The Land of the Rising Sun

I came across an old Japanese calendar when we moved into a rented premises years ago. The calendar contains old prints from Katsushita Hokusai collections. We got them all framed and hung them in our home for years. The influence from those prints were my first love for Japanese crafts and textile.  The Katsushita Hokusai prints below are courtesy of Google image, but some of them are the same as what we have. 

I will be leaving to join The Silk Study Tour  to Japan on Wednesday May 18th. and return June 12th. This blog will be unattended during that time so I thought I would leave you these great prints to enjoy....! 

Beautiful Woman by Katsushita Hokusai

I hope while I'm in Japan I will see someone wearing a Kimono. I also hope to find some vintage Kimonos to bring back.

Hibiscus and Sparrow - Katsushika Hokusai

I also hope to visit some of the beautiful Japanese gardens. In my experience the whole of Japan is Japanese garden!

Tama River in Musashi Province, Edo

And see Mount Fuji from the train on my travel from Tokyo to Osaka. I had glimpse of it the last time I was in Japan. It was a breath-taking view!

Shibori Festival - Arimatsu

I know I will see lot of Shibori both on the display and in the making. Would you believe it? The annual Shibori Festival at Arimatsu will be on while I'm there. The event happens on the first weekend in June every year. We will be spending that weekend in Nagoya.

Ryogohu Bridge at Onmayagashi by Hokusai

Ryōgoku bridge at

Hokusai - from an animated sketch book

I hope to see some of these prints as well.

The great wave

BUT I  do hope I'm not going see this (The great wave!) 

If you want to follow this tour please go here. It has been a rough road preparing for this trip after what has happened in Japan recently. Thanks goodness the road is now clear and the bag is now packed, I'm ready to follow this silk road to the land of the rising sun!!! 

Bloggers' Quilt Festival - Spring 2011

I almost missed this year's Bloggers' Quilt Festival  for Spring 2011. It started yesterday May 13th. Life is getting really hectic these days. I never thought anything of it until a dear colleague who reads my blog asked me one day how I manage to do so much while also working full time. She said I'm so prolific with what I do! I'm sure that was a compliment. I don't know how to live any other way. I seem to have a lot on the go at any one time. I love it!

The quilt I'm entering in BQF today is this small friendship quilt I made two of them, one for myself and one for my friend Linda (no blog) who gave me the heart fabric for the border. To me the heart fabric by itself was overpowering, but setting it around a redwork embroidery toned it down a bit. I love it much better now.  

It's only 36" x 36" square. I hand embroidered and quilted it using a bow pattern. It's not a brand new quilt, but I haven't blogged it here before so I thought I would share it in this year's Bloggers' Quilt Festival. Thanks again Amy for hosting this wonderful event. I'm looking forward to visiting all the blogs and viewing all the wonderful quilts.

Close to my heart

In April I took a whispering heart mini workshop with Jude Hill. It was a month-long course. It was great because we concentrated only on hearts. I'm a heart person and have been using hearts in my quilts for a long time. In this workshop I made a gift for the host family I will be staying with in Japan. I made a little heart cloth for a friend who was taken ill and I'm making a 'soft heart' cloth for myself. Yes, I did do quite a few things in this workshop. 


My trip to Japan with the Silk Study Tour is only a week from today woo hoo! A lot of things happened since I booked the tour. There was an earthquake, the Tsunami, and a radiation scare, but we are still going ahead as planned. We feel that this is our way of supporting Japan. 

I made this cloth for me. I will call it 'soft heart'. I'm happy to use my natural dyed silk for it. There are three different pieces of natural dyed cloths here. They were all dyed using three different types of Eucalyptus plants except the piece you can see through the hearts which was dyed with rose leaves on silk linen. It's not finished yet. I will add more stitches during my trip.

This little cloth is for Herm. Herm is a lovely lady I met in the online workshops. Herm was taken ill so all of us in whispering heart workshop are making Herm cloth with a heart on it. You can see more hearts on SEW, a blog set up by Jude as a gathering place for all her past and present students to share the works they are making in her workshop. 

If you remember I took a Shibori workshop with Glennis a couple of months ago. It was so much fun and I learned a lot about Shibori from it. I love Shibori, but now I treasure and appreciate it even more! Deanna sent me some photos she found in an old copy of Piecework magazine of ginkgo leaf patterns done in Shibori. I haven't got time to make a whole cloth, but managed to stitch up just one using a piece of indigo backed with felt. I can wear it as a brooch when I attend Shibori Festival in Arimatsu. More on that in my next post...! 

