The helpful manager in TRY6 gave me a tip about another gallery he thought might have some sashiko, and sure enough when I reached the galerie arbre, I discovered the work of two more sashikoists. 
​Kogin mameco, the needle name of a lady who specializes in kogin sashiko, had a lovely range of book covers, zip pouches and pencil cases on display. Once again, however, I couldn’t resist the brooches, and purchased a sweet button-sized brooch covered in a rough-weave beige cloth stitched with a red ume no hana (plum flower). See Kogin mameco’s work here.

Hitomezashi and kogin sashiko are currently extremely popular in Japan, so I was not surprised that all the sashiko I had found so far was exclusively in those two styles. The sashikoist known as harinoto, who lives in Tochigi prefecture (which is not Tohoku) and whose work I also discovered in galerie arbre, however, was doing something quite original with kogin. Harinoto had made a series of coasters representing the six prefectures in Tohoku, stitched with a kogin-style motif emblematic of each prefecture. These were apples for Aomori, iron tea-pots for Iwate, woven straw horses for Akita, wooden kokeshi dolls for Miyagi, cherries for Yamagata, and toy red cows for Fukushima. Naturally I bought a kokeshi doll coaster as a souvenir of my visit to Miyagi.  

​​New years greetings and best wishes for happy stitching in 2018!
 
I love the beginning of a new year, when anything still seems possible. This year I am especially excited to be starting the year with my Watts Sashiko website. I’d dreamed of making this happen for a long time and was thrilled last year to finally get started. There are still many refinements to make and projects to get started, but little by little I’m moving forward. Please sign up for the newsletter if you’d like to get monthly updates of my progress.
 
I’m thrilled to be starting on the next phase of my vision – the subscription kits. Kits were very important to me when I first started sashiko, as I had no one to consult or teach me (in pre-internet days), but finding and choosing them was always a random process, and I was often confused by the instructions. That experience led me to the idea of offering subscription sets. If I can deliver a short series of kits in a particular style, with instructions translated by me, and subscribers can share that experience with each other, then overall it should add up to a fun and informative experience of learning about sashiko.

So for my first offering I have three special order Hitomezashi (‘one stitch’) kits from Olympus, which you won’t find available anywhere else on the internet. Hitomezashi is typical of Shonai sashiko one of the three major sashiko styles. ​The deadline for ordering this series is January 15th.

She became aware of the beauty of sashiko about twenty years ago, and although not very skilful at sewing or craftwork herself, bought some kits to try it. A turning point came, however, in 2015 when she became ill and couldn’t work as a translator for six months. While resting at home she began doing sashiko again and became completely absorbed by it, even starting to make her own pieces instead of using kits. “It was so soothing, and satisfying. I found that even a clumsy sewer like myself could still make things easily and enjoy it,” she recalls. 

Alison turned the experience of being ill into an opportunity to change her life. She began pursuing her passion for sashiko when she recovered, by joining a sashiko group in the town, and starting up a website and blog. This month she opened an online shop on her website, which is selling sashiko kits sourced from a Nagoya-based craft company. The kits contain English instructions she translated herself.  
“Sashiko is growing in popularity as it becomes more and more widely known overseas,” says Alison who senses a need for more literature in English, as there is very little available. 

“I think it’s because sashiko is beautiful and easy to do. It’s a craft that anybody can enjoy. You don’t need to be an expert sewer,” she says. 
​
Alison Watts. Born in South Australia, October 1963. A literary translator by trade, she has translated Durian Sukegawa’s novel An (English title: Sweet Bean Paste). She also produces poetry and music concerts, and in February produced a concert in Tokai-mura to mark the sixth anniversary of the 2011 disasters. The concert featured Durian Sukegawa’s performance of “A New Road to the Far North,” the record of a journey he undertook six years ago by bicycle, travelling in the footsteps of poet Matsuo Basho and measuring radiation along the way in disaster-ravaged areas.  ​

As with many sashiko books it follows a standard format of introducing a number of sample pieces (in this case twenty), then providing samplers of the stitches, basic instructions on how to do sashiko (with explanations about cloth, thread, equipment, drafting, stitching and making two easy pieces), and instructions for making up each individual item. The stitches are introduced in four categories; straight line patterns such as tobi asanoha (scattered hemp leaf), curved line patterns such as fundo tsunagi (linked weights), hitomezashi such as kaki no hana (persimmon flower), and Shonai sashiko such as ganzezashi (sea urchin stitch).  ​

