okadaya, tokyo

Japanese Narrow Goods

Yesterday I made it to Okadaya, a five-storey fabric store across from the East exit of the Shinjuku train station. I had a 35-minute window of time before I needed to regroup with my family and head back to our apartment in Nakano.

I walked up the stairs to check out the merchandise on each floor. If I had known in advance that all the quilting (pronounced "kilting" in Japan) fabrics were on the first floor, I could have saved ten precious minutes. There were elaborate Liberty of London cottons, Michael Miller and other American designer fabrics, and cutesy Japanese novelty prints galore.

My big find was a collection of narrow cottons (approximately 15 inches wide) that are hand-printed in only one or two colors. They took my fancy because their simple motifs looked genuinely Japanese. I bought 8 meters for 8,000 Yen each (approx. $9 US), plus a couple of remnants at a good discount. The cutter was very generous as he added about 3 inches to each meter, something that is never done at my local Seattle stores.

FYI: Be advised that there are two Okadaya stores within a half block of one another. The one for quilters has bins of fabric outside it.

quilting in japan

Details of a Japanese quilt in “Path to Edo” at La Conner Quilt & Textile Museum, Summer 2008

I am off to Tokyo for seven days to noodle around the big city and look for signs of Japanese quilts and their makers. I found another blog (goatinacoat@blogspot.com) that talked about different stores in the city to buy fabric, so that will help me out.

The Japanese, with their built-in meticulousness, are fabulous quilters. Although quilting may be considered an original American art form, the art/craft form translates well to the sensibilities and fabrics of the Japanese.

With my eyes open to all things quilted, this should be an exciting trip. Sayonara.

quilting weather

Backyard, The Longest Night, 2008.

With two major snowstorms in four days and a third storm just beginning, Seattle is homebound. This is a great time to start a quilting project. Especially since I want a lap quilt to stitch during my upcoming one-week vacation.

I have pulled out some fabric to begin a runner for an East Coast friend, Grace Lynch. A key part of the piecing will be Martha Negley’s Vegetable Leaves fabric. I bought three yards of two color lines (with turquoise and cranberry backgrounds) to make 20 dinner napkins for Grace. Now with the scraps, I want to make an additional gift.

Grace has a remarkable collection of Majolican cabbage leaf china. She has upteen plates and bowls, and at least five big fat teapots with little rabbits peeking out from under the green leaves. The napkins and quilted table runner will hopefully be used when she hosts her big family gatherings.

an expectant great grandmother

Cats for Liz’s Firstborn, 32 x 40 inches; Fish for Vik’s Firstborn, 33 x 41 inches

This past weekend I visited my mother and father in Victoria, BC. It was a fun weekend, made memorable by a blizzard that dropped five inches of snow in a city devoid of plows.

My mother, Jane, is a happy quilter. Her joy is making baby quilts with bright colors and novelty fabrics. Only one of her grandchildren has produced offspring, but that doesn’t stop Jane from believing there are many more to come.

She sent me home with a wonderful quilt for each of my daughters’ firstborns, even though my girls are just single college students right now.

the loaner

Before Maurine Noble migrated to the sunny climes of California for the winter, she lent me her second Bernina. It’s a 20-year old baby that her guests from afar use when they visit her home. What a thoughtful hostess!

The afternoon of the hand-off, Maurine took time to show me all the features that make a Bernina the perfect machine for quilters. With the two-task foot pedal, knee bar and stitch memory, I had a brain-opening lesson.

This weekend I have used it for the first time to piece a baby quilt for a special newborn boy. The machine just purred as it stitched together the woven plaids and checks.

After story: At the end of the winter I bought the machine from Maurine. I couldn’t live without it.

lap quilt series: no. 3

A Blanket for Babar, 2008, 44" x 59"
PURCHASED BY ANNA RHODES FOR HER GRAND NIECE

“An elephant in the room” is a problem that everyone knows well but no one talks about because it is taboo or embarrassing. That is the theme of this month’s Art Chix challenge.

What does a quilter do with such a project directive? My idea was to make a cover-up for the elephant so the difficult subject could be ignored a little longer.

