Tag: パッチワーク

New Quilts by Sarah Nishiura and Thoughts on the Humble Thimble

By:
Textiles Sarah NISHIURA

Today I’m very excited to let you know that we have new quilts by Sarah Nishiura in our shop->

Quilt by Sarah Nishiura, 2023
Sarah made this quilt because she hadn’t made a yellow quilt for Entoten in a while and she was also in the mood for some sunshine after a long gray winter.
Quilt by Sarah Nishiura, 2023
This quilt was made as part of a series of blue and white line of work that Sarah has made for Entoten over the years. Each work of this series has been created through a different approach using these colors.

 

Right around the time I received these much-awaited quilts, Sarah was announcing her hand quilting workshop in Chicago that begins registration on June 21st through her Instagram account. “What’s the best way to learn to hand quilt?”, she wrote. “First, buy a thimble; Second, find a teacher who can give you a few tips; Third, practice, practice, practice!”

This got me thinking about thimbles. About how the thimble that my mother showed me to use in Japan is different from the ones used here in the U.S.

Thimbles in Japan are called yubinuki and they provide the same function in hand-stitching as western thimbles to push the end of the needle through fabric and to protect your finger. But while a typical Western thimble is worn on top of the middle finger, Japanese ones are worn between the first (DIP) and second (PIP) joint of the middle finger like a ring. You can watch a short Japanese YouTube video on how to use a yubinuki here->

The Western cap-shaped thimbles are also available in Japan, but all the kimono sewers that I have known wore these ring-shaped thimbles. I would often walk into a tea break that my mother was having with her sewing buddies and everyone had these rings still attached to their fingers as they sipped tea from a cup; like it was some sort of a fellowship ring of sewers.

Yubinuki that my mother uses to sew. They can be purchased for less than a dollar a piece.

 

According to the encyclopedia Nipponica via Kotobank, the majority of pre-Meiji (1868-1912) period yubinuki were made from layered fabric in the shape of a triangle or a circle and were worn at the base of the middle finger with a string. This is because people used long thick needles to sew work clothing that were mostly made from rough linen or cotton. After Meiji, when sewing became part of the school curriculum, shorter needles and ring-shaped yubinuki became more common.

I first learned to use a yubinuki when I made a summer kimono many years ago under my mother’s instruction. It was very awkward and uncomfortable to use at first, but when I got used to wearing it, I couldn’t sew without it. I haven’t had the courage and patience to make a kimono since then, but the yubinuki has stayed with me and I look for it even when I have to occasionally re-attach a button.

Sewing set that was used by my niece in school when she was about 11 years old. The same yubinuki is in the set because they can be adjusted to fit the small fingers of children with a string. Sewing is still a part of the Japanese primary school curriculum.

 

Once, I purchased a nice ring-shaped metal yubinuki for my mother because I noticed that she was using cheap leather and plastic ones that needed replacing regularly. She was very happy when I gave it to her, but I soon noticed that she wasn’t using it. When I asked why, she hesitated, then told me that she prefers the soft adjustable ones because the bony knob on her finger joint was getting bigger as she got older, and it was difficult to put the ring through. I was embarrassed that I didn’t realize this without her telling me. Just because it was durable and more expensive, it wasn’t better for her working hands.

Many years have passed since then, and these days my mother has difficulty remembering how to sew a kimono. But she still loves stitching and when I see that brown, slightly tattered yubinuki on her finger, it makes me happy because I know that she is having a good day.

New Quilt by Sarah Nishiura: Inspired by Taisho Design

By:
Textiles Sarah NISHIURA

Quilts by Sarah Nishura in our shop->

How cultures and designs inspire beyond time and borders is fascinating and eye-opening. Across the ages, early Greek artists were attracted by the ancient Egyptians, French impressionists were influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, and old Korean ceramics inspire today’s Japanese potters.

Sarah Nishiura’s quilt was inspired by a Taisho era kimono pattern

So I was intrigued to hear that Sarah Nishiura’s new quilt was inspired by a Taisho era kimono, with its bold and also slightly nostalgic pattern. Sarah says that she is really interested in the scale of the designs in the Taisho era kimono and the way its [large] scale allows the whole garment to come alive with the movement of the body. A quilt is much more like a kimono than a painting from the perspective that they twist and roll as they cover the body.

Quilt by Sarah Nishiura. A quilt is much more like a kimono than a painting, because it twists and rolls as it covers a surface

The designs from the Taisho era are eclectic mixtures of traditional Japanese designs with influences from contemporaneous Western design schools like Art Deco. Taisho was a unique time when Western and Japanese designs influenced each other simultaneously. And fortunately, because Japanese do not throw away kimono easily (mottainai), many examples of the patterns from the Taisho era are still easy to find.

Taisho era kimono with a large scale “Yabane” arrow feather pattern from my closet. This kimono belonged to my grandmother and is paper thin now, but I still wear it as “jyuban” -inner wear- for my kimono.

