Talking Indigo With Shizuko Kuroha

Think indigo--deep, rich indigo. That's what Japanese quilter and quilt teacher Shizuko Kuroha has been doing for more than 30 years.


Shizuko Kuroha, owner of Nuno Space quilt shop and studio in Chiba, Japan, has become an expert on vintage Japanese fabrics, especially indigos that came into use in the 1600s during a time in Japanese history known as the Edo Period. Originally used for clothing worn by the lower classes who were not to wear the bright colors of the rich, indigo fabric gained popularity across Japanese society by the mid-1800s. Much of Ms. Kuroha's stash of indigo comes from a lifetime of searching at flea markets.

With the amount of vintage indigo fabric limited, Shizuko Kuroha has recently designed this indigo reproduction fabric as part of her efforts to teach her country's culture and history through fabric. While the colors of the vintage indigo can be fairly well duplicated, the textures of the cloth cannot. She is developing ways of combining vintage and new indigo fabrics and helping her students find ways to use vintage cloth without cutting it up.

In addition to the indigo reproduction cloth, Shizuko Kuroha has also designed fabric based on vintage designs once used for men's undergarments. The bolt seen here is a reproduction of the swatch of vintage cloth laid on top of it.

Check out the three colorways for this design.

After spending the morning with Shizuko Kuroha and enjoying yet another great lunch of sushi, I hopped a train back to Yoko Seito's The Quilt Party shop. (Check out my last blog post for more on Ms. Seito.) I just had to get a closer look at the wonderful taupe fabrics that are part of her Centenary Collection, produced by Lecien, a Japanese fabric company. I fell in love with her designs in the blue-gray range. There are also great browns, greens, and reds. Her fabric is available online. Check out http://shop.quilt.co.jp/en/. The collection includes printed and yarn-dyed fabrics.

While at The Quilt Party, I just had to pick up a few additional yarn-dye fabrics. Remembering what I've learned this week about creating texture and dimension with these fabrics, I decided to get small cuts ranging from fabrics that are almost smooth to those with a lots of texture. Working with these will be a whole new ballgame for me. For now, it's a enough just to drool over them.

Remember my picture of a portion of this lovely painted service-hole cover? (Check out my last blog post.) Well a friend helped me move the construction barricade just enough to get a photo of the full cover. Still loving it.

Meet Yoko Saito, Shop Tokyo

Two more great days in Tokyo--days of seeing beautiful quilts and finding inspiration for my next quilts while walking the streets of the city on a sunny, balmy mid-December day. Let me tell you about meeting Yoko Saito, a quilter and quilt teacher who is famous in Japan and beyond.

Yoko Saito clearly loves teaching others to quilt. When you enter her classroom, which is part of her shop in Tokyo, you notice all the students have a stack of colored markers. It only takes a few minutes to realize why. Ms. Saito has developed a colored-coded system of creating patterns and classroom diagrams. The system makes it easy for students to remember what to do when they get home. Ms. Saito not only teaches at her shop but has also traveled extensively as a quilting instructor in Europe and Asia.

Yoko Saito's teaching skills are matched by her quilting skills. Thimbles and more thimbles--count them--are key to her speed and accuracy in hand quilting. Check out the detail of one of her quilts below. The white ceramic thimble is her own design.

Yoko Saito's hand quilting is enhanced with hand embroidery. Her use of color and printed and yarn-dye Japanese taupe fabrics creates dimension.

After a week of meeting quilters, visiting their shops and studios, seeing their quilts up close, and talking with them, I was ready for a day to just kick back and relax. So what did I do? Sightseeing and shopping, of course. Just outside my hotel, I crossed the bridge known as Asakusabashi--bashi means bridge. The boats offer dinner cruises but it wasn't dinner time and I had shopping to do. So I headed straight for the accessory district.

The district is packed with wholesalers who also welcome retail shoppers. Most prominent are the bead stores. This really is heaven if you use beads and crystals to embellish your quilts. There's every color, size, and style you can imagine, and all at good prices. I enjoyed meeting Kusal Shrestha at Himalaya bead shop. When he found out I was a quilter, he took me to a nearby bead store that had a second floor full of fabric. Talk about heaven!

A short train ride and I was in Akihabara, the section of Tokyo known as Electric Town. There were people and more people everywhere. I'd read this was the heart of Japanese animation and the place to find anime figures. True enough. There were thousands and thousands of figures, some at astronomical prices. Very overwhelming. I wanted to get my photo taken with some of the characters but it was just too crowded. I think the warm day brought out everyone in Tokyo. I did grab a few shots in the neighborhood and am thinking they just might inspire a quilt.

If you're not familiar with the anime phenomenon-- I'm no expert--but here's just a sample of the big-eyed look many of the characters have.

From bold and impossible to miss to this surprising underfoot--literally underfoot--find. A beautiful service-hole cover--go figure. I only got a portion of it in this shot because it was in an area cordoned off for roadwork. But I had to show you what I could see. More inspiration for quilts.

My next stop was Asakusa, an area of Japan that is home to the Senso-ji Temple and vendors of traditional Japan goods--quite different from Electric Town! The shops are tiny and packed full of all sorts of items made of beautiful Japanese fabrics and paper. I was pleased when Fumiko Amashita at Azusaya Kimono agreed to pose with me. And I finally found kimono fabric for QN staffer Joli Hines Sayasane but there was one problem. It's only sold in rolls of 100 meters--"no cuts" I was told over and over--at a steep price. Sorry Joli.