This quilt is made with Indian batiks that I bought at Winmill Fabrics in Boston last spring. I scissor-cut the fabric without measuring so the design lines are softly irregular.

The center square of fabric is hand stitched around the flower pattern while the surrounding bands of fabric are machine stitched in-the-ditch. The binding is made up of leftover bits of fabric from the quilt top.

baby ezra's quilt

Little Men, 2008, 38" x 42"
GIFTED TO EZRA COX

I finished Ezra’s quilt in the wee hours this morning. It is a design-as-you-go production which I started a few months ago with some scraps of Kaffe Fassett fabric.

Just before noon today I visited the new baby with his mom, Naomi Cox. Although Ezra slept through our sweet tea party, it was obvious he is a contented new being.

lap quilt series: no. 2

Italian Rainbow, 2008, 45" x 53"
COLLECTION OF CHRISTINE CARLSON

The luscious multi-colored sateen fabric from Italy shouted to be noticed. "Use me, use me."

This quilt is loosely styled after a Gee’s Bend one, with scissor-cut top pieces and uneven sides.

my quilting rules

Marbled Mania, in progress

I have only been quilting for 15 months but I have some rules I like to follow:

1. asymmetry I don't like making quilts with a repeated pattern, especially a symmetric one—as the eye only looks at one part of the design and then mentally finishes it.

2. express the fabric Instead of using published patterns, I like to have the fabric inspire the design of a quilt.

3. an unexpected element The addition of a non-matching fabric or an unusual detail adds delight to a quilt. Sometimes a fabric that would be considered “ugly” is the perfect touch.

for hannah mae

Little Dutch Girl, 2008, 25" square
COLLECTION OF HANNAH MAE COX

For Naomi Cox’s daughter Hannah Mae, I whipped up this doll quilt. The self-imposed exercise was to make a quilted piece with only two fabrics. The pieces were all cut with scissors—purposely a little uneven in shape.

I wanted to create a completely naive feel—with the simplicity of the fabrics and the messy quality of the piecing design. I even trimmed the outside edge with scissors so the quilt is not quite square.

The final touch is a 1" wide binding. The fabric for this was cut 6" wide, on the bias. What a lot of fabric it takes to make a wide binding!

lap quilt series: no. 1

Dreaming in Russet, 2008, 60" x 42"
COLLECTION OF CINDY ANDERSON

I have just finished no. 1 of 10 in a series of lap quilts. My intent is to try different piecing and color combinations, essentially to sketch with fabric.

This quilt has wedge-shaped blocks in long strips with machine quilting in-the-ditch along each seam line. The printed fabrics are global, from Maurine Noble’s stash and scraps.

In the spring I plan to have an Open House to sell the collection, with the proceeds going to a worthy cause. If you read this blog and would like an invitation to the event, just let me know.

ruby’s daughter

Our Piece Makers’ meeting this month was at Sarah Stine’s home. A stay-at-home mom, Sarah has an online fabric/pattern/accessory store in her basement for quilters. The bulk of her business is from eBay where her handle is Ruby’s Daughter.

After Story 1: Sarah has abandoned eBay and now sells her fabric and merchandise on Etsy under rubysdaughter.
After Story 2: Sarah opened a store in Magnolia named Fabric Crush.
After Story 3: Sarah secured space in the Wallingford Center and is moving her fabric store there in March 2010.

sans studio

I don't have a quilting studio or special room for my obsession. Instead the borrowed Pfaff sewing machine sits at one end of my dining room table and my cutting surface at the other.

Being in the middle of everything suits me. My family is usually up to something in the adjacent living room and I am only steps away from the kitchen — which is handy for making tea or a meal.

Right now I am working for on a lap quilt with lots of browns and rusts. The whole composition looked lifeless until I added a bright color — a little accent of turquoise.

The pieces of fabric are lying across the floor between the dining and living rooms so I can get a sense of the color combinations. At times like this a studio with a design wall would be a lot more convenient!

dachshund circus quilt

Dachshund Circus Quilt, 2008, 52" x 42"
GIFTED TO MADDY JOHNSON

The inspiration for the Dachshund Circus Quilt came from vintage fabric I bought in Astoria last January. With a turquoise background, the pattern includes a big top, freak show, balloon man and Ferris wheel.

