Tokyo Handmade Festival

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of meeting Julie F (My Quilt Diary) at the Tokyo Dome, to see a small quilt show together.  We hadn't seen each other in person since the Quilt Festival in January 2020.  

This "Tokyo Handmade Festival" was like a little taste of the old Quilt Festivals. 

The only hassle was navigating quite a long, inefficient, almost maddening process of walking past the whole length of the line to get my ticket, then even further for us to fill out forms with our name and phone number, then a walk all the way back along the line, to the end of the line.... then... wait in line, etc. etc. - all of that took a long time, maybe 45 minutes or even an hour?  

The show itself was very small but lovely, and not too crowded. 

Atsumi embroidery: 

I adore this whimsical alphabet: 

Kathy Nakajima's Hawaiian quilts: 

A fun and rather fittingly busy and garish Halloween exhibit: 

Some interesting BORO pieces: 

And beautiful work from the Tokyo-based artist Lindzeanne: 

Last but not least, the NHK Partnership quilts, all along the perimeter.  It took some sleuthing but we found our individual blocks:

My block is the bottom left one below in orange, yellow, green: 

And Julie's beautiful cardinal is here, top right: 

There were many quilts on display - Queenie's block is second to the right from Julie's cardinal, on the other side of the black whale.  A lovely earth surrounded by her trademark embroidery and with a tiny Swedish flag. 

 

And here is Tanya's block at the bottom right  - the "Love the Earth" block.  I thought this grouping of four was terrific and really conveyed the "love the earth" theme.  

It was fun to peruse all the Partnership quilts. 

Next, we split up for 30 minutes to explore the vendor area, and I stayed mostly on the perimeter, avoiding the center areas that really were too crowded.  

I focused on three or four vendors, and purchased several beautiful pieces of vintage indigo (and some soft brown and red) as well some newly woven kasuri (not pictured) to use in more indigo sofa throws.    

Ahhhhh this makes me happy: 

Lastly Julie and I got some bubble tea and sat outside catching up for awhile before saying farewell and walking in opposite  directions to our respective train stations!  Thanks for the nice outing Julie!  I hope we can gather together with Queenie and Tanya too at some point in the not so distant future! 

xo

Cynthia