At last I have finished all the mini quilts in my Japanese Collection.
At the Yokohama Quilt Festival I bought a Jelly Roll (3.5” width in Japan) and used it to create this coverlet in which to wrap my memories of Japan. It is backed with a lovely piece of silk that was donated to me.
There are 8 small quilts in all. The first one I made was for a mini competition (called Japanology) amongst my fellow travellers.
Quilt 1 - Japan – Day Eight
This tiny quilt was made for a competition amongst our tour group and began my journey into small Japanese quilts.
The eighth day dawned on our quilting tour
Of Japan’s fabric and fibre art.
Our plan was to visit Station Five
At the foot of Mt Fuji for a start.
But the rain was heavy, the mist was thick,
No chance of viewing Mt Fuji today.
A museum visit, that’s the trick,
To give the quilters creative play.
Itckiku Kubota’s kimono displays,
Impressive with stitches and magic hues,
Are housed in a building delightfully set
With gardens of leafy autumnal views.
The ponds are flanked by coloured displays,
Of reds and yellows, purples and green.
But to surprise us just when we’d had our fill
Mt Fuji appeared to complete the scene.
Of all our wonderful trip to Japan,
The quilts and dyes, the friends and fun,
The images of the Kubota museum
Remains in my memory as number one.
My tiny quilt is a humble attempt
To create an impression of that day
With a chance to use fabrics from Japan
And my first free-motion quilting play.
Thank you Lynn and thank you Deb
You gave so much for me to absorb
But the greatest of all our experiences
Was the Itchiku Kubota reward!
by Betty Jacobs
After I had made this quilt I had no idea what I would do with it so decided to incorporate it into a collection that I could create with all the bits and pieces I collected in Japan and other things with a Japanese flavour that I already had or purchased to complete an idea.
Quilt 2 - Japanese Tea Ceremony (on right above)
The Philosophy of Chado - Tea
The underlying philosophy of Tea evolved from Zen Buddhism. Zen is the Japanese counterpart of the Chinese word chan, which is a translation of the Sanskrit word dhyana, meaning the meditation that leads to deep spiritual insight. Both Tea and Zen emphasize a way of training body and mind in awareness that has potential to become a rigorous spiritual discipline. Urasenke founder, Sen Rikyu (1522-1591) summarized the principles of the discipline of Tea into four concepts: wa, kei, sei, and jaku.
Wa (harmony)
This word implies a feeling of oneness with nature and people. At a tea gathering, harmony plays between host and guest, guest and guest, mood and season, the food served and the utensils used. Sensitivity to the changing rhythms of the seasons and harmony with these changes are one source of ever deepening pleasure in the practice of Tea. The unpredictable nature of weather is an integral part of a tea gathering and is not to be shut out, ignored, or considered inconvenient. This harmony with nature quietly leads one to an understanding of the evanescence of all things and the unchanging in the changing.
Kei (respect)
Respect results naturally from a feeling of gratitude. Respect is extended not only to the other people with whom one interacts but also to daily life, and even to inanimate objects, such as utensils as a product of human effort or whatever has come into existence. The etiquette observed in the tearoom helps a student of Tea to learn to apply the principle of kei. To the uninitiated what may appear at first as excessively strict and formal is actually a means of internalising the spirit of respect. The hospitality of the host, the concern of the guests for each other and the host, and the careful handling of the utensils exemplify this respect.
Sei (purity)
Cleanliness and orderliness, in both the physical and spiritual sense, are a very important part of the study of Tea. Rikyu must have learned the importance of simple acts of cleaning in his study of Zen. Even the most mundane acts—washing dishes or cleaning floors—are the seeds of enlightenment. When the host cleans the tea utensils, he or she is simultaneously purifying heart and mind through total concentration on this task. The guests, before entering the tearoom, pass along a garden path and rinse their hands and wash out their mouths at the low stone water-basin, thereby purifying themselves of the “dust” of the everyday world outside the tearoom. Sei also implies simplification, that is, the elimination of all unnecessary elements. The appearance of the garden path and tearoom are examples of this kind of simplicity.
