Check out the locals 四国の伝統的な人形

During the winter holidays in 2009-2010 Rik and I packed up our bikes and headed for a two weeks cycling trip around Shikoku. If you are interested in reading about our trip feel free to surf our blog entries.
As we were cycling in the rather remote area of the Tsurugi mountain range, we came upon these life size dolls of japanese people. First this young lad waiting perhaps for a bus.

冬休み自転車で四国を一周しました。剣山地の道沿いにこんなすばらしい手作りの人形達を発見しました。先ずはこの男の子です。バスを待っている姿なのでしょうか？


A living room scene complete with the entire extended family. Notice the middle age man drinking sake, the young boy with some sticky candy and the sandals carefully lined up at the entrance. I love all the careful attention to detail.

昔話みたいな大家族は素敵で細かな所まで作られていました。

Here is a close-up of grandma and grandpa preparing some goodies on an open stove. Looks almost good enough to eat, especially in our ravenous state.

祖父母が美味しい料理を作っている姿に詳細な点にも細心の注意を払っている。自転車は一日中漕いで、食べ物に飢えてきましたのでこの食べ物なんか美味しそうでした。


Further along the road we found this traditional new years scene complete with a playful kite flying scene.
The humor and the expression in all these scenes was wonderful and left us in a jolly mood for the rest of the day. We didn`t see a single live soul in these villages, but we were assured of their kind presence through these creative scenes from traditional rural japan.

伝統的な昔日本のお正月シーン。作品にはユーモアと表情があふれているように見えます。村では誰も見かけませんでしたが、このやさしい人形のせいで村のすばらしい印象が残っている。

Milo sitting on his Echino Baby quilt. What a big boy! He is hardly a baby.

Riandaria リアンダリア

ta dum. A flower for mom. My first completely original piece, and i love it. It was all hand appliqued, and then quilted (stitch in the ditch) as well as echo quilted. The final product looks like a modern/hawaiian/japanese/leanne invention. My friend gave it the name riandaria...combining my name Leanne (in japanese pronounced rian) with the flower dalia.

Echino Baby Quilt for Milo

After many months of stopping and starting, sighing and groaning, loving and hating, I finally put the final touches on this baby quilt for my nephew Milo. It`s all wrapped up and in the mail, and hopefully will make it in time for the holidays.
何ヶ月の作業がやっと出来上がりました。クリスマスに間に合うかな？

The main light green material found in this quilt is a beautiful cotton linen blend designed by a japanese artist ECHINO. I found this piece on an auction and bought it for a few dollars. The prairie points around the green material are made with various scraps of material; some antique japanese kasuri, other pieces cotton remnants from past projects. I was hoping that a baby would love to touch these little pieces of fabric that poke out from the quilt.
 パッチワークをする時布を切ったり縫ったりするは基本がこの緑の布はそのまま完璧だと思ったので何もせずに利用して、プレリーポイントという工夫を使って、回りは残り布で四角を二回折って飾りました。ベビーキルトだから赤ちゃんはその立体的な布を触るのが好きだろう。

This quilt was all hand quilted and embroidered, including this little spider.
このキルトは全部手でキルトラインを入れました。この小さいクモは刺繍して、可愛くなってきました。

 The bottom and top of the material is covered with leaves, which I outlined with small green and white quilting stitches. The middle of the quilt was blank, so I improvised with my signature squiggles quilted in multicolor thread (my school notebooks were full of these kinds of patterns). 　学生の時私のノートは全部このようなくねくねした線の模様で溢れていた。

The back of the quilt is a checkerboard arrangement of some baby soft, double gauze material designed by Heather Ross in her FarFar Away collection. The light blue sections are full of unicorns, and in the orange area you can find many little snails. This quilt is reversible.
ベビーキルトだから後ろにヘザー　ロスのユニコーンとカタツムリの模様の柔らかいダブルガーゼを使いました。このキルトはリバーシブルだよ。

Coin Quilt Completed

It’s a different world depending which window you look through. My complete coin quilt seemed to me less like a collection of scraps and more like separate little windows framed with pretty white. Do you have a favorite window?

For this quilt I used a bag of scraps that I bought from Anna Marie Horner, as well as other various scraps that I had floating around in my house. The white lattice work was an experiment in using trapunto- a technique where you actually insert extra filler (in my case wool) into the design. The hand quilting took forever to complete, but now that it is finished, I wish I had hand quilted all the lines. The sewing machine is great for doing the piece work, but I love the look of hand quilted lines. Sewing in the ditch with the sewing machine was not nearly as easy as I had expected.

