Friday, September 05, 2008

Thursday quilting

A couple people asked what the finished baskets that the kindergarten kids braid look like. I couldn't find the ones my kids made but here is a picture of a little girl in last year's class. She was so proud of herself!


Yesterday I went to Mrs. Furui's house for a patchwork gathering. Actually we didn't have anything to work on jointly. I brought the bazaar quilt and put in a few more stitches and passed it along to Furui-san to work on this week. Mrs. Ochiai brought her beautiful black and white and red quilt (I don't think it has a name). That quilt is even lovelier up close! Quilting really makes the quilt! Mrs. Ochiai had also done a simple but interesting binding by placing little scraps of red here and there among the black strips so little bits of red popped up here and there in the binding. No particular organization to this she said but one red scrap just hit the corner which gave it a very planned look. I must remember this simple trick of adding a bit of interest.



Mrs. Ochiai spent the rest of the day looking through quilting books and she was attracted to very bright and cheery, colorful quilts. She said all those months of looking at her latest quilt got boring no matter how beautifully it turned out.



Mrs. Furui was helping one of our members plan out a Prayer and Square quilt and getting the lady started on that. She did take time to show us her latest small project of Hardanger embroidery. Isn't this elegant? It is a pocket tissue holder and a little bobble for your cell phone which we thought hilarious since Mrs. Furui doesn't own a cell phone. (One of the few people in Japan who don't. Even elementary children carry cell phones nowadays in Japan). Mrs. Furui often is doing embroidery, some I think she sells in a friend's shop, some go to different school bazaars, often she is making something lovely for her friends and family. I don't know where she finds the time to do quilting too! I think Mrs. Furui got a few requests for cell phone bobbles yesterday.



5 comments:

Mrs. Goodneedle said...

What lovely handwork, so neat and well executed. Great post on such dedicated needle-workers.

Marilyn R said...

I love the way Mrs. Ochiai had the red scattered in the binding - that is a neat idea!

Shasta said...

Another post with lots of beautiful work. The red in the binding is a great idea. I love the way it shows up in the corner - doesn't look like a mitered binding though.

Colleen formerly of South Africa said...

I love the red white and black quilt...and those baskets are too cute.

meggie said...

What a gorgeous little girl.
Love the black white & red quilt, but I could never make one- I am not so disciplined!
I love Mrs Furui's work too.