Jaku (tranquility)
It is often remarked in the practice of Tea that, although a person can work towards attaining the first three principles, the last cannot be attained by direct effort. However through a constant practice of harmony, respect and purity, a person whose heart inclines towards Tea is prepared to approach the utter stillness and silence of jaku. This tranquility is far from a dreamy psychological state. Instead it is the dynamic force of one’s innermost being that infuses the practice of Tea and gives significance to the tea gathering, similar to the words of one of Sen Rikyu’s predecessors,
“be heart’s master, not heart mastered.”
I edited the information about the Tea Ceremony from:
During our Japan quilting tour we attended a tea ceremony.
While I created all the elements of this quilt at home I put it together and did the quilting around the characters on a plane trip and visit to the UK in 2013.
Quilt 3 - Woven at the Nishijin Textile Centre (top left)
Quilt 4 - Sashiko and Beads (bottom left)
Some years before my visit to Japan I was given this small piece of marked up sashiko fabric. I used a train trip to Darwin on the Indian Pacific and The Ghan to complete the stitching on it. I now realise it is much better to sit and sew when travelling than to sit and read. People passing will stop and chat when you are sewing but never interrupt when you are reading.
I bought the beads in Adelaide part way through my journey while staying with my cousin Dianne. She knew all the craft shops around her area and we had a great opportunity for some retail therapy. The beads have minute Japanese artwork on them.
Quilt 5 - Shibori at Arimatsu
At Arimatsu we had a shibori workshop. My work produced a blue hanky with white leaf-like blotches and some smaller white blotches on it. I was at a loss to imagine what to do with my result but at the Yokohama Quilt Festival found some blue medallions of two sizes and some smaller red “button” flowers. These then made a bunch of “flowers”. I bought pearl buttons in Adelaide so added the “cane grass” stems with sashiko stitches.
Quilt 6 - Yokohama Rising Sun
This mini quilt was inspired by a few whole quilts I’d seen at the Yokohama Quilt Festival incorporating a variety of Rising Sun images.
My little quilt was my take on this idea.
Robyn bought me a medallion with fabrics reminiscent of the woodwork style we saw in Hakone. She had bought a coat with the same medallions and I just loved them so much. My medallion formed the centre for this mini quilt.
Quilt 8 - Many Memories
At last the final mini quilt is complete. It was completed in 2019.
In Kyoto we had a Yuzen dyeing workshop and created the intricate, multicoloured hanky in the bottom right hand corner of my quilt. This is a screen printed design with different screens for each colour. The result was most disappointing until the final white lines are added by the master dyer.
One of the highlights of the tour included a special visit to the Konmaki Cat Patch Club, a group of quilting ladies known to Lynn. One of the activities there was to exchange gifts with a partnered Japanese lady. I had two ladies - Maki and Masami. These ladies gave me the yoyo piece and the floral fabric in the bottom left hand corner of the quilt.
A piece of the butterfly fabric in the top right hand corner was given to all of us by a lady who had a mattress making business with her husband. This fabric is one of the ones they use to cover the mattresses but also makes a beautiful patchwork fabric.
While we were with the group one activity was to make a fabric flower brooch using shibori fabric. Mine is mounted in the bottom right hand corner.
Some of the fabrics I have used as patches for boro work and the binding are also created using shibori. The “scrunchy” mounted at the top is also shibori and I bought this in Yokohama too.
Shibori is a process of tie-dying fabrics by filling small areas with tightly wrapped tiny stitches and knots. Silk is most commonly used for shibori work.
The Collection
Of course once I had finished all the little quilts I had to decide how to display them. The following pages show some of the ideas I had.
However, in Japan items are often wrapped in fabric so I thought it would be most appropriate to wrap my quilts in my jelly roll coverlet and include my journal with it.
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