Matryoshka Dolls Visit the Sewing Room

November 8, 2026November 7, 2026 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

I have a collection of matryoshka dolls in wood, from small to huge, gathered from all over the world. While they originate from Japan, “the first Matryoshka doll wasn’t made until 1892” (from here). Many of mine are from Russia, but I’ve never traveled there. I’ve picked them up in Costco (!), Greek festivals at our local church, Berlin, and the large one at the back (nearly a foot tall), was purchased in the back of a copy shop in Chicago when my husband was there on business. He carried it home in his suitcase — a treasure for me.

(more photos are at the end of this post)

Another gathering of those nesting dolls showed up in my sewing room this month. I had wanted to make a gift to thank Janine for her hospitality when I showed up in London last month, so started to make one for her (she mentions it here). Then I wanted one for me (the red-head in the lower right), and then I realized I needed to make wee gifts for the tablemates at a quilting retreat I’m headed to this week, so added few more to the count.

I cut the cases from the one meter of yardage I purchased from Liberty, while I was in London. (Only one meter from that whole store — what restraint!)

I used 100% wool felt from two sources: some I’d purchased while in Berlin ages ago, and other felt I’d sourced when making the Oh Christmas Tree Quilt, some time ago. It doesn’t go bad in the cupboard, I promise. This post talks about some of the sources I used; the one that is still in business is A Child’s Dream. (How things change!)

The buttons are some that I picked up in Nantes, France, from ChifonieStudio, at the For The Love of Thread quilt show. Truly, this little doll is international!

I put more photos, the templates, illustrations and instructions in one of my PatternLite patterns, found in my PayHip shop.

And from now until our US Thanksgiving, I’ve put it on an introductory sale (incredibly cheep-cheep!). The pattern is listed here.

Besides a few decorative pins and my favorite large-eye needle, what did I put in the little pockets in the front and back? In the front are my favorite travel scissors: baby fingernail cutters, with very short blades. In the back pocket is my favorite thread conditioner from Rachel, of RileyAcres. I’ve been buying it from her for years and it’s made from the beeswax she collects from the bees she maintains on her property.

Construction photos. They are in the (currently, cheap!) pattern. BTW, I put it on an automatic discount so you don’t have to fuss with coupon codes, etc. but it only lasts until Thanksgiving 2026.

Now, more real matryoshka. The title on this is “Mucha” as in the artist who makes glorious art as well as some stained-glass windows in the Prague Cathedral.

The tallest one at the back is the one my husband bought in a copy shop: scenes of family life, with mother on one side — and the father on the other when you turn the doll around. In front are some more dolls including Rosie, as she’s known (front and center with the large painted rose on her front apron).

Front of set…and back of set. (Click to enlarge the photos). Matryoshka dolls are like us: they contain multitudes (thank you to the poet Walt Whitman).

It’s a longer story about how I came to head to a quilt retreat in Utah, but it involves one of my long-time friends, Lisa. She cautioned me: get everything cut out! And Mary, of Zippy Quilts, also sent along another piece of advice: “wind lots of bobbins with neutral thread: it’s amazing what you can get done if you aren’t doing laundry!”

The scene earlier this week, with Janine’s Happy Jingle-bell Star in the background.

Project #1: two table runners for Halloween. That holiday now long gone, I’ll be ready for 2027 (she says, cheerfully!).

And then there’s this one: Project #2.

The original quilt can be seen here, but it just didn’t suit me, plus I wasn’t going to do some of those blocks since I’m doing hand-appliqué (I’m taking my Singer Featherweight, not the bigger machine). But I wondered: it can’t be Utah if there are no cherries that we canned when I was a kid? Or the spectacular Utah peaches, my mother lifting up those glowing jewels from the canner in our hot, steamy Provo kitchen that had no air conditioning? And where was Y-Mountain? And Watchman Peak, from Zion Canyon, where my husband and I spent our first camping trip after we were married (with four young children)? I had to add those things. So it’s not really the designer’s Utah quilt now, but My Utah Quilt. All of the piecing awaits, but most of the appliqué is prepped up, so I’ll get started on the long drive there.

If I get any time, I’ll prep up one more easy-piecing project (multiples of the same block). We’ll see. I do remember Lisa’s advice.

And at some point, I need to pack!

*The Watchman, from the Watchman Campground*

Quilts · Something to Think About

Don’t rush.

October 31, 2026 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Ever since the Knicks won the title in five, I’ve had this little clipping perched on my mousepad: “Don’t rush. The key is the flow out of which the shot comes.” This was Bill Bradley, “exhorting the Knicks in Game 1 when they were trailing.”

When they were trailing.

It’s been a summer of trailing for me, with some highs and many unexpected lurches sideways. I’ve always been a busy girl, known for this in my family, as well as the ability to organize the heck out of a jewelry drawer. But somehow this year, it was too hard to keep up, to go at a crazed pace blading out quilt patches, stitching them up, thinking about a few pieces to add to my wardrobe, navigating through some bumps in relationships, keeping up my appearances at doctors’ offices (plural), and the cleaning, and errands, and cooking, and other self-assigned-and-assigned jobs that had my name on them.

The key is the flow out of which the shot comes.

Maybe I’ve kept that there because I keep thinking I need to slow down?

Or, maybe the flow is just paying more attention?

The British art critic, John Berger, who trained as a painter before shifting to criticism believed that attention was “not a passive, individual state but rather an action.” According to A.O.Scott, who wrote about him for the New York Times, “[w]e don’t just see what’s in front of our eyes. We interpret it, looking for patterns and meanings and associations. How we do this depends on where we are, who we’re with and how we see ourselves.” Scott wrote that Berger “grew skeptical of modernity and acutely aware of the costs of technological progress, which brings in its wake dispossession, alienation and amnesia along with efficiency, speed and convenience.”

Regretfully, I’ve had to pare down, set aside some of my favorite things during this time period, and not just in the quilting realm. This is not easy because I’ve always lived by just-stuff-more-things-in around-the-edges credo (in other words, the opposite of working in flow). Sadly, I’ve suffered some losses because of this slowing down. I needed days when I could inch along at a snail’s pace and see the “patterns and meanings and associations” not only in my work as a quilter, but also in my family, in my communities. Sometimes we are so busy rushing the basket that we forget the game, which is kind of why — I guess — I keep that saying front and center, right by the little mouse that clicks my way through a day, navigating the “cost of technological progress,” with its hurry-hurry and its more-more.

Most days I need less-less.

Another quilt from Quilts Japan: some of this fabric’s raw edges were on full display. Intriguing.

I voted. Early.

These colors just glow. I love autumn!

Museums · Quilt Shows · Quilts

Quilts Japan • Vision Museum of Textile Art

October 23, 2026 Elizabeth E.12 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!