Japanese quilt artist books

As I mentioned in my posting below, I was given two books by the Japanese quilt artist Reiko Yamaguchi. Here are some photos from the second book




I also love her notes starting out with .... thread and scissors!

Coming to the end of February

I've been working on knitting my WIPs -- changing as my arm allows. The Irie Tarot bag is coming along, as is one Paistu mitten.

A Japanese friend lent me a book by a friend of hers: Reiko Yamaguchi. I believe this particular book is out of print, but it is glorious to look at:
the cover

a screen

a close-up of beautiful fabrics

so of course I spent the afternoon sipping tea, looking at the book, and looking at photos from the Tokyo International Great Quilt festival posted on Flickr by moonstitches

I need to get back to my February TIF challenge!

More favorite UFO blocks

I have favorite UFO blocks, sigh.

The light has gone for the day; I'll re-photograph these tomorrow and add a few more. The blocks are from the late 1980s.

 

When will "they" come up with a Ravelry for Quilters? I find the Ravelry projects and queue sections so helpful to keep track of what I'm working on.

First Machine Pieced Quilt

I'm a hand piecer and hand worker. I was taught to embroider, knit and crochet when I went to a British elementary school in Vienna, Austria years and years ago.

I started quilting in the 1980s when I was living in Virginia, where Jinny Beyer had just published her pattern block books, and we were all taught quilting and patchwork by hand. I started with Mariner's Compasses and more, but can machine piece a mean bias-cut triangle, thanks to Marsha McCloskey and her Feathered Star block series of the same "era."

This little quilt below was the first thing I EVER machine pieced. I didn't grow up around a sewing machine, so I sweated bullets doing this. And it still sits, unquilted, after all these years.

 

Then later, courtesy of Marsha McCloskey's fabulous bias-square triangles directions:

 

Quilting in the future ... long time UFOs...

I have an entire closet full of quilting fabrics ... in tubs.

I've signed up for a lovely Quilt-A-long that hopefully I can start thinking about this coming week. I need something simple to work on to get the sewing machine going again: it's probably been more almost two years since I've done any sewing. Have to laugh at how life throws things at you: between moving up here from Almaty and having a broken arm/frozen shoulder issues, I can see why I haven't done any quilting.

And a sampling of the stack of UFOs, some of them 20 years old!