Hydrangea and Iris at Hondo-Ji Temple

This is somewhere I saw on Rurousha who gives me all my tips about which gardens to visit and when. It was truly beautiful. The moment when you come out of the first set of buildings (various shrines and memorials to former chief monks) and see the iris's is really something. A few photos.

This is the view from that moment...

It was a very lovely way to spend a morning.

Teacher Byrne

I had a meeting this week with the woman who organised the Yukata Classes. I had offered to teach classes on various sewing, knitting or crochet topics plus said we could use my flat for the lessons if it was on a weekday. Along she came to see my various creations and also check the flat was suitable.

I had laid out various projects on the dining table for her to see and she was immediately drawn to the metal frame purses.

She said traditional bags to go with Yukatas were often like this but larger with a handle - was it possible to make one of those?

Hmmm, hummmm, ummmm... I pondered. Oh hang on, I think I have some like that in the bedroom.

I had completely forgotten about these when I was selecting things to show her. Turns out this is exactly what she wanted. She particularly adored the patchwork one but I made it clear it would have to be a single fabric piece to get the workshop done in a day. So...I'll be teaching a metal frame handbag making workshop in July preceded by a shopping outing to Shinjuku for a frame and fabric for the lining and outer - to be chosen by the attendees using guidance from me. I am off there on Monday to scope out the prices of various bits so she can work out the costs of the class. Exciting!

Patchwork Progress

Unusually for me I bought a pattern - for the Sew Together Bag (pattern here on Craftsy). I had been admiring several on Flickr, including this one:

But rather than just using two fabrics I thought I'd mix it up a little bit. Here are my outer fabrics for the two bags I am making.

The unusually sophisticated orange and teal one is for me and the other for a friend about to go on a holiday. And of course I then needed zips.

I think zips are second on my list of favourite fastenings, second only to buttons.

The pattern has been consistently criticised for a lack of pictures so it irks me that it is still $12. Despite years of criticism the author has decided to do nothing about the feedback, but then when people are prepared to pay $12 for a single pattern why do you need to listen to them? Fortunately there is a sew along with multiple photos from earlier in the year. I hope to make progress on these over the weekend.

The blue and white EPP quilt for Mater progresses. Last time I checked in I'd done 52 stars. I've now completed all 93 and started sewing together the hexagon section. The pattern is my own and looks like this:

And I eventually decided to go dark to light ish rather than random on the layout. I see lots of bloggers who have a 'design wall' made of felt or something which they can stick blocks up on to see whether a layout works....I have a 'design floor'.

I am thinking ahead to how to quilt this and have been much taken with a blog called Kathy's Quilts and especially her Slow Stitching Sunday series where she spends her sewing time that day hand stitching. She has hand quilted a country style quilt called 'Journey of a Quilter' which, while not my taste, is very beautifully done. But to hand quilt a double sized quilt? That is a lot of work plus you've got the thing on your lap the whole time and it's hotting up again here. I don't know. But then I guess there is plenty of time to think about it before I get to that stage.

View Halloo

Before the pictures, a few statistics (taken from Wikipedia)...

To summarise, the centre of Tokyo is 38% larger than London with its outskirts stretching 62% further than London's. The population of Tokyo is also nearly 140% higher than London's. So...you can start to see that they need a lot more buildings. With that in mind, behold the staggering urban density of Tokyo...

This was the view from the free viewing platform on the 42nd floor of the North Tower of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building on a rainy day when the edge of those suburbs was lost in cloud. As in London (and in New York and other cities) there are little oases of calm in the shape of parks and gardens.

This one is Yoyogi Park - one of the largest in Tokyo at 54 hectares.

And of course there is a South Tower you can go up as well. In fact you can see each viewing platform from the other.


The building itself is very impressive, although not the tallest in the area.

The inside is equally...impressive.

Plus lots of signs of the national pride at winning the Olympic bid.

In the Tourist Centre inside I chanced upon this guy.

His name is Musubimaru and he seemed to be the mascot for either a specific rice brand or for a prefecture (region) of Japan. The person inside him was having a whale of a time.

"He" was really flirty with the japanese ladies around me and kept striking all these coy poses for our photos. It was really rather funny.

Outside there was a courtyard with a semi circle of statues placed periodically. One particularly caught my eye.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Japan is not a Christian country so I wasn't sure if there was a similar myth in Buddhist or Shinto historical texts, but the sculpture was beautifully executed.

Adam in particular was a handsome chap, but I particularly liked his apparently knitted jumper!

Speaking of knitting, and by implication all crafty activities, I am sewing and knitting away in between outings. I have made a mini quilt for The Little Quilt group on Flickr. I can't share pictures until after voting finishes. It is a fun idea - you submit a photo to the moderator who posts it. Then once the deadline passes you all vote on the quilts and put them in order of liking. The person with the most 'likes' gets their first choice quilt posted to them and so on down the list with each participant ending up receiving one of the quilts. The deadline isn't until June 30th so there is time to join in if you would like to. I still need to add binding to mine.