Where has the time gone? While sashiko is never far from my mind, in this busy modern life it takes some planning to get me sitting in front of the computer long enough to actually write about it.
One tidbit of sashiko related news I wanted to tell you about was the announcement of the uniform for the Japanese soccer team in next year’s World Cup… featuring sashiko in the design. Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary since Japan first qualified to compete in the World Cup, so the concept is that sashiko will be the thread that connects up history. Isn’t that a nice idea!
Speaking of sashiko connecting people, you may remember I previously wrote about visiting a tiny backstreet bar in Tokyo where the owner showed me hanafukin made by her 94-year-old mother-in-law (turns out it was mother-in-law, not mother). Well, the other day when I paid another visit I had a wonderful surprise; apparently the mother-in-law was so thrilled to hear about my visit, she sent me a little gift, two hanafukin that she had made. I was moved to tears, as never in my life did I expect to receive a hanafukin from my own mother, let alone anyone else’s! Another lovely surprise was that she had left me some other hanafukin to look at, one of which happened to be exactly the same pattern as the piece I was carrying around with me to work on, and my topic for today kaki no hana (persimmon flower). ​

This stitch is one kind of hitomezashi (one stitch sashiko), which you may recall I wrote before was traditionally often used for practical purposes, such as clothing or reinforcing material, because of the strength that the dense stitching imparts. Hitomezashi is typical of Shonai sashiko, one of the three major styles of sashiko. The Shonai region is Yamagata prefecture in northern Japan, a mountainous region, cold in winter, that faces the Japan Sea. The story goes that ships carried out regional products such as safflower and rice, and made the return journey with their holds filled with cotton and old clothing from the warmer regions they visited where cotton grew. Women would get busy stitching the cloth to make jackets, footwear and other useful items.  
Compared to moyozashi (pattern stitches), I find hitomezashi easy in the sense that you don’t have to think about the length of your stitches or making them fit them the pattern, because each stitch is simply one side of a square in the grid. The only tricky thing is that you have to get the order of stitching right, if you don’t the pattern won’t appear. Transferring the pattern is simple too; just draw or trace a grid onto the fabric and off you go. The recommended size of the squares on the grid is 5mm, but they can be up to a centimeter. Any longer and the stitching will stick up or catch. Here’s some examples of kaki no hana stitching I found in my collection of sashiko books that may inspire you!  ​​
(*Amazon Japan affiliate links included)

Above two images from Tohoku no Sashiko (Sashiko from the Tohoku region), Nihon Vogue-sha, 2016

Kawaii Hari Shigoto: Sashiko no Tezukurikomono (Charming Needlework: Small Handmade Sashiko Items), Boutique-sha, 2017 

Sashiko no Teshigoto (Sashikoto Handiwork), Nihon Bungeisha, 2017

These were the result of a joint project we’ve been working on all year, stitching squares fifteen by fifteen centimetres in length with whatever patterns we liked. When the time was up we gathered up all the squares and put them together to see what size hanging was possible. It turned out we had enough for two. Sensei gave no stipulations whatsoever as to what patterns we should stitch, but the overall balance seemed to be just right, and a lovely sampler of all the different styles of stitches; the densely stitched hitomezashi (single stitch), kyokusen moyozashi (curved line patterns), chokusen moyozashi (straight line patterns) and jiyuzashi (free stitching). I could look at these all day in wonder and never tire. What a gorgeous illustration of the beauty of sashiko! ​

 I am indebted to Hiroko Kondo’s book Akita ni tsutawaru oiwai no hari shigoto: Yomeiri dogu no hanafukin (Traditional congratulatory needlework in Akita: Hanafukin, a bride’s trousseau), Kurashi no techosha, 2013 - Amazon Japan affiliate link here. It is a wonderful reference and the patterns in this book are stunning, I will introduce it in more detail at a later date.  ​

As is obvious from the title the book features fukin stitched on cloth squares of 33cm and 34cm. Sashiko books commonly feature fukin, and I have to admit for a long time I wondered what on earth they were. That’s a topic I’d like to explore in more detail in another post soon, but for now let’s say that fukin are basically square cloths that serve decorative and practical purposes. This book shows fifteen fukin stitched with traditional sashiko patterns and fifteen stitched with Northern European motifs.

What sets my heart beating when I leaf through the pages is the glorious use of colour; sky blue and lemon yellow on white, pink on olive, grey on red, yellow on green, etcetera etcetera, plus the obligatory white on blue. Though I do love the traditional blue and white, I find the use of colour in contemporary sashiko really exciting. It allows so much potential for artistic expression, and thinking about possible colour combinations of pieces is one of the most enjoyable aspects of sashiko for me.

The other thing I find striking about this book is how well these Northern European motifs adapt to sashiko, whether in freestyle form, such as the cloths featuring food and vegetable designs, or as repeated patterns like the trees or butterflies. It’s another marvellous illustration of the adaptability and infinite potential of sashiko.

The contents of the book include a one-page photograph of each fukin, basic instructions for sashiko, instructions for reproducing and stitching the traditional patterns, and diagrams for reproducing the Northern European motifs. Of the traditional patterns, the hanazashi (flower) particularly caught my eye with its colourful combination of orange, yellow, pink and red threads that very aptly suggest a bright patch of flowers, and makes a nice contrast with the Northern European flower motif of three different wildflowers. Once you start thinking of ordinary everyday things around you in terms of patterns and colours, there’s no end of inspiration for sashiko! ​