Happy Mother's Day

How lucky I am to have a kind, loving and creative mother. I am twice as lucky to have a wonderful, kind and loving Mother-in-law as well. Today I would like to honor my Mother-in-law Soula Lymbery. I wish her a Happy Mother's Day and happiness always. I also like to thank her for the kindness and love she has given to my family and I for almost 40 years. 

Soula Lymbery 16 years old

At the age of just 17 Soula got married and had my husband when she was 18. In 1954 her family migrated to New Zealand from her birth country, Greece. Her children were young and the journey to NZ took 7 days by air and ship. Not speaking a word of English she not only had to look after her young children, but she had to try to adjust to a new life in a foreign land. She was desperately home sick and missing her father and brother. In the days of not having easy access to telephone and mail, communication could take months. I cannot imagine how hard life must have been for her. Soula was strong and for the sake of the children's future she had to make it in her new life and new country. 

Make it she did. It's now more than 50 years since she moved to New Zealand. She is still living there and calls it home. I thank her for bringing her family to this part of the world where I've met and married my husband and started a family of our own. 

Soula has been kind to me ever since we met. She has never said one word to upset me. She is always there to give support. She's a mother of three, a grandmother of five and a great grandmother of three, two of them being my grandchildren. Soula and I are meant to connect and I'm glad and lucky. Thanks Mum, I love you.

Coastal Natural Dyes

Searching for dyeing materials started as soon as we took off on our Easter holiday trip. We had a long drive to get to DS and his family. We enjoyed the drive and regularly make this trip to visit them. We made a few stops on our way. At each stop I would be looking for something I can use for dyeing.  I gathered some autumn leaves at each stop.

After an overnight stay at DS we all took off together to Kioloa Beach, South Coast of NSW. The Kioloa Beach Cottage is only 3 minutes walk from the beautiful sandy beach where we had a few swims. On one of the bush walks at Bowley Point I collected some Spotted gum bark and some lichen for dyeing. My DIL and the two year old DGD were my assistants in searching for dyeing material. Everything is for Lady Yahya (that's me) said DGD...!   

At the cottage I set up a dye station using the table on the back patio. I took my dye pot with me from home. The bark is brewing in rain water. The silk was soaking overnight in sea water. Sea water acts as mordant. I had steamed the first batch the night before. You can see them in zip-lock bag on the table. 

I bundled up silk with a variety of plants like Eucalyptus leaves, sea weed, lichen, pin oak leaves and liquid amber leaves. I brewed them in a spotted gum dye bath for 45 minutes and then left it over night before unwrapping.

  

These are the bundles that I steamed the first day we got there. I stored them in zip-lock bags and left them out in the sun for a day before unwrapping. You can see the imprints of the Eucalyptus leaves showing through in some of the bundles. 

Here they are revealed in all their glorious colour in all shades and designs. DIL and I had so much fun unwrapping them. We were supposed to leave them for another day, but with both DGC asleep the short amount of free time was too good to miss!  

The closed up photos of the Eucalyptus leaves imprints on silk. Aren't they gorgeous? Almost good enough to eat...!

Another dye I did was Shibori dyed. I wanted to try the lichen I gathered from a fallen log I picked up on our walk. I didn't know anything about lichen, but DIL told me she remembers her mother used to dye yarns with lichen.  Instead of putting plain silk in the dye bath I decided to do stitched Shibori (Kamasu) to the silk before I dyed it. I used wood ash as mordant for this piece. I found wood ash in the wood BBQ in the yard. I filled up a jar to bring some home as well. 

You can see the Shibori pieces snugged in with the lichen over the stove. The colour shows up after a few minutes of boiling. I was so excited to see the bright orange given out by the lichen. 

We were due to leave later that day, and I should have really left it for at least overnight before unwrapping it. I transferred the whole content of the dye bath into a zip-lock bag and took it back with us. We couldn't wait until the next day when we unwrapped them that evening. The results are as you see in the above and below photos. 

This piece was DIL's. She wanted to try the shibori technique. This one was quite easy. I just drew half a circle on the folded fabric, stitched and tied it. It is called Karamatsu Shibori. 

Another Shibori piece showing a pattern that I accidentally discovered how to make. It was late at night and I wanted to get all the silk that had been soaked in sea water overnight into the dye pot. I wanted to give the pattern some texture, so I fan folded the fabric lengthwise and folded it into triangles. I roughly tied two long ends of the triangles with elastic bands and the result is as you see above.  This piece was dyed in the bark bath.