Ka(t)waii Bag

Remembering, as I am sure you have, that "kawaii!" means "cute" in japanese, the title of this post will make perfect sense. I have made a cat bag.

The features are needle-turn applique'd apart from the whiskers which were simple embroidery. On the back is a bow - because most cute things in Tokyo feature bows somewhere along the way.

The bag is a kit I got at the Quilt Show some months ago and my finally getting on with it was brought about by my previous cross-body bag suddenly breaking mid-jaunt a week or two ago. There is no doubting this one is cross-body when you see the length of the strap.

Which itself is a paw at one end, albeit rather sketchily embroidered.

The fabric is one of the lovely japanese woven ones with a polka dot texture (dots and cats - the kit was basically designed for me). In the pattern and instructions that came with it the bag was supposed to be a little bit smaller with an 8" zip closure. I've enlarged mine and given it just a magnetic clasp.

I also added an inner pocket for my travelcard using one of the sample squares I picked up still on the card at Okidaya.

The original design didn't have any lining but I've added this japanese lilac kitten and temari ball print I picked out of a bargain bucket somewhere this year. I've yet to give the bag a testdrive but I am rather smitten with it already! It is finished in time for the start of Spring which has begun here with some really lovely weather. 16, 18 even 20 degrees so that I sat here at lunchtime with the balcony door open.

From next week I will be able to sit out on the balcony in my red polka dot garden chair Pooch inadvertantly got me as a present. I say 'inadvertantly' since he has been in bed with the mother of all hangovers all day and to make up for the smell and the rest of it I told him he'd got me the chair in one of his lucid moments just as I arrived at the bedside with another cup of tea. He bravely muttered that there was no need to thank him.

While my Mum was visiting I got her to pick out some fabrics for a quilt and have since been going strong on an EPP quilt I have designed for her.

The sides are all 2" and so I calculate I need 90 blue hexagons, 86 whitish ones, 558 blue diamonds and 135 whitish of the same. So far I have 78, 12, 180 and 64 respectively. I have more fabric waiting for me for when I get back to the UK for a visit in three weeks, but this leaves me with a dilemma. Should I start sewing together the shapes or should I wait so I can fully integrate the new fabrics into all parts of the quilt? If I wait I need to keep cutting more and more paper pieces, whereas if I get on with it I can reuse existing ones but risk a patchy quilt. That basically answers it really - I'll have to wait. Having so many shapes left me in a storage quandry until I found these at the 100 yen shop.

Diamonds in the top and hexagons plus uncut fabric in the bottom. I'll need to swap those before long though. Mum asked for the quilt to be in blues so there are quite a few shades appearing already.

I am sure there will be many more added before I see this one off the needle though!

Blossom in Yoyogi Park

I am 90% sure this is plum blossom still - the cherry isn't due to start for another week yet - but I've not seen any with the green leaves like this. 

It was a beautiful day yesterday and a national holiday called Spring Day. Wikipedia says it is a time to commemorate ancestors by leaving spring flowers at graves and also a time to reconnect with living family, start a new hobby or spring clean. From our point of view it meant Pooch got the day off so we took a walk in Yoyogi Park. It is the same park I visited at New Year when I went to the Meiji Shrine (which looking back I realise I never blogged about) but it's the first time I had been into the park proper. My eye was caught by a dog area - specifically for dogs to socialise in. 

The signs are for under 12kg on the right and over 10kg on the left. The yapping from the smaller dogs was ghastly. However, in accordance with the norm in Tokyo, all small dogs were suitably dressed in at least a t-shirt and some in a full outfit. 

Very odd. 

It's been a quiet week since my back went ping again on Monday so I've just been quietly working on a few EPP sewing projects and thinking about the next jumper I am due to knit.

Meanwhile back in the UK it is SkipNorth this weekend! Can't believe I'm missing it but Nickerjac is keeping me up to date with frequent tweeting. I hope they are all having great fun!

Confirming Receipt

It has been a good few months for swaps. I ended up with two partners in the first swap of my English Paper Patchwork Group on Flickr. I scored these two beautiful pouches.

So different but both so brilliant. Look at the extra detail on the red one...

Completely non-functional but adding a really polished finishing touch. And with the clamshell, look how she handled where the two sides join underneath...

That represents a level of planning I rarely seem to achieve with my projects. I adore them both!

I also received my parcel for the sewing room swap, also on Flickr. The most brilliant bag!

My inspiration mosaic contained several cat pictures and I'd said that my preference was for jewel colours.

