My box of fabric finally arrived! When we were traveling in January, we spent 24 hours in Tokyo. One of the few things I managed to do in such a short time was go fabric shopping at the infamous Tomato in the Nippori Textile Town district. The store is actually 5 stories of fabric alone, with neighboring sister shops for ribbon and notions and the like. I never made it past the 1st floor, also known as the 100-yen basement; that's less than a dollar a yard, y'all!
Most of the pieces in that pile came from the 100-yen section, and in a couple of instances I found myself buying the last of the bolt. The exceptions were one-meter pieces of the pricier hedgehog prints and the sheep print; I am so obsessed with hedgehogs lately! I also picked up some adorable hedgehog patches while we were in Tokyo.
I went in with an idea for a quilt in my head, and even had some preliminary yardage and color ideas. After some frantic math scribbling and some subdued squealing at the cuteness that is japanese fabric, I walked out with the makings of something completely different. The plan is to slowly transform the tower of fabric above into a queen-sized quilt. I'm using the "Scottish Stars" block from the Fall/Winter 2006 issue of Quilt Sampler magazine, but I'm not using their quilt design at all; their placement involved turning the blocks on a diagonal, large setting squares and several borders. Instead, I want to butt all of the squares together without any sashing or borders; I think this will achieve a kaleidoscope effect, especially if I stick with tilting the blocks diagonally. I figure I'll need 50 blocks, with each block being 12 inches by 12 inches. The muted tones of all the fabrics should lend the whole piece a zakka feel.
This is definitely a back-burner project that I won't have much time for for awhile.
While I was waitng in line to have my yardage cut, I spied these pretty things. I snagged them with intentions of making some skirts, but foolishly only got a meter of each design. I'll be lucky if I manage to get one skirt out of them! I'm thinking a peasant-style skirt might work?
I haven't seen any of this stuff since about ten minutes after we bought it. We walked straight from Tomato to the Post Office, where I struggled to mail the package to myself in the U.S. without the benefit of an understanding of the Japanese language. Even though we proceeded to travel for 4 more weeks we still beat this box home by a month or so because it was shipped via Sea Mail rather than Air Mail.
Here's a better shot of one of the pieces unfolded. It's a 9 by 9 grid of different prints on one length of fabric. I'm completely enamored with all the colors, especially in combination with that other slubby spiraly spotty linen-like piece.
Unfortunately, since I neither speak nor read Japanese, I have no idea what the fiber content of any of this stuff actually is, so I suppose I'll need to be extra vigilant with the prewashing.
If only this had arrived a day sooner..... When I have almost no time to craft (as has been the case lately with Bradley's new work situation), I tend to shop for supplies for all the projects I'm going to work on as soon as I have the time (ha!), irregardless of how many other WIPs I have going. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, right? Well, this weekend I wound up ordering a Denyse Schmidt fat quarter pack for a purse idea I've been kicking around, and some hard-to-find yardage for a dress pattern I've had in my stash. Because, ya'know, I don't have enough unsewn stash mocking me :)
I've been working on taking photos of jewelry and writing descriptions on the rare occaisons that Logan actually naps, and should have the shop open within the week; I'll announce it here when Zaina launches over on Etsy!