To provide a little background, Taisho (1912-1926) was a short era right after the better known Meiji (1868-1912) and just before Showa (1926-1989). Taisho was a time when liberalism flourished, popular culture was spread by mass media, café culture blossomed, and the new world opened for women to work and declare financial and spiritual independence. It is the equivalent of the “Roaring Twenties” in the West.

And the Taisho era continues to influence people today. If you ask a Japanese what comes to mind when they think of the Taisho era, they would probably say “Taisho Modern”.

Tokyo Station on the Marunouchi side. Originally opened in 1914, the station is a well-known and iconic brick structure from the Taisho era. The facade was restored to its original outlook in 2012.
Photo by J. Evans

The term “Taisho Modern”, or also called “Taisho Roman”, refers to spaces and designs that conjure up the culture of Taisho. I think of strikingly patterned kimono, cafes with high ceilings and stained glass windows, and old Japanese-Western style architecture that can still be seen in the high-end Ginza and Nihombashi districts of Tokyo

My great-grandparents, my grandparents, and my mother. Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras on display in one photograph. My parents always talk about the generations who survived the Taisho era as tough and brave.

Most important, “Taisho Modern” carries an inherent feeling of resilience because Japan survived the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923) during Taisho, which was the country’s worst-ever natural disaster in which more than 100,000 people lost their lives. My parents always talk about the generations of people who survived the Taisho era as tough and brave. So I feel that it is a perfect sentiment for a lovely quilt that stands up to use and protects us from the cold, and does it in great style.

The Fabrics of a Craft: Quiltmaker Sarah Nishiura

By:
Design Textiles Sarah NISHIURA

Quilts by Sarah Nishiura in our shop ->

When I first saw a photograph of an inventive quilt made by the Chicago-based quilter Sarah Nishiura, I thought I was looking at an abstract painting. The fascinating geometry, surprising lines, and the hues of colors enticed me to feel something completely new.

2017 Quilt by Sarah Nishiura.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Nishiura

Sarah, who is both an accomplished painter and dedicated quilt-maker, distinguishes between the two forms. “A painting is flat,” she observes, ”a quilt on the other hand is never flat. It may be presented that way in a gallery or in an image on-line, but the surface is textured from the stitches. There is always some kind of wave or wiggle to it, and, if it is used on a bed or a lap, it changes constantly as it is folded, draped, or left in a lump on a piece of furniture.”

quilt by sarah nishiura
A quilt changes constantly as it gets used in our everyday life

A quilt has much more purpose than a painting in Sarah’s view. “Quilts are meant to be touched while paintings are generally not. As a painter, the brush was always an intermediary between me and the thing I was making. When I quilt, I touch every inch of my work as it evolves. And similarly, touch is a very important part of the viewer/user’s experience,” she explained.

Sarah was taught to quilt by her mother, whose own mother made quilts by piecing together feed sacks during the Great Depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Sarah’s Japanese-American father’s family was held in an internment camp during the Second World War, where they gathered wood scraps to create altars for people.

Sarah hand-quilts all of her work instead of by machine because she likes the way the lines look. It is a slow process but she feels that the pace of quilting is what makes the final product so special.  
Photo courtesy of Sarah Nishiura

By creating beautiful quilts that provide warmth through the piecing together of otherwise discarded fragments from the past, Sarah finds a connection to the ingenious creativity of her ancestors who created useful and beautiful things out of nothing.

Sarah Nishiura and her shelves of inspiration at her studio in Chicago
Photo courtesy of Sarah Nishiura

Sarah gets her greatest inspirations from quilt history. “I love looking at quilts made in the past, analyzing their designs, how they were made, and also thinking about the context in which they were made”. She occasionally takes a deep dive into the collections database of The International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, Nebraska where traditional quilt patterns can be searched with examples of hundreds of variations of the same pattern.

“One thing I love to do when designing is to challenge the geometric relationships that have traditionally been used in quilting. Figuring out how to warp a grid or shift proportions within a composition is a really fun puzzle and can open up endless possibilities and create some really dazzling effects,” she said. Indeed, a quick Internet image search of Sarah’s name will pull up quilts with numerous innovative designs that she has created. Given Sarah’s gift and passion for geometry, it is no coincidence that her father was a mathematician.

Quilt designs by Sarah Nishiura. She loves figuring out how to warp a grid or shift proportions.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Nishiura

Yanagi Muneyoshi, the founder of the Mingei movement once wrote in an essay titled “Nature of Folk-Crafts” that the most essential quality of folk-craft is its nationality, because it directly reflects the life of that nation. When Sarah remarked that  “a quilt is made of many different materials that all have to be made to play nice together”, this made me think about the openness and inclusiveness of quilts and how synonymous it is with America, where the quilting tradition thrives to the present day with more than 16 million quilt makers.

A quilt’s most special quality is its intimacy. “The desire to play with geometric pattern is only one part of the game” says Sarah Nishiura.

I understand why Sarah does not want her quilts high up on walls, but want you to keep it close and take them into your hands. It is because the most special quality of her beautiful work is in its humility and intimacy.