Inside there is an excellently deep pocket and the lining is another cat print fabric. Such thoughtfulness! This was my 'big' item and you also sent a small one too. My 'small' was not exactly insubstantial.

A lovely sewing roll! I can honestly say I have used the bag every day since it arrived on Saturday, starting with a visit to a food market when Pooch snapped these.

I really do love it!

The next round for the EPP Group is currently open for sign ups so click here to read more about it. There is no need to have a blog - just a flickr account is fine.

Kamakura's Big Buddha and Other Family

My parents are visiting this week so it has been sightseeing central. I have plenty to catch up on but since they are still here will content myself with a small peek at what we did yesterday. My friend Noriko very kindly took us off for the day to Kamakura which is a seaside town about three times the size of what I would think of as a UK seaside town since everything in Japan is either on a much larger or much smaller scale than anything in the UK. It has many shrines as well as lots of craft shops, a large sandy beach for surfing, views of Mt Fuji (only on clear days - alas not when we were there) and restaurants a plenty. It is an hour by train from Tokyo and is definitely worth a visit. Having grown up by the sea it was lovely to go back, even just for a few hours.

The weather was idyllic - the warmest day of the year so far - and the waves seemed to be good as the sea was full of surfers, even on a weekday. However, our first stop was inland. We got there, rounded a corner, and behold...

The effect of rounding a corner and seeing this kind of thing in the flesh is hard to describe. As we were leaving I watched others and there was always the pause, the widening eyes and the mouth slightly open. You know to expect him, but then suddenly there he is.

Photos really do not do justice to him. It sounds terribly twee, but there really is a feeling of extreme serenity as you look at him. I am not a terribly spiritual person and have no religion, but I felt very strongly that if I had the time I could quite happily sit there for hours looking at him, at the sky, at the trees, at the birds, and think lazy thoughts about nothing in particular and be very happy while doing so.

Some school children from another part of Japan had recently made him a pair of traditional slippers. You see these in paintings from the Edo period and they are still sold in many traditional shops around Japan.

Although of course very few of them are made for this sized foot. This pair were a lot taller than me.

The Buddha himself dates from 1252 and his story is told on a wall plaque.

I felt rather humbled by such an amazing...I'm not sure of the right word. Creation? Symbol? Icon? He seems too present to be just called a statue or something inanimate.

The rest of our day in Kamakura was spent in beautiful but rather less epic pursuits. It did however, in a way that brought me back to earth and reminded me of my true calling in life, bring me my first "Beware of the Cat" sign.

This was near another shrine we visited. Apparently the cats have a tendency to run out into the road. Earlier in the week I had taken my parents to the Calico Cat Cafe and bought Rob a pot of food without first warning him what the effect would be.

There was a cute stampede towards him. Fnah fnah.

Sadly they go back to the UK at the weekend so normal blogging will resume after that. Today Rob has gone off to the Railway Museum with Mr Pooch so Mum and I are going craft shopping in Asakusabashi and Nippori and then on to Harajuku for Tokyo's biggest 100 Yen shop. I took her to a smaller one in Shinjuku on Monday and she caught the bug! They really are rather wonderful places, especially when your previous experience of such things has been the UK's Poundland. There is just no comparison and I have to keep reminding myself that all the craft bits I find in them are only 65p a pop.

Seriously Sunny at Ikegami Baien

Ikegami Baien is a garden in the south of Tokyo with 370 plum trees covering 30 different varieties. This isn't one of those gardens that was created for the naughty whims of the Ronin to be fulfilled in - it belonged to an artist and then a restaurant owner before being bequeathed to the city. It isn't huge but it is plenty big enough and very beautiful.

Plum blossoms are different to the cherry ones in that they are sparser so you don't get the massing of colour - it's more like polka dots. And I do like polka dots.

The blossoms are amazing close up.

There are the pure white, pale pinks and the amazing cerise pinks. There is also a lovely, very subtle, scent in the air. You can see all my photos here.

As you can see from the photos the weather was perfect and Noriko and I had a wonderful time wondering around taking lots of photos. After half an hour Noriko turned to me and said "I know what you are thinking Alex - you are thinking about how you could make this into a quilt!" So true. I was thinking of this one I saw a while back in a library book.

Now that is cherry and this was plum, but still...kinda wonderful! Cherry bl ossom will be out in a few weeks time. You can be sure I'll be out seeing plenty of that too!

In February...

My January post seems like a lot more than a month ago. There has been lots happening on the personal side as well as what has been going on in my role as a craft buddha. Here is the mosaic of finishes for this month.