Problems:

Since this was my first attempt at using a hoop, there is quite a bit of variation in my hand sewing, starting slightly irregular and becoming smaller and neater as I improved.

This quilt was designed with the purpose to hide a cubbyhole where I store various odds and ends, including garbage in my house, kind of like a curtain or in Japanese a noren. Rik (my husband) laughed at me and said that our house has the most beautiful garbage hider (ゴミ隠し)in the entire archipelago. Of course it’s true, and what he is really trying to say is that the purpose of the quilt doesn’t really match the design of the quilt.

Live and learn! Personally I can’t wait to install it in our home.

Asian Baby Bag

My latest bag design is finally in the hands of my little sister. Happy Birthday Anita!
This bag was made using scraps from a baby quilt I made last year, Japanese antique kimono material, Shikoku hand woven material and my boss’ old pair of jeans. For the front of the bag I used a pattern called “Orange Peel” to put together these various scraps into pretty flower shapes. Alternating between dark colored circles and light colored circles I think the busy patterns of the fabric work well together.

Making the orange peel pattern was really tricky because of all the curves. The material I used was also not the easiest to turn into beautiful arcs, instead I struggled using a mix of a roulette to first make a curved crease, as well as appliqué glue. Where the various circles came together, most of the seams met beautifully, but I was worried with the type of material I used that there might be some fraying of the seams. I should have made a wider sewing allowance especially with the loosely woven materials. In order to reinforce these weak areas, I put covered buttons at all the junctions. In the end this helps to unite the front of the bag with the back of the bag. The front of the bag was all hand quilted with tiny stitches, echoing the curves of each petal.

I used the bum side of the jeans for the back of the bag. I figured that the pockets would be fun to use for the bag. First, the jeans had to be taken apart, and resewn so that the pockets were straight and functional. Using a pair of well-used jeans gives the bag a very soft feel, and drapes comfortably on your body when you wear the bag. The appliquéd butterflies were made from scraps from the front of the bag to cover some thin areas in the material of the jeans. Also, I thought that Rowan (my sister's daughter) would like to look at some butterflies on her mama’s bag.

I quilted the denim using my handy dandy sewing machine. Sounds easy, but since the material is so thick and bulky the machine revolted and often bunched up. My teacher recommended that I use her free motion machine to quilt the top of the denim, so I jumped on the idea and sat down at her machine only to produce a mess of neither straight nor curved lines of sewing. What a disaster! I took it all out and hand stitched little flowers instead at the top of the bag. Putting the bag together was also a real pain. The thick layers of denim, batting, and scrap material were way to thick and awkward to sew together by machine. Instead I had to painfully sew the bag together one stitch at a time using a thick needle and brute force. I promised myself that I would never make another bag using denim.

I made a matching cell phone/glasses case that attaches to the bag in a clever way using the belt loops from the waistband of the jeans. The material I used for the case was a scrap of beautiful antique material called Aizome, which is a blue indigo dyed material made in Japan. I love this little scrap of material, and cutting into it was really hard. Since the material was a little thin and worn, I first reinforced the material with an iron-on material especially made for reinforcing thin material, and then hand quilted the case following the pattern of the material. I love this little pouch, although it makes the bag not fully reversible, as you most likely want this accessory to appear at the front of your body as opposed to along your back.

The inside of the bag is lined with a deep scarlet red cotton material. My sewing teacher was not very fond of my choice, but I think it’s great. I love how when you open the bag it seems like you are entering the body cavity of the bag. The outside of the bag is so busy that I think that a solid color works best. In the lining I put a zippered pocket and a convenient key fob to make finding your keys a little easier (I personally think this is the best part of the bag).

There you have it, a handy dandy bag made from beautiful scraps. Happy Birthday Anita!

I've got the rainy season blues

This is what happens when it rains all weekend and I have too much free time on my hands.

I'm thinking it will become a pillow, any ideas?

The design was inspired by a beautiful pillow that I saw on Anna Maria Horner's website. I put together a basic design of the flower on Photoshop, and then made stencils to make each appliqued petal. I'm in the process of hand stitching around each petal.

Most of the material I used to make this flower was scraps from my coin quilt project, which is almost finished.

For all those wondering whether I would ever finish the coin quilt, fear not, the end is in sight. Since I mostly hand quilted the entire quilt, it has taken forever to complete. I'm just putting the binding on the quilt, and am feeling a little anti climatic about the whole process. I should feel happy about the imminent completion, but instead I feel a little disappointed. Perhaps after awhile when I have time to step back and appreciate the final product, I will like it better. I'll post a picture of it as soon as it stops raining, and I can hang it up outside to take a nice picture.