Quilts Japan • Vision Museum of Textile Art

October 23, 2026 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

This treasure of a quilt by Satoko Kase of Tokyo Japan is about 10 inches square. I would have measured it, but didn’t have a tape measure nor did I dare get my fingers near it. It’s titled Dance of Migratory Birds.

The quilt was in a show not too far from our home and was held in San Diego. It’s called Quilts Japan; it’s the 17th Quilt Nihon exhibit, and the Vision Museum of Textile Art was one of four US venues that will be showing it.

The Museum is housed in part of the re-purposed naval base in San Diego, and I loved seeing signs like the ones below, showing that many spaces are filled with interesting enterprises (across from Barracks 19 is a charming cafe):

The exhibit was in about three rooms, not a huge display, but they packed a lot in.

Now that the introductions are over with, here are some of the quilts.

Hemp Leaf Pattern Window by Satoko Kase. This received a Publisher’s Award from Quilt Mania in the Award Category of Miniature, just like its friend at the top of the post. The category states: “quilts must measure less than or equal to 60 cm on each side [about 23 inches]. All aspects of the quilt are reduced and miniaturized.”

Those dots are about the size of a paper-punched dot –about a fat 1/8-inch.

Jump Out!! by Mayumi Yamagishi is about 9 inches square. It was awarded the Gold Award and the Governor of Tokyo Award. It felt like it was a very tiny room with quilty walls.

Pattern, Pattern! Pattern!! by Kuniko Kasai reminded me of the Chuck Nohara quilts that Susan Snooks (of Australia) and I did a few years back: lots of small blocks that are intensive patchwork.

Atsuko Oshio’s Wish. We struggled with the exposure levels and lighting. The quilts were brightly lit but sometimes this creates havoc in the picture taking. My apologies. This really was an exquisite quilt.

As You Like, by Chizuoko Kojima

This is for all intents and purposes, a simple block. However, the quilting elevates it to a special realm. It was amazing.

Overlap and underlap and skip.

Traditional, but pink? And that choice just made this quilt. This is Reiko Miyamura’s Coral (Baltimore Style).

I have a soft spot in my heart for Jack’s Chain variations, but this one towers above all else. A basic Jack’s Chain is based on nine-patches and they are linked together. However, Flower Tour, by Misako Sano, takes this to a new place with her borders, her sixteen-patches and appliqué.

I hope you can see the tiny blocks.

I did a Jack’s Chain using giant nine-patches, and drew up the pattern — found in the public domain, which can be found in my pattern shop for free. But you are on your own if you want to make this one. I loved the subtle trapunto in the border scallops.

Good Day by Michiko Oobuchi

Detail. Seeing it up close changed how I interacted with this design. I could see it as being one of those quilts where you make the blocks singly, maybe scraps after finishing up a big project, and then put them away one by one. Then when you have enough blocks, you make the quilt top. These blocks all appear to be of a similar “design” (or two), but the color variations are what change them. I realize, of course, that I am a sucker for Flying Geese, and there are plenty of them in this quilt!

Another miniature. This is Yoko Euhara’s Florence. I’m assuming that is in Florence, Italy? The city? But maybe it’s a woman’s name. It won the Publisher’s Award.

Teensy diamonds!

Another sort of simple traditional block taken to new heights by those borders! It’s titled Let’s Play in a Circle, by Chieko Yamaguchi.

As with all the gallery images, you can right-click to open them in a new tab to see them larger.

Stormy Sea, by Klein Elke

I really loved this one. Simple shapes with huge design impact. What if you just kept a stack of squares in a limited range of hues and sewed a narrow rectangle on a diagonal, splitting it. Then what if you just trued them all up to the same size? And then after a while, you started arranging them into a design, led by color? I make this piece of art sound simple, don’t I?

This one is a wall-sized quilt (no, they didn’t have measurements on them). It’s My Garden, by Yukiko Sugaya. She has layered regular quilting cottons with sheers. I hope you can see it:

And I loved her borders:

5 mm 2 by Hiromi Yokota. Just for reference, 5 millimeters is less than a quarter of an inch and each of the those logs in her small log cabin blocks are about that big. It was so charming.

If you start now, you might have it done by Christmas of 2027, I think. (But if it’s paper-pieced, it might take you to Christmas of 2028 to get the papers off.). It’s just perfect, and about 20″ square, if I had to take a guess.

Longing for a Mandala, by Mini Naomi Iida. A last miniature, but this wasn’t all of them. I’ll try to slide the last ones into different posts as I go along, over the next few weeks.