Quite a variety - washi box, jewellery, patchwork and more. And there are all those other projects on the go - the one block wonder patches waiting to be assembled into something. The blue/grey hexagons in traditional woven cottons waiting to be a bag, the jumper I'm knitting and then not to mention the projects I have planned. Quilts for two people, egyptian socks, various traditional japanese things including what I think are called Hinakazari decorations although I'm not sure of that. They look like this.

Bit blurry I know but these are photos I took at the Quilt Festival last month. They come in an infinite variety of designs and combinations.

I've had some library books about them and have taken careful note so hope to have a few flowers and animals produced soon. Perhaps for March's mosaic!?

My One Block Wonder

From little acorns...

...do aimless patchwork pieces grow. The thing is I can't decide how to arrange them or what to use them for.

Or some other way.

Whatever is does end up as I am still amazed at how much variety there is in the blocks.

I used EPP for the triangles and then stitched them together to make the hexagons so all hand sewn. But seriously, what to do with them?!

The Costume Museum and Vintage Shopping

Two outings to share today. The first was actually the vintage shopping which took place in Koenji. I have read that there are more than 70 vintage shops in this area and it is easy to believe while strolling up just one of the neighbourhood's  streets.

 

If you didn't know it was vintage mecca you would take it for a suburban neighbourhood with little old ladies and mothers with babies very much in evidence. I suspect it all changes at the weekend but as this was a weekday I was free to stroll around and browse at will. Shops varied from general...

...to those covering a certain period...

Prices also varied from reasonable to astronomic, although some of the dresses were absolutely divine.

One of the things I am not sure about is what the well dressed Japanese was wearing in the sixties, which I will have to look into in more detail. I had hoped for some enlightenment at the Bunko Gakuen Costume Museum but as luck would have it I happened to time my first visit with a special exhibition of European fashions from 1800-2000.

It was almost as if I was in the V&A in London as I strolled around the beautiful but tiny outfits from 200+ years ago. As time spooled forward I noticed some familiar outlines and very familiar names. A Jean Deses draped evening dress from 1953 was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. No photos in the museum and I can't find it now on google. A purple Thierry Mugler jacket from 1988 was sadistically beautiful.

While a Balenciaga pink silk evening dress was a masterclass in pattern cutting. Like this one but floor length and cerise pink.

There were also a small number of modern Japanese designers represented which naturally must include Issey Miyake. The dress shown was a 'Rhythm Pleats' dress from 1990.

I ended up pretty much pirouetting around the dress as I tried to work out how it was constructed. Astonishing that there isn't any wire involved. The one I saw was red and yellow but otherwise the same with the neck and one armhole on one side (within one circle) and the other armhole on the other side. It must feel amazing to wear something like that - as if it's alive!

Sew One, Get Three

I realised that the Triple Zip Pouch Swap posting deadline is Saturday, and while I'd got the fabrics I hadn't done anything about putting them together. That is no longer a problem!

Once again I uphold my reputation as someone averse to right angles. Everything about this is very slightly wonky but the fabric is lovely and the zips all work and the Japanese tortoise print on the inside will hopefully please the recipient! Now I just need to work out what to fill it with before sending. In case you want to make your own the free and excellent tutorial is here.

As I was getting ready to give it a final iron, I remembered two I had started last summer. I always meant to finish them but it was while the big packing and clearing mission was getting underway and they got packed and cleared. Happily, if perhaps strangely, I brought them with me. It turns out one was actually 100% complete while the other just needed the final seams doing. I must have been really struggling when I packed them up not to be able to do something so simple. Two minutes work and ...

They are both for family members so I shall be despatching them very shortly, along with the greenyblue one.

I do love the quilt-as-you-go method and this particular example is really the only kind of quilting I can do with a borrowed and extremely basic machine. Not that I'm complaining - I'm very grateful to have it! But there's no free motion option and the stitch lengths and widths are fixed so there's limited options there too.

My attempts to lure the neighbourhood birds to the balcony continue. Having become a daily stopping point for brown eared bulbuls I've also achieved sparrows and, just this morning, our first visit by a Japanese white eye.

These tiny birds are maybe 15cm long and have only just appeared in the neighbourhood so I guess they have wintered elsewhere. The picture (taken by someone far cleverer than me) shows the shade of green but not their iridescence. They are so beautiful and, to me, amazingly exotic! I have only seen one once before on the way to the post office and it was pecking at half an orange so you will not be surprised to know 'oranges' have now been added to my shopping list. Tweet tweet!