During our vacation in Nagano and Yamanashi prefectures, a friend of mine living in Kiyosato took us to a museum in Matsumoto city to visit the exhibition by Yayoi Kusama.
She is very well known in the world. Maybe many of you might have seen her works somewhere before.
The notable feature of her works is dots.
The most amazing thing is that most of exhibited works were made in the last 2 years and she was born in 1929 ..... yes she is already 83 years old! How energetic the works are!
Emi cound not help but dance!
If you would like to know her better, please visit her website .
Dear French and Thai readers,
We have new 2 books by Masako published in French and Thai. So please check them out and you don't need to be bothered by Japanese language problems again!
Quilt americain - Adorables motifs varies (les editions de saxe)
If you would like to browse it, please click this and here is further info .
PATCHWORK RECIPE (Amarin printing and publishing)
You can purchase it here .
We had been invited to give one of each workshop in Okayama and Takamatsu by a Japanese retail chain company called "Dream" and visited the shops last week.
We took the Shinkansen (the super express train) from Tokyo to Okayama in the morning, which took us more than 3 hours to get there.
The first workshop began at 12:30pm.
Using the interfacing, we made a bag with the orange peel pattern. After a short break during the workshop, students practiced embroidering with a special embroidery needle which had 2 eyes!
At the end of the workshop, everybody got together to take a picture.
The manager of the Okayama shop was a young lady who worked really hard and helped us a lot. Thank you!
Please take a look at the map below. The next workshop of the following day was in Takamatsu (A was where we were and B was where we were supposed to go next.) which was located across Seto Inland Sea. As soon as we said goodbye to the manager we headed to Takamatsu with a special train which went under Great Seto bridge.
The train looks like this ......
Here are pictures that we took on a train and it was the best time to enjoy the sunset!
The 2nd day in Takamatsu
Takamatsu is a city which is famous for Udon. Have you ever heard of Udon before?
Udon is a kind of Japanese noodle which is made of wheat flour. It usually comes with a cup of cold soup (Zaru-Udon) or is in a bowl of hot soup (Kake-Udon).
We had Zaru-Udon and Kamatama-Udon (the local speciality) for lunch.
The noodles were very chewy and tasted great!
The 2nd workshop began at 12:30pm as well as the last one.
One of the students brought a backpack using my old collection "American Country which was made for her boy.
One of Masako's students goes to Seattle to see Ichiro play baseball at Safeco Field every summer.
I'm not sure how many of you know of Ichiro who is a very popular Japanese baseball player and has been playing in the US for a long time.
The game that she watched was the exact one that Ichiro played at as a member of The Yankees for the first time.
Before going to Seattle, she saw a post of our blog where we talked about our American friend, Maggie who lived in Seattle and visited Tokyo then had lunch with us together last May. So she asked me to email Maggie if she knew some quilt shops in Seattle.
Then Maggie gave me info of an exhibition that was held in Bellvue which was just 20 minutes away by car from Seattle.
Last week the student came to CRIB QUILT for a lesson and showed us pictures of the exhibition!
"Bold Expressions: African American Quilts from the collection of Corrie Riley"
More than 50 quilts which African American people made from circa the 1910's through the 1970's were displayed. They were literally "bold" as you found the expression in the title!
The collector, Corrie Riley found herself drawn to quilts which had the stunning color combinations and free patterns 50 years ago, and since then it has set her on a quest to look for their quilts.
The materials chosen for the quilts often reflected their intended use. You would find old cotton, wool, corduroy, flour sacks, old blue jeans and fabric remnants.
The exhibition runs until October 7, so if you have a chance to go to Seattle, please visit and tell us your thoughts.
Here is a link of the exhibition. http://www.bellevuearts.org/exhibitions/current/bold_expressions/index.html
It's not a pair of glasses or just a key ring either .....
It's a pair of scissors!!!
When traveling, quilters are always annoyed by the X ray machines at the airport because usually scissors are not allowed to be brought with us.
Masako travels a lot and her students know well about it, so the other day one of the students gave her it as a gift. The size is only 8cm.
It is a very good price so please check it out if you would like to get it.
http://item.rakuten.co.jp/v-road/1198360/ (This site is only for Japanese customers but I believe many other companies make one of these.)
One of our popular items is a leather handle in Masako's American blue.
The new size has arrived here!
The width is 15mm and the length is 1.6m.
The price is 480 yen for international customers. You can cut it however long you want to use!
To attach it to your work, please make holes with a stiletto and then sew.
Zen and Wuxi took us to amazing restaurants during our stay in Singapore.
I didn't have time to search for info about foods but I had known about Chicken rice and our Thai friend, Pao, recommended to eat it at the Mandarin hotel.
There it was. You could eat Chicken rice anywhere in Singapore, but everybody said that was the best. It came with 3 different sauces, Chili, Ginger and Duck sauce. You can make your own one by mixing them up.
Chili crab is also a popular seafood. We went to "JUMBO" to have dinner together, every table even outside the restaurant was almost full and it looked like a big party was going on.
The Japanese love crab but it was different from what we had here. It was so hard to open the crab shell, so an apron was needed.
Some of you might have seen this tea house "TWG" in your town. TGW is a Singaporean brand.
I knew it was in Jiyugaoka which was a town that I liked, but I always hesitated to go in because a menu hanging on a wall outside the shop told us it was a little expensive.
On the way to go up to the top of the Marina bay sands, we had tea with Zen and Wuxi.
There was a million kinds of teas and it was so hard to pick one out.
When we were about to have seats, one of the students who attended the workshop was sitting right next to us! What a coincidence!
It was definitely a luxurious and relaxing time.
We bought many tea boxes to give friends as gifts at Takashimaya department store. When having the tea, it will surely remind us of nice memories in Singapore.
Do you know what this number "1837" means in its logo? Singapore has only a 47-year-history. Usually in a logo, we find "since" or "established in" but then we realized nothing was indicated. It must have a meaning. It is funny and we are curious to know the reason.