A bit closer. Just exquisite!

Under a Big Tree, by Chieko Akada. This was a good-sized quilt (you can see it in one of the first few photos) and we really could imagine getting under this tree.

As always, when at a quilt show, I talk to the quilters who are there, and that’s how I met (from left to right): Jan, Carleen, and Mary. Hi ladies! and thanks for chatting with me as I wandered around. That tall guy smiling on the left in the white shirt is my husband, and he helped me take all these photos (he’s quite good at quilt photos!).

The opening placard.

I had a wonderful time — a Grand Day Out — in San Diego. I have my eye on another exhibit, and then Road to California is coming up in January. In between we have ThanksgivingChristmasNewYear, or it feels like that. Let’s hope for some quilting here and there!

Quilt in thumbnail (and above) is Seirenka, by Hiroko Hoshino.

300 and Beyond · Appliqué · Free Download · Free Quilt Pattern · Museums · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Finish · Quilt-A-Long · Quilts

NMAI • Top Finished! (Twice)

October 11, 2026October 10, 2026 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

I nearly always put the finished quilt top at the beginning of the post.

Not this time.

I’m putting the Finish, Before I Really Finished It, at the top of the post. Here it is:

This is the finished layout from the 2026 quilt-a-long project from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, with a few tweaks. As I mentioned in my BlueSky post, I absolutely am not a fan of piano key borders. You know those ones with a million little pieces that NEVER FIT? Sure you do.

And this was a type of piano key border, but the bits were subdivided to mimic a step design, seen on baskets from the designer’s region and people. I can honor that, but I was not keen about making it. That’s why you see two extra bands of yellow on top and bottom, as I’m trying to get that border to fit somewhat. I finally gave up because I knew I was going to do this:

(That fun figure I purchased in Northern Arizona is helping to show off my Really Finished quilt top.)

I got rid of all the inner borders, swapped out my sun symbol block for the hand, and tried to set the design to balance as well as it could. In her narrative about the basket inspiration used for the final border, Margaret Wood noted that the break in the design always points East. I intimated at this with my one yellow spacer, pointing to a traditional east.

So I consider this a successful finish.

(Early version)

But let’s talk about that final block.

Which leads me to ask, what is the real point of this quilt-a-long? Past all the designs, past all the paragraphs and aspirations? At first I viewed it as another traditional quilt-a-long, you know: get a free pattern, make a block, repeat.

But when I hit this one all that process abruptly ceased for me, because there was no way I was going to make that block. I went away for a couple of weeks (here, and here…always good for the quilty soul), and while gone saw another quilter on BlueSky make hers, changing it to suit her.

And then I started reading and reading; I read about the Yup’ik people. I read about their designs, where they lived. I found other artists in other venues. I searched for “Ellam Yua,” which is the black symbol floating over that random wave up there. And then I found this:

This hand-carved mask, from Jennifer Angaiak Wood of the Yup’ik people shows the river flowing from the upper right to the lower left. Things fell into place. Instead of that ocean wave representing water, I’ll do a river flowing over mountains.

The Yup’ik live in this area of the world where there are rivers, and oceans and mountains. After I borrowed Ms. Wood’s idea the creating began for me. I was — I think — finally catching the spirit of this adventure: learning about the native peoples who lived here before America was even a glimmer of an idea; perhaps that’s why the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian) was doing this for the America 250 celebration.

And if you haven’t been to that museum, please do put it on your list. We were in Washington, D.C. when it opened and it was just a party of different peoples from all over the American Continent (north and south) with a parade, food, programs. A good memory. And here’s a slideshow of that day, with all the amazing dresses (I love the Ojibwa Jingle Dress, slide 11) and regalia of the different nations. The first slide is a partial glimpse of the museum itself. The last three slides are inside the atrium, with the rainbows shining through the windows and down the walls.

Here’s a free pattern of my version of the final block for you to download. Please do not post this on your own site, but send others here to get it for themselves. Thank you. (This is already up on my pattern site, and eventually I’ll take this one down and the pattern will live over there.)

Yup’ik Block_opquilt Download

Okay, a quick review of how I made the block. I like using freezer paper when I do appliqué that has a tricky edge.

I pressed the raw edge (clipping at the curves) over the freezer paper. NOTE: please do pin your piece to the freezer paper as there is a tendency for it to move as you press.

