potd - Old Bag Display

Thanks to everyone who's been in to see my Old Bags! display. It ends on Saturday.

Old Bag Display

I'm putting on a display  simply called 'Old Bags!'. It will be  in the shop and runs  from  tomorrow (market day  10am - 3pm) until Saturday 26th September.  There will be a wide variety of  old and traditional Japanese bags, wallets and purses from my own collection (sorry not for sale) -  I think about 40 in total .  They range from tiny  saikumono decorative  chirimen silk bags through to well-used practical  indigo cotton kinchaku drawstring bags.  I'll post more pictures but I  hope you can come along for a look.

Winter Break

Every winter when the shop's a little quiet I take a week off just to have some time to myself and to catch up with jobs around the house.  So the shop will be closed from tomorrow (15th August ) and re-open on Tuesday 25th August.

I'm  planning a display of antique bags next month so I just got some more Japanese bag-making books in:

potd - Horn Bags

These are literally 'horn bags' (tsunobukuro). This a traditional bag style  made from a single piece of folded and stitched fabric. The triangular 'horns' on the top can be tied in a similar way to a furoshiki wrapping cloth to create a handle. Because the material is on the bias the bag has quite a bit of stretch - though I'm not sure what these particular bags were used to carry. They have names on them so maybe  they were for workmen to carry their personal belongings.  They're made from hemp or a similar bast fibre and date from mid last century.

 

potd - Bamboo Bag Handles

We still have lots of these real bamboo bag handles in varying sizes.  Very retro and cheaper than plastic ones.

FAQ - What do you do?

Customers often ask me what kind of sewing I do and they're often surprised that I don't  make kimonos, that I'm not a quilter and that I rarely sew with silk.  The truth is that I do very little sewing!  I'm usually kept busy enough preparing fabric for the shop - and being a mum. I never use a sewing machine unless I really really have to. My taste  and temperament leans very much towards more rustic handstitching.  I'm very interested in all traditional Japanese techniques for re-using and recycling old fabrics but I'm not good at all with little fiddly things (like the oshie in my previous post  for example). I love and appreciate so many of these traditional crafts  and I guess I could become better at that kind of work if I persevered, but it's not what I enjoy making.  Here are some pieces that show what I do enjoy.

I made the first pieces some years ago for an exhibition that my sewing group put on in the shop.

This is a sashiko furoshiki wrapping cloth that I use as a table cloth in the shop. It's about  60cm square and is stitched on  a piece of old futon cover.  Some years ago I found an article in a Japanese magazine about an old lady from Kyushu  who was doing the most amazing random freehand sashiko . I've seen very few other examples of it but I enjoy doing it myself and like how it looks.  These coasters and mats were also for the exhibition:

 

 

This is a silk komebukuro (rice bag) style drawstring  bag that I finished  recently. I had started it years ago and purposely left it unfinished for  komebukuro workshops. It's quite big ( a useful size for storing things) which made my husband comment that I couldn't really call a bag that size a  kombukuro. I like this style of working with random sized  strips.

 

 

This is the first, much smaller,  bag I made for the komebukuro workshop, using antique cottons.

 

 

This piece of patchwork is a detail from a quilt (it will be tied not actually quilted) that I've been working on for years and will eventually finish one day  - maybe. The squares are about 5 cm square but you can see that precision isn't really my thing! Again,  I like the randomness of it.

 

 

 

Lately I've started working on some traditional sashiko cotton hanafukin cloths for a potential workshop. These dishclothes were the kind of  stitching that women would sit and work on in the evenings to recycle their  cotton remnants. The one on the left is hitomezashi stitching  which is a kind of sashiko done in straight lines of vertical and horizontal running stitch on a grid. But again my taste is always to the more simple and I prefer the simple lines of the second one.

 





 

I haven't run any workshops for a few years now. We don't have very much space and as the shop got busier it became too difficult to run them  when we're open. I'm thinking of starting a limited programme again in the new year. One  of the workshops I'm working on is Ainu embroidery.  The Ainu are an indigenous people of northern Japan and I will post about Ainu textiles again in future.  I still have a lot of work to do to prepare for this workshop  -  my embroidery skills leave a lot to be desired. These are some of my  first attempts  - they don't have the same flare as original Ainu pieces - and please don't look too closely at the stitching!

 

 

 







 

 



In Store...

