ended up near the center area where the next of my agenda items were to be found.

Chikako Ueno has been a friend over a number of years. We first met at the Yokohama Quilt show which no longer exists ... but when it comes to quilters and friendship, those go on regardless.

Ueno-san always has something to enter in the show and this year she entered one of her wonderfully creative bags and a framed quilt. Since Ueno-san comes from out of town, it was not possible to make our schedules meet up this year as in other years but I couldn't miss  viewing her bag.

And, here is her framed quilt right around the corner from the bag display.


What a lot of work must have gone into this small quilt!

There are areas that seem like MOLA techniques and that is something I plan to cover in a later post.

There were quite a few framed quilts in the exhibit and the following were some that caught my eye.






This was one of the prize winners.


There is a lot of embroidery setting these flowers off.


With my in-house translator gone, I am not able to give credit to these, and I have had issues over the years  with the lack of even a simple English name.

This year I included the display information with these quilts so at least those quilters can get some credit for their hard work and creative ideas.

This turtle was another prize winner.

It also has rather a Mola look but certainly not as detailed as Ueno-san's fish.

What is it about kids and dinosaurs?

In our pre-school library, the shelf of dinosaur books is the most stirred area each time I go in to get the shelves in order.

This was a bit larger than many other framed quilts but it also contained a lot of small pieces.


As you may note by the plaque, it too was a prize winner.

And, here is another winner.

Colorful and charming.

How about this gathering of pigs?

Or this awesome piece of whole-cloth quilting.

Here are the three winner bags.

I think bags are very much personal things and it would be hard to make any judgement.

There was a really cute bag that has already been shown (Tanya's post?)It was a whole bag of cats.


I often think of making a bag to suit my needs. It would need lots of different sized compartments ...
Probably inside so not showing. It would need an open pocket for my train pass with a ring to clip the chain on. It would need a zipper that can open right or left. And NO VELCRO!!!

It would probably need a strap that could be lengthened to go over the shoulder but able to be shortened to carry over the arm or even by hand... and since I often have pinched nerves from a crooked spine, it might be nice if it could double as a waist-pack.

The closest I have ever come to making a bag like that was a needle point bag made back in the late 1950's that was stolen on a trip to NY. I have two quilted carrying bags but they are both showing wear after years of use.

Among the stalls at the quilt show, there were many selling bits and parts for bag-makers.

The show ended Wednesday but there are still many pictures to show so, for us bloggers, it will last a bit longer. Be sure to check out Taniwa and Queenie as I will be off for the weekend to the Women's Conference. I will be hoping to see a few finished beginner quilt projects and maybe win a convert or two to the quilting world. The prep-work for the classes is almost done. The last thing in the plan was to iron the folds out of the cut fabrics but my iron died without warning.  No shops selling irons in my area so it may be some time before it can be replaced. (and I will be picky because I need one that can be used left-handed).
Last item on the list is pack up my bag with class items and clothing and to cut a few scraps to sew on the ride there and back.

Tokyo Dome Quilt Festival part 1

With a plan to meet Carin and Tanya in Friday, I was so excited I could hardly sleep through the night. Even though I set my alarm, I was waking up nearly every hour and looking at the time. Finally I just turned off the alarm and got up to take Nikko for her morning walk, checked and re-checked the train schedules and maps ... as if I had never gone before ... and set out on the mobile sardine can.

Tokyo keeps talking about "getting ready for the 2020 olympics" but from my point of view, they still have a very long way to go. When I got off the train, there were lots of signs... mostly in Japanese ... about making connections to other trains. Well, I knew the "Dome" was closer to the Marunouchi train station so, seeing the big red "M", I set off that way. Going through the gate there was a word, "Dome" and an arrow pointing to the left along with lots of other words and arrows in Japanese.

I set off in that direction but no further signs. I ended up doubling back, checking every underground gate for a possible sign and worrying that I would be late for our meeting. Finally I just picked an exit and came up above ground. Great! I could see the roof of the dome in the distance. I pulled out my map and wrote "Exit 6" in the margin for future reference, then hurried off to the meeting place just a few minutes behind schedule. Oh my, there was a huge line of people waiting to have their bags inspected and go in.... and luckily, just to me right side was Carin! Hurray, we were off.

