Japanese face masks

Whilst living in Japan, I amassed a wealth of fabrics and I have quite a hearty collection. Many of the fabrics I bought were beautiful kimono fabrics that I made into clutch bags and purses. But I also gravitated towards the wonderful array of cotton fabrics on offer. There were so many choices and there is even an area in Tokyo called Fabric Town which is in Nippori, north of the city. The best shop was called Tomato, a fabric haven that spread over 5 floors, but along the same street there were a selection of smaller stores which often had hidden gems in them. Along my way, I picked up these two fabulous fabrics - a sumo wrestler fabric and a Mount Fuji fabric which I have now made into washable, reusable cotton face masks.

I love the sweet sketchy feel of these jostling sumo on a fab mustard yellow ground.

Each mask is double sided so that you can use either side depending on your mood. The back of the mask has a contrasting dark grey crosshatch fabric and there are two black elastic loops.

I love the fresh blue of the Mount Fuji fabric and its simple design.

This mask has two white elastic loops to put around the ears.

For the back of this mask I chose a red and white spotty fabric to match the red of the sun in the Mount Fuji fabric.

Shop Face Masks

It's countdown time!

Oh my goodness, I just realised that in three weeks time I will be in Tokyo!!!!! How exciting?! It's also a bit nerve wracking as it means that I now have a limited time to get all my bags ready for the show.

I will be selling my wares at the International Bazaar, which is held at the Tokyo American Club on Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th of November. It's a show that I have done for the past five years and I love doing it as it means that I get to see old customers, meet new customers and catch up with the lovely friends I made whilst living in Tokyo. Of course I also plan to do a fair amount of shopping and am looking forward to coming back to the UK with a collection of new kimono and obi fabrics to play with. The Oedo antique market will be on while I'm there and it's one of my favourite markets, held in the grounds of the International Forum.

Here's a little taster of what I will be taking to sell at the International bazaar. Each item shown here will be exclusive to the bazaar only. Each has a Japanese influence and most of them are made from tenegui fabrics that I collected whilst living in Tokyo.

 These three coin purses are all in shades of blue and depict traditional Japanese images including a fan and lucky cat on the front purse, storks on the middle purse and sumo wrestlers on the back purse. Check out those buttocks!

 I couldn't resist this panda fabric and gave it a black and white spotty lining. The middle purse shows aikido fighters (I also have a purse made from ninja fabric!) and the back purse has chopsticks and rice spoons on it.

I love this fabric depicting kokeshi dolls. Kokeshi dolls were something that I enjoyed collecting whilst living in Tokyo and I have a lovely little collection of them. This fabric is bright red and has a black and white lining. The purse at the back is a tenegui fabric used for Kodomo no Hi (Children's Day) and has a sweet, simple image of a boy and girl on it. The inside has a blue and white spotty lining.

I have also made some kimono fabric purses and will be mentioning those on my blog in the next few days.