The Annual AUTUMN EXHIBITION

Every autumn, my sashiko group participates in an exhibition at a community art gallery in the train station. Over the last three years I have made a series of framed works featuring different patterns, and contributed to the joint wall hanging that we make especially for this exhibition every year. Although I was unable to contribute this time, I was happy to be able to view the exhibition recently.  

This years’ joint wall hanging project was a series of four vertical panels depicting the iroha song, an ancient poem famous for incorporating every syllable of the Japanese hiragana syllabary. Sort of like the Japanese equivalent of ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ Even native Japanese speakers can find it difficult to make out what this stylized writing says, so kudos to my four clever classmates who were able to transfer the patterns and fill them out with such beautifully even stitches! 

Other classmates each stitched flower designs to frame. Here is a selection of a few. 

The above are all examples of jiyuzashi, or free stitching, which is basically stitching along a freely drawn line. There were also plenty of examples of moyozashi , or pattern stitching. 

A hanafukin cloth in nanohana (rape blossom) stitch

A runner stitched with shippo tsunagi (seven treasures) filled in with a lattice pattern. The cloth backing is seigaiha (blue ocean wave).

Another hanafukin cloth stitched with tobi asanoha (scattered hemp leaf)

Then there was this spectacular runner below, which was made by one of my classmates done in the bunkatsu (section) style. The patterns you see represented here are (left to right, top to bottom); sayagata (brocade weave), kagome (basket weave), Bishamon (Bishamon-name of a god), asanoha (hemp leaf), tsuno kikko (flower tortoiseshell), and ajiro (wickerwork), plus one more I can’t for the life of me remember or track down – which is driving me nuts! 

Finally, these three versions of the same stitch, tsuno kikko (horned tortoise shell), on the same kinchaku (drawstring) bag, are a wonderful illustration of how varying the thread colour or pattern size can alter the overall effect.