The whole cloth quilt has an appliqued dachshund and big ball. I pieced the appliques with fun, bright fabrics. Maurine Noble helped me by satin stitching a pale yellow thread around the two shapes with her fancy Bernina sewing machine.

On my machine (a 20-year old borrowed Pfaff), I free-style stitched around all the circus elements in the background. It took almost 40 hours! Just trimming all the threads took another three hours.

My big learning with this project had to do with contrast. Due to its patterning, the dachshund applique did not show up well. I added an eye with a highlight and little black nose to make the colorful blob look more like a jumping dog!

The quilt now belongs to baby Maddy, the daughter of a designer at my workplace.

artist inspired

Crow Barn Quilt, 75" x 52"

This month’s Art Chix theme was “Artist Inspired.” Our assignment was to create an art piece inspired by a well-known artist.

I chose quilting superstar Nancy Crow. Nancy has transformed quilting into a modern artform with her work exhibiting in high profile museums.

Partially finished with some hand stitching, my project was a twin-sized quilt. The three dramatic areas of black and white piecing in the center were created by Maurine Noble at a one-week workshop led by Nancy Crow. Maurine had tossed the class samples in her scrap bag and forgotten all about them.

I don't expect to finish this quilt until Spring. It will be given to a high school graduate at Plymouth Church. There are a lot of young men in this year’s senior class, so I assume this will be a big boy quilt.

imported from africa

Out of Africa, 2007, 72" x 48"

I made this twin-bed quilt from fabrics that Maurine Noble bought home from a teaching gig in South Africa.

The top is very colorful with quilt-as-you-go horizontal strips. The back has a black-on-beige pattern in the center area and a beige/rust-on-black pattern on the sides. Lime green sashing connects the sandwiched and machine-quilted fabric.

Note how the 1/4 inch binding changes where the background fabrics meet.

little men

(From top left, clock-wise) Hippy Man in a tie-dye shirt, Metronatural Man in a graphic shirt, Enviro Man all in green and Messy Man in work clothes.

I made Little Men for the baby boy quilt I am completing. The quilt is a design-as-I-go project and I wanted something simple for the four corners as the rest of the quilt is visually busy.

Each Little Man is made with 22 pieces! I had to count them to believe it.

The design is modified from a magazine photo of a folksy quilt. The historic-style quilt top was laden with little men, little women, a barn, some roosters and sheaths of wheat.

I like the idea of the baby boy one day realizing that his quilt has little men on it. And when that happens, he will be a little man himself!

chinese coins

Batik Baby, 2007, 42" x 26"
GIFTED TO MIA AGUILAR

This is Quilt No. 3 for me. A sampler really, as it isn’t very big. The fabrics are from Maurine Noble’s bags of scraps. The inspiration was a set of pre-made squares I found in the collection of castaways—mauve triangles with coral heart-design batik triangles. I added some sashings of hand-dyed fabrics and a wrap-around border of random-width Chinese Coins to finish the quilt top.

I can’t find the origin of the name, Chinese Coins, anywhere. Instead I have found that there are other quilt patterns with similar names, such as Roman Coins and African Coins.

The quilt was machine-stitched “in the ditch” to make the triangles and Chinese Coins puff up. It was the first time I used Dorrit’s Pfaff with a running foot to stitch a quilt together with the batting.

Baby Aquilar is the recipient of this stroller-sized quilt. Her mother, Laura, worked at Belyea before getting pregnant, selling her condo and moving to Arizona. With only two week’s notice before her departure, the baby-to-be received an existing quilt instead of a new one made specially for her.

the careless quilter

The idea of careless quilting is to “design as you go.” No pattern, no plan. It turns out that it is not as easy as it sounds.

In my piles, I had some Kaffe Fassett fabrics that intrigued me. Then I found some colorful bits that looked good with them and starting stitching pieces together. Pretty soon, everything was out of control.