I've just put out a few more netsuke, including these three that are still attached. The first is a smooth, flat  gourd design and is attached to a leather lined kinchaku which probably dates from Meiji period. I love this:

 

This tiger and bamboo netsuke is a little older and is attached to an old tobacco pouch in not very good condition:

 

 

The last one is a delicate shiitake design netsuke attached to a small  damaged inro (case for medicine etc) . The inro doesn't really have any value but it's nice to have the little set together.

 

 

I've just put out a couple more rolls of silk shibori.  They both date from about the 1960's. I haven't had a lovely roll of allover kanoko shibori in the shop before:

 

 

This vibrant pink one is quite lovely:

 

 

 

I have these cotton bundles for sale on my website as well. They're made up of  antique indigo remnants in varying conditions. They're perfect  for  quilters and textile artists with a taste for 'boro' and all things rustic.

 

 

I had these lovely old Japanese glass beads in the shop a few years ago and just discovered that I still had some more (it's like that here!)  Based on the original packaging I think they date from mid 20th century.

 



 

 

Customers sometimes ask if I sell fabric with pre-printed sashiko patterns.  We only sell old indigo for traditional sashiko  ( you can of course do sashiko designs on any fabric that your needle and thread go through!) and I have never tried to source new sashiko fabrics pre-printed or plain. I like the character of the old fabrics and they usually have a more open weave which is easy to stitch.  I unpick most of the sashiko fabric from old futon covers and sometimes work jackets and linings ( we usually refer to this fabric as 'uraji' which just means lining).  I wash it, de-fluff it (it often still has old futon wadding stuck to it)  and  because it's  never in perfect condition divide it up into usable pieces (including remnants and patched pieces).  I decided to put patterns on some of the smaller panels. They're ready to stitch  to use as panels in quilts or smaller projects or you can just hem them to use as a table mat. If  they sell I'll keep doing it... it really doesn't take long to transfer a pattern with chalk paper.

 

 

 

It's impossible to put everything we have  in the shop on my website.  If you're ever interested in purchashing something from my 'in store' posts and can't make it into the shop  just give me a call or send me an email.  

 







 

 

 





Using kimono remnants - part one

There is a strong tradition in Japan of re-using scraps of kimono fabric to make little bags, dolls and other osaikumono(craft items). From the second half of the Edo-period (1603-1867) it became a popular craft with wealthy women who had the time to sit and stitch very fine mostly decorative items. They also had access to the fine pieces of silk and thread and found uses for even the tiniest fragments. (While the less well-off were recycling their humbler scraps of cotton into more functional items such as nappies, cleaning cloths and patches for their clothes and bedding). The most popular silk for these crafts was chirimen crepe which not only often featured fine yuzen-dyed designs but also has the natural elasticity to make it ideal to use on small intricate projects. One popular craft was making oshie pictures. These are small padded collages such as this 19th century example from my collection:

In the Meiji period (1868-1912)these crafts began to be taught in home economics classes at girls' high schools and so became more widely spread throughout Japan. The following picture is an illustration of projects in a sewing book from 1915:


Many of the pieces feature red chirimen - which was the predominant colour used for kimono linings. Some of the popular items to make were little drawstring bags, often in the shape of flowers, birds or animals, amulets, covered boxes, thimbles, cases for various items such as toothpicks or incense, and (my favourite) maigofuda 'lost child tags'. These had plain white cotton or paper on the reverse side with the child's name and address written on them and were attached to the child's obi. Interestingly Japan still has a tradition of lovely name tags for children's bags. Here are a few old samples of chirimen crafts from my collection. From top to bottom: a maigofuda, a small kinchaku drawstring bag, a covered box with an oshie tiger and a miniature doll bag. .





Like many Japanese textile traditions these crafts declined during the war and post-war years but have been revived as popular handcrafts in the last 20 or 30 years. There is a huge range of books available (in Japanese of course) on how to make both traditional patterns and modern variations. At the same time the price for old chirimen silks has risen enormously partly because it is also used for making and dressing dolls. Unfortunately there is not very much available in English about these patterns or the history of chirimen and chirimen crafts. Kumiko Sudo's 'Omiyage' (which we stock) has many of the traditional patterns, but because of the fabrics she's used doesn't have quite the same sensibility as the Japanese books. Please have a chat to me in the shop if you're interested in trying some of these traditional projects, or perhaps going beyond what's in 'Omiyage'. There's a small selection of old chirimen in the shop but it's also possible to make beautiful items using other(cheaper)soft silks from the remnant baskets.