Once cool, I removed the freezer paper, then put it into place on the “mountain” triangle, matching straight edges. I appliquéd it down, then cut out the excess behind. I chose to use hand appliqué but if you are familiar with using monofilament thread and a small zig-zag stitch, it would work well in this instance.

Similar process for the inner ring (the red center was appliquéd first, then I did cut out behind that). I trimmed the pattern piece on the lines, cutting away the seam allowances. Then, using a small-tipped iron, I pressed the clipped seam allowances over the edges of the waxy side of the freezer paper pattern. I pinned it to the block, then stitched down the inside of that first smaller ring. Then I removed the freezer paper, pinned it down again and went around the outside edges with my stitching.

Same steps. I clipped into the corner when the lines poke out from the circle, and tucked the raw edges under the shape.

I was in Scotland and England when researching this Ellam Yua shape and found it interesting that there were echoes of it where I was: a circles with the four points jutting out:

I learned a lot on this block, really enjoying my exploration of the Yup’ik art. And I learned a lot with all the other blocks and borders, too — expanding my horizons while doing a good challenge. Many thanks to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and thanks to Congress’ America 250 Committee, which contrtibuted to this.

This final image is of a mask that Jen Wood made and put up online. In the text she notes that “the blue with white dots on the forehead represents the sky and stars, as well as our ancestors.” I liked the idea of this, so maybe the dots for my backgrounds evoke the same idea?

Thanks, Jen.

Happy Stitching!

Florere • Quilt Finish

October 4, 2026 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

I gave my sister my original Blossom quilt (happily) yet I missed it so much, I determined if I ever found the AMH border fabric again, I would remake it. At Road last year, I found the exact fabric; the personal challenge was on, and now it’s finished.

This is quilt #322, and is titled Florere, the Latin word for bloom (or so the internet says). I used a combination of all Anna Maria (and AMH fabrics), Soft and Bright batting, and I quilted it myself using a combination of Superior Magnifico thread and YLI Elite thread.

I cut out the 12″ size from my pattern. While many fabrics are similar, there are some changes, as Anna Maria had made some different ones that I wanted to use (like the coneflower fabrics).

There’s that border fabric. I started cutting this out in February 2026, only a month after Road (not bad).

While the top gets finished and pinned, it takes me a while to think of ways to quilt it. I went a little swirlier in the yellow-green petals. (That fabric is a Painter’s Palette Solid.)

Pattern can be found here.

I liked it so much, that earlier I made another one, smaller and for springtime. All four sizes are in the pattern.

A little stained-glass view for you.

Museums · Sewing · Textiles & Fabric · Travels

All Quilty Roads Lead to Liberty

September 27, 2026September 26, 2026 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

That’s Janine and I, up there under the Liberty Arch.

Apparently all roads lead to Liberty of London if you are traveling to England. Janine, of Rainbow Hare, has also written about meeting up a stranger (that’s me!) from the US in the great city on the Thames, and has a wonderful overview of that store. She called her blog post A Grand Day Out, and it was!

I learned from Janine’s blog that it has the idea of a ship at its origins, and I can see it in the timbered and half-timbered exterior (from a ship!) and interior:

I didn’t quite figure out the floor plan, but basically there are central atriums and so many beautiful goods for sale.

These are from the first central atrium we entered. That giant rose with all its petals made me wonder how they crafted it. Magic, I think.

Another atrium. They don’t just sell Tana Lawn or fabric, but being quilters, Janine and I made a beeline for that section, with one quick stop on the fourth floor to see the (new) Christmas displays).

Eyeball ornament?

And…eyeball tree. Must have been some current bit of culture I missed out on.

Love seeing their golden ship weathervane through the skylight. [Truth: Janine spotted it first. It is totally the best to go to a store with a fellow blogger. They see things you don’t, and visa versa, and we “see” so much more!] Okay, time to go down one flight of stairs (we were always looking for the stairs) to the fabric floor.

I saw some of this, too, in Paris, where they drape the mannequins in yardage and ruffles to show you a dress in their exquisite fabrics.

We were moving so fast, I didn’t get a chance to read about this display of giant scissors.

With the open atriums you can see all the festive Christmas lights. It would be so fun to be in London at Christmas. (next trip, haha)

Knowing I would be overwhelmed by it all, before I left home, I did some “pre-shopping,” browsing their website and choosing one print of Tana Lawn — only one — to purchase. I showed the young man (with the fabulous brooch on his shoulder) my photo of what I wanted, and he took me right to the yardage. One meter, please.