I realized that I wasn’t going to be happy if I kept proceeding helter skelter. So I ripped my seams apart, gave some thought to what I wanted to accomplish and proceeded again.

You can see in the picture above that I made some notes to myself with a sketch. So far I have pieced together a 16-inch square. It will be the jewel-like center of a baby boy quilt.

I intend to make four more 16-inch squares that will become the corners. Then I will fill in the rest of the quilt top with Chinese Coins—strips of different fabrics in a random pattern.

Although I now have a concept, there are many decisions left—such as working out the fabric and color combination of the final parts. It is this type of challenge that confirms to me that quilt making is truly a creative activity.

baby ob’bayi’s quilt

Indigo Baby, 2008, 42" square
GIFTED TO CHLOE OB’BAYI

In Africa, clothes dyed with indigo are a symbol of wealth. In Japan, indigo is the color of summer and is used to dye cotton cloth for lightweight kimonos known as yukatas.

In making a baby quilt for Heidi Ob’bayi, I chose a selection of indigo fabrics from around the world. The Japanese fabric honors the two years Heidi spent in Japan with the JET Program while the elephant fabric represents Kevin’s Kenyan heritage.

Today I gave Heidi her quilt at a lovely baby shower. Almost 50 guests attended the catered event at the PEMCO Home Office where the pile of presents was remarkable!

The quilt is hand-stitched vertically “in the ditch” with a little extra stitching around the elephants. The indigo blue and white fabrics are framed with a mustard and navy batik used for the binding.

marbled fabrics

At The Beach, 2008, 37" x 13"

Through Piece Makers I took home a thick stack of marbled fabrics. Most of the pieces are a foot square and while many have matching dye colors, no two are alike.

Maurine Noble is the person who marbled the fabrics. When I asked her how many months it took her to dye them all, she said “One afternoon.”

The fabrics are truly inspirational. I used some of them in a table topper for an Art Chix project entitled “At the Beach.” I liked how the swirls in the marbled patterns reminded me of waves in the ocean. I made the edge of the runner wavy and cut the binding on the bias so it would stretch around the curved edges.

art chix

Visionary Landscape, 2008, 40" x 14"

“Visionary Landscape” was the theme for last night’s Art Chix meeting. From our group of eight women, projects ranged from a 3-D photo with homemade 3-D glasses to monoprints to paintings to color photos to an unfinished quilted table topper by me.

Presenting a fabric piece was a bit of a stretch for the theme. I was working hard to complete the table topper and ran out of time to do something different. The whole-cloth runner is hand-stitched with a metallic thread and skinny hand-dyed silk ribbon.

One of my early ideas was to color and collage on top of a landscape blueprint. When I called my inside connection at an architectural/ environmental firm, I couldn’t get a drawing. That squashed that concept instantly.

I had a few other ideas but none of them inspired me much. Just maybe my desire to spend my free time quilting overcame all other creative urges. And can’t an intriguing runner transform the landscape of a mere table?

piece makers

The Plymouth Piece Makers met at my home tonight. The ministry team, founded by Maurine Noble, is nine years old. Our small group makes quilts for babies being born into the church, youth who are graduating from high school and companions for Plymouth Healing Communities. This evening seven of us gathered to chat about our favorite activity and show our recent projects.

scrap quilting

Homey Squares, 2008, 48" x 72"
COLLECTION OF MICHAEL STONE

It’s a symbiotic relationship—a veteran quilter with lots of scraps and a neophyte with a need of fabrics.

Maurine Noble, my generous mentor, had tons of scrap that she gave to me. (Okay—about forty pounds.)

I picked up the two bags on a Friday night. That evening I began sorting them out, trying to make decide how to organize the little pieces of fabrics. By colors or patterns? It took me all weekend to get through the project, including ironing the most wrinkled ones. My collection looked almost impressive, filed by color hues in big ziplock bags, inside black plastic milk crates from Fred Meyer.

Not only is Maurine an expert quilter, author and teacher, she has great taste in fabrics. No calicoes, novelty fabrics or chintzes. Maurine loves global fabrics that are hand printed or hand dyed. So my stash is a wonderful and inspiring collection of great materials.