First stop was the partnership quilts. Both Carin and Tanya's blocks were in quilt #1. Tanya has already posted pictures of the blocks but I can't resist a bit of duplication.

This year the walls behind the partnership quilts were painted green. Not too bad.

The blocks were made smaller this year. Each year there are over 60 quilts and if they were thinking smaller blocks would make fewer quilts ... well, there were 8,910 blocks submitted and 63 quilts. About the same as other years.

The project of assembling and quilting these quilts falls on a different well-known "sensei" or teacher and her disciples.

This year the teacher was Eiko Okano. Sponsored by NHK TV, there is a show with a few demonstration blocks. Even if you do not watch the show, it is pretty easy to guess which blocks were in the demo because there are multiple ones of that pattern.

This is quilt #1 and there are a few of each of patterns except for one with a bridge.
Maybe for quilt #1 they wanted the most variety.
There doesn't seem to be much else of a plan,

Can you find Queenie's block in the above quilt?

How about Tanya's ?

These are the ones suggested by the sensei.


I think you can find at least two of most of them.

Next to each quilt is a posted sheet of names,
arranged in order to indicate the makers of the blocks.

and ... below the sign is a box where you can deposit a raffle ticket (or if you really want that quilt, many more at 500 yen each ). There will be a drawing at the end of the show.

In these two quilts you can see a large amount of similar blocks. They almost seem to be competing with each other.

Though the theme was "Garden", this quilt looks more like a forest.



Here there seems to have been a plan to put blues and greens around the border and the lighter backgrounds toward the middle.

This one has red backgrounds and potted plants around the outside.


It might be that some people met in groups and worked on their blocks together because many blocks seemed to have used the same fabrics.

This is the quilt #61 that has my block.


My Ohio cardinal is planting his sunflower seed in the left border forth from the bottom.


There are a few more bird blocks and a few birdhouses.

And this one seems to have mostly Hawaiian style designs.

Tanya posted one with a forrest border and a large mob of moles in the center.

All the quilts were hand quilted with diagonal lines forming a square grid on point. The quilting was only in the background areas and stopped short if the applique designs.

I have no idea how many disciples a sensei has, but these quilts are a small single bed size and there were 63 of them. Assembling the sandwich, quilting, and binding, even with some help must have taken no small amount of time



Please look on my blog list and visit Tanya and Queeniepatch to see more of the show ... and better pictures than my camera could get.
More to come ........

TOKYO International Great Quilt Festival part 1

Wednesday I went to Tokyo Dome for the quilt show. It was HOT and very crowded. I enjoyed what I could see. More pictures were allowed but it was almost impossible to take any because of all the visitors. Today I went back again and learned something, the last day is less crowded. I was able to take as many pictures as I wanted. Sorry to say, all the names as well as the titles were written in Japanese. I would prefer to give credit where I can so this is my best try. Part 1 is "Traditional". The above is by Gang-Hee Lee, called "Now, here I am happy". It is all in half-inch square pieces!

This is by Takane.

The quilting is in short dashes giving a very interesting effect.

"My Baltimore" by Shimada

uses an interesting color combination.

This quilt by Suzuki has blue embroidered Sun-bonnet Sues in each block.

I couldn't get the title but these animals and people are appliqued all over by Sumi?

"Red quilt filled with love" by Kimura.

This was really more stunning than the picture shows. By Hayashi.

Another 9-patch hexagon called "yorokobi" or Joy. by Sakaguchi.

"Flower Quartet" by Sugaya.

The pale colors gave a quiet feeling.

This is a detail of the one below. The figures are appliqued by machine with raw edges. They did not look very sturdy but they were so cute.

This is by Takemori. (I think)

By Karino

These little angles are by Sato.

Each one is different.

Except for the one machine applique piece, all are hand applique and hand quilted. There were some machine quilted ones, but most were beautifully hand done.

I am not very good at arranging pictures. My friend put them on a slide show which might handle more but I am not that tech savvy. More next post.