Meanwhile I am plugging away on the EPP quilt and have finished sewing all the stars and started sewing the hexagon section together. I'll take some proper pictures of it all soon.

Hama-Rikyu Garden - History and Beauty Combined

This Garden was originally part of the estate of an Edo period Shogun who ruled in the 1650s. The main pool is tidal and is still fed by the seawater of the bay through two sluice gates. There used to be a villa here and it is where the Shogan would go if he wanted to show off his boats to visitors - in fact it is still used as a dock for one of the river boat services that run in Tokyo. The Emperor gifted the Garden to the city in the 1950s and the tea houses, destroyed during WW2, were very carefully rebuilt in the original style. The garden is now surrounded by high rise buildings (in particular the Conran Hotel) and has a stonking great dual carriageway along one side. Inside it is peaceful and idyllic though. It costs a whopping £2 to get in and I easily spent 2 hours there - I would have spent longer if I'd brought something to eat. Now, I'll just leave you with the photos.

Those last two are the front and side view of a 300 year old pine. It's height is only 11ft but that main branch coming out at 90 degrees is 18 feet long and the breadth of the branches coming off it was, I dunno, 30 feet maybe? I should also explain that the kimono couple weren't just mooning about in the garden like that. They had a photographer and two attendants with them and were taking wedding photos. I thought I'd just nip in and capture the moment and help spread the love.

Unfortunately I went to the garden without any sunscreen on because it was 100% cloud cover.

Not my finest assumption.

Ow.

I am now hugely sunburnt in a stripey bagpuss-esque painful style. The thick straps of my vest top are stark white but annoyingly so too are where the lanyard around my neck lay. So I am literally striped. In fact, here's a photo Pooch took of me blogging on the sofa.

I tried an internet remedy of socaking a towel in black and tea and then draping it over you. I ended up smelling of very very strong tea and it didn't help. A friend has suggested Aloe Vera gel which thankfully they do have in Japan (at least, I think it is aloe vera gel. It's possible I'm about to smear myself in sea urchin juice or something similar)  so I have some in the fridge which I'll apply shortly.

Scrap Swap Time!

I am the organiser of this one. Click on the image to sign up!

Yukata Update - Class 2

I blogged about the first Yukata making class here. The second day was last weekend and very good fun. The organiser actually made a 30 second video of it which I've embedded below.

I was discussing this with Natalie and describing the stitches we used when she said she hoped I'd be blogging about them. Hum. So here they are, although the photos were taken with my old camera, hence slightly dodgy focusing. (Everything beyond this point will only make sense if you know how to sew.)

Things to remember while looking at this - the long edges of the fabric are already finished because it is only about 35cm wide (but 12m long) when bought. Therefore there is no chance of these fraying. In addition the fabric is very heavily starched when you buy it so takes a folded crease very well and this also lessens the chance of any fraying while you work on the hems. Lastly, the fabric itself is quite densely woven cotton, so yet again the chance of fraying is minimal. 

First we have the tacking done by the teacher. 

Fairly standard and used a cream version of the white thread we were all using - a 30wt or 30/3 cotton.

The Sensai (just like Karate Kid) taught us two stitches - one for finishing hems and one for hemming edges. The seams around the arm holes on the sleeve and the bottom hem were done with the latter, which looks like this on the outside (I've left the needle in so you can see the stitch):

- but cannot be seen at all on the inside. I've tried to draw a diagram showing how it works, but don't laugh. 

Once you've stopped laughing, you'll realise that 1 is the 'main' piece of cloth and 2 and 3 are the layers of cloth you get when you fold it at the hemline in the two places shown by the green arrows. So it's folded over twice to give a neat hem - nothing unusual there. What is unusual though is you get no sign of any stitching on the inner edge - above layer 3 in the diagram. The only sign of stitching you get is on the outside - below layer 1 in the diagram. Hence you get what you see in the photo above. 

The second stitch is worked on the long seams and is essentially just to make them look neat and fasten them down since the edge of the fabric is already finished. This stitch is visible on both the inside and outside of the garment. Inside first:

And outside:

And the comedy diagram:

I did ask why the stitches were visible on the outside - they can be done much more subtly than this - but the teacher essentially said that this is the way Yukata are made so this is how we do it.

It has been really fascinating watching the teacher and her helpers work and seeing how a traditional garment is sewn. I want to incorporate some of the techniques in the Sashiko Jacket I have planned which I got the fabric for from Nippori last week, when I took the photos for that blogpost. 

One more class is needed before it is finished but I will be taking lots of photos of the finished project and there is one more thing I need to cover - the enclosing of the long seams by folding. The final class isn't for another 2 weeks but as soon as I can I will show it off to you all!