My fourth quilt is a green and gold scrap quilt. The square within square pattern took longer that I had expected. Each outer square is made up of four pieces. Once I made all the double squares (77 total), I trimmed them so they would line up well (308 cuts!). Then I hand stitched the quilt together.

I love scrap quilting—as the final effect has an appealing organic quality. And, as 100% cotton fabric is not cheap, it is a great way to access quilting fabrics.

big jane

Many people call me Little Jane. That is because my mom, Jane Belyea, and I are quite alike. That is a compliment as I have the greatest respect for my mother’s ways and accomplishments.

In recent years Big Jane splits her creative time between knitting mittens for the Red Cross and making quilts for young ones. All her quilts are bright, happy and fun!

quiltfest!

Two things overwhelmed me today at Quiltfest in Seattle. First, there were so many quilts to examine. Second, the winning quilts were the work of maniacal artists.

My hope of ever creating a quilt worthy of a ribbon is lost. The level of detail, design and craftsmanship incorporated into the winners’ quilts was remarkable. All the same, I took lots of pictures so I can continue to be inspired by the show—especially the quilts from South Africa.

Sharing the display area were row after row of vendors with quilt-related goods and sewing machines. Two of the sellers got some of my dough.

Elin Noble, the daughter of my quilting mentor Maurine Noble, sold me a beautiful piece of hand-dyed fabric (see Elin and Maurine above). Elin also dyes threads.

At Lorraine Torrence’s booth, a collection of pieced jackets caught my eye. One jacket in particular, with polka dot and jaguar fabric, came home with me. Coincidentally the seamstress for my jacket is Diane Roubal. Diane is a leader of Plymouth Piece Makers, my quilting group at church.

Quiltfest happens every two years. I wonder what my level of quilt making will be like in 2010?

baby color philosophy

Baby Bluebell, 2007, 42" x 36"
GIFTED TO TOSHIKO MEALY

Blue is for boys and pink is for girls. Sex not known? Yellow or green. To break this protocol, my very first quilt was for a baby girl with pretty all-blue fabrics.

Not only did I succeed in my goals, I got hooked on quilting. Now just one year later, I have completed five baby quilts, two twin-sized quilts and one lap quilt. And a quilted pillow and two table runners. I am a rank beginner who is experimenting with patterns, fabrics, and whether or not I like machine stitching or hand stitching the final quilt.

This morning I met with Liz Holland to show her some very unlikely fabrics for her proposed baby quilt. Russet red, hydrangea blue, chartreuse, bright seafoam and a hot coral dominate the bold "global" patterns. The plan is minimal piecing and extensive hand stitching with a lime green thread.

So tonight I will wash the exciting fabrics, tomorrow press them, and this weekend begin (and hopefully finish) the piecing. Oh Baby.

charlotte’s pillow

Pretty in Pink, 16 x 16 inches
COLLECTION OF CHARLOTTE STONE

This pillow project, made with cotton scraps, is an experiment in very thin piecing. With 1/8 inch strips of fabric, the pressing direction of the 1/4 inch seams became important.

Machine pieced, hand quilted.

quilting neophyte

Patricia Belyea with Nicki

I’m a graphic design professional who has rediscovered my love of fabrics and sewing.

As a teenager, I spent all my free time at the helm of a Pfaff machine. At 13, I used a Vogue pattern and made a fully lined, cashmere coat with bound buttonholes. Through high school, I sewed my own clothes, including prom dresses.

When I turned 18, I attended a women’s college in Guelph, Canada to study Clothing Design. The professor, a high-strung fashion designer from Toronto, made all the students’ lives miserable. After five weeks I dropped the class and transferred to the hard sciences.

It was such a traumatic experience that I didn’t sew for 20 years. And then, I only made a few flannel nightgowns for my little daughters and curtains for their room.

In Spring 2007 my youngest bought fabric and a pattern for her Junior Prom dress. As she’d never made a dress before, I offered to help. That got me sewing again. Two months later I made my first quilt—for an Art Chix project. I was pricked by the passionate needle and I haven’t stopped quilting since.