Asakusa is home to Kurodaya, a paper store established in 1856, that sells paper that almost feels like fabric. The selection of colors and patterns is tremendous. I went for pieces featuring indigo, some with red highlights.

From Asakusa, I headed to Nihombashi, a section of Tokyo where I'd been told I could find a Maruzen, a store that carries English-language books. I needed to pick up some reading material for the flight home next week. The perfect find: The Villain by Shuichi Yoshida. It's the first book translated into English by this award-winning Japanese writer. Even more interesting, I found QN's sister publication Quiltmaker on the newsstand. Along with the latest issue was the recently released Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, Volume 2. The price? Just $2,500 yen or about $30. Worth every penny! Of course, if you're in the United States, it's an absolute steal at $6.99.

One last train ride and I was home. It was time to give tired feet a rest. In good Japanese-style, I left my street shoes at the door. Then I had to make a choice: Would I don these luxurious Japanese clogs or would it be a fun pair of slippers. Check them out below.

This too-cute guy is Anpanman, one of the most popular animae cartoon characters among the youngest Japanese children. Anpanman appears on children's products from toys to clothes to video games. Anpan is a bean-jam filled pastry, and Anpanman saves people by providing them with something to eat.

Checking Out the Tokyo Quilting Scene

Kinkame Shigyo Company, a leading Japanese fabric and notion producer, is my host in Tokyo. And wow, what hospitality! Check out the folks I'm meeting. They're all movers and shakers in Japan's quilt scene.

My first stop was Kinkame headquarters where the company's President Kazuo Kurita welcomed me and told me all about what they do at Kinkame. He is the fourth generation of his family to lead the company, which was founded by his great-grandfather more than 120 years ago to make silk thread. Their silk products have been used in kimonos for Japan's royal family and Tokyo's finest hotels. Today, Kinkame still produces silk thread and has added fabric and notions to their products.

Next stop was talking with Kinkame fabric designer Yoko Uematsu. Here she is with many of the fabrics from her popular Toy Poodle collection, available in the United States through Clothworks Fabrics in Seattle. The collection was designed for young Japanese mothers who make bags and backpacks for their children when they start school. The name was inspired by the fact that an increasing number of these mothers have toy poodles, a popular pet especially in Tokyo. She is also the designer of Kinkame's European Taupe collection, available in the United States through Clothworks. That collection was inspired by Louisa May Alcott's book Little Women. Check out a future issue of Quilters Newsletter for the full story behind the design.

An exciting drive through Toyko with our Kinkame host Kouji Takahashi took us to Reiko Kato's shop and classroom. (Let me say Mr. Takahashi is an excellent driver. The excitement is because the street lights in Tokyo are quite different from those in the United States so it is not clear to a U.S. visitor when it is safe to go. And the Japanese drive on the opposite side of the road from U.S. drivers.)

But back to Reiko Kato. She designs quilts and teaches quilting to students who commit as much as four years to learning the basics. Her shop features a wide selection of Japanese yarn-dyed fabrics and U.S. fabrics. Look forward to learning more about her quilts in a future issue of QN.

What a surprise to learn Kinkame notions developer Yoshihiro Itakura has begun quilting. He made his first quilt to better understand what notions quilters need. He uses Kinkame fabrics and notions in his quilts and is anxious to learn free-motion quilting. Men Who Quilt, I think you may have new recruit!

Check out his use of Kinkame leaf appliques below.

Yoshihiro Itakura embellished the border of his pineapple quilt--made with Kinkame's European Taupe fabric--with leaf appliques. Other edges feature buttons and smaller leaf appliques. Very interesting and pretty finishing touches.

Masaaki Takahashi, president of MC Square, led me through the maze of trains and shops to attend a charity quilt show and sale organized by Moriko Okamoto. (More on Ms. Okamoto and her show and sale in a minute.) MC Square is Japan's leading distributor of all things quilting--fabric, books, notions, and more. The company supplies quilt shops and quilt teachers across Japan. The shops and teachers sign up to be members of MC Square then receive monthly sample books that include 500-1,000 samples every month. About half of the fabrics are Japanese and half are from the United States. MC Square partners with Kinkame to import the U.S. fabrics.

MC staffer and fabric expert Kaoru Nakagawa said Moda and Michael Miller are among U.S. fabrics popular with Japanese quilters as are Victorian prints by Yuwa, a Japanese fabric company. Japanese yarn-dyes are a perennial favorite among Japanese quilters. I think these are a treasure waiting to be discovered by U.S. quilters.

The staff of MC Square knows a lot about fabric, notions, and the tastes of Japanese quilters, said company President Masaaki Takahashi. Many are quilters.

MC Square staff put in many hours preparing extensive sample books for Japanese quilt shops and quilt teachers. This stack of yarn-dye fabrics will soon be cut into small swatches and pasted into logs like the one pictured here. Every MC Square member shop or teacher gets 500-1,000 samples a month.

I just loved quilter and quilt teacher Moriko Okamoto--maybe because she is a longtime fan of Quilters Newsletter, maybe because her quilts are beautiful, maybe because she cares about others, maybe because she really liked me. Actually, all of the above are true. She and her students have come together to make quilts and quilt-related art that they are selling to raise money to build a house for adults with mental disabilities. She was moved to initiate this project because of the experiences of the son of a family friend. Much success, Ms. Okamoto!

Moriko Okamoto combines extensive training and experience in hand embroidery with patchwork and large-stitch quilting to make stunning quilts. Check out the detail above.

And how about this bag I picked up at the sale?