It’s for a secret project later on this year, so here’s the slightly disguised view. We also combed through their boxes of “scraps” or remnants, and I picked up a lovely floral clip-dot:

I learned about this way back in the day when I took my textiles classes in college. We know it now as “dotted swiss” but that fabric really that is little dots of glue and bits of fluff.

Above is the “true” dotted swiss: a long thread is carried during the weaving and then clipped short to create those little dots. Then it is printed afterwards, which is why some dots are blue or red or green. This is one of the beauties of Liberty: you can find the traditional fabrics.

While we were looking for stairs, we ran into a few other interesting Liberty tidbits:

What your fabrics are made from: spools of yarns.

The “Sole Spa” for “fabulous hands, feet, and legs.”

No(se) comment.

Stained glass in one of the stairwells.

And then out! We grabbed some lunch at Pret (which used to be called Pret A Manger) then walked over to MacCulloch & Wallis Ltd, another sewing store.

What is haberdashery? In America, we’ve adapted it to mean mens’ clothing, but the original meaning, from Chaucerian times:

“a haberdasher is a business or person who sells fabric and small articles for sewing, dressmaking and knitting, such as buttons, ribbons and zips” (from here)

Here’s some haberdashery eye candy, for those of us in the States still mourning the loss of the JoAnn’s stores:

Yes, I bought buttons. And some elastic to replace some in my half-slip that had worn out, which led Janine to take me to Marks and Spencer Department Store next to find a “half-petticoat.” A great adventure! And why did we ever change out the word petticoat for “slip”? Or the word “haberdashery” to “notions”? We really have to reclaim these words!

Some London sights.

After a restorative beverage at McDonalds (no judging, it was right next door), she took off to the train station to head back to her lovely English countryside. But she left me a great present in the form of a magic wand:

I put it in my scissors-and-pens container when I got home; when I sew on my machine, I can hear the little bells jingle. A treasure, from the hands of Janine.

When we were at MacCulloch & Wallis Ltd, we each got a tote bag with our purchase. Which leads me to confess I have a true love of tote bags. And Scotland and London feed that habit as they are Very Serious about no plastic bags. Maybe if we here in America had all these cute bags, we’d get rid of our plastic bags, too (except for special necessary occasions). Here’s most of the bags I toted home:

Topping & Company was the beautiful bookshop right around the corner from our flat in Edinburgh

Detour Story:
When I was chatting with the clerk at Topping and Co. bookstore, telling him how much I enjoyed being in his shop, I mentioned that it was not like our bookshops at home. He asked me what they were like. And I said well, most of the things in the bookstores are not books. He then said the owner made a calculated decision to not even let pens be sold in the store because if pens come in, then you have to have journals and if you have journals, you have to have stationary, and so on. The whole place is just gloriously filled with books, along with a couple of racks of greeting cards, but that’s it.

Scottish Parliament Building (another tote). The deal in that gift shop is this: you can buy a paper bag for £1. Or you can buy a cloth tote bag for £2. That’s a no-brainer to someone who loves textiles.

National Gallery of Art (London) Some of the art is posted here.

The Royal Yacht Brittania, Queen Elizabeth’s decommissioned yacht, AKA Corgi City. I carried this bag around after that, but turned inside out so it wasn’t sooooo obvious I was a tourist.

National Galleries of Scotland (there are actually four of these linked museums, but they all share the same style of tote bag). Here’s a post about the tiled floors in the National Museum of Scotland. Above is the inner atrium of the National Portrait Gallery.

Holyroodhouse Palace. I was there on the “special day.” If I coughed up a bunch more £-notes, I could see the Queen’s Royal Apartments. I met some a mother and daughter who’d come up from Essex just to tour these rooms. I asked them “Do we like Camilla now?” Oh, yes, was the reply. “And how about your most recent returning royal, Prince Harry and his wife?” The two women looked at each other and shook their heads, saying something about how they need to keep their heads down and be proper royals. And in true British fashion, both of these women’s middle names were Elizabeth.

Last photo from London, in the Heathrow airport. I never did ride on the Elizabeth underground.

Next trip!

Bonus Tote Bags:

Backside of the National Gallery in London bag. Somewhere in the millions of title cards I read while going through museums, there was a line about what will we do when we don’t have museums to learn from? I loved that they were teaching me even on a tote bag.

As fellow lovers-of-cloth, you will understand when I tell you that I grabbed this from the tray in the hallway with someone’s garbage from their take-out dinner. I dumped out their cartons (neatly) and took it back to our hotel room. This heroic rescue made us just late enough that we had to run to catch our bus. #worthit