Friday 28 January 2011

Blue and White quilt update

The blue and white quilt I've been working on is slowly taking shape and now has a border round it using a dragonfly motif.I am now attaching the wadding and using sashiko-inspired stitching. Sashiko is a Japanese running stitch traditionally used to repair worn places with patches of fabric. It is now often used for a purely decorative purpose in quilting and embroidery.
In Edo era Japan, only certain classes were allowed to wear cotton and bright colour clothing. The poorer classes used blue indigo-dyed hemp fabric as it was hard-wearing and was considered to repel insects and snakes. The sashiko stitching came about as there was also a rule that motifs on clothing could not be any larger than a grain of rice. To overcome this rule, designs were made up of the small running stitch where each stitch was the length of a grain of rice!

Sashiko stitching is such a beautiful way of decorating something, but I'm not sure I'm doing it justice!

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