Quilt exhibit

Tetsu took me to a local quilt exhibition in the next town over and though he isn't very interested in looking at quilts, we spent about half an hour looking at the lovely things.

Some beautiful quilts but what is always most amazing to me is that Japanese quilters do this all by hand. There is not a machine stitch anywhere! The quilting is exquisite. The tiny pieces are mind boggling. The fleeting thought that I really should do more HAND work enters my brain because I have to admit that heirlooms result.

Often when I am teaching quilting, my friends will shun the sewing machine saying that theirs in the back of their closets that hasn't been used in 30 years (bought by their mother as a wedding present or something). They don't WANT to use a sewing machine on their quilt. They want to HAND piece and HAND quilt. Which is fine! Except many of the people who want to do all this HAND work get caught up in other things in life and those HAND pieces never get done.

Or they never get started...

"Oh, I wish I could make something like that... But it would take me a lifetime. I can't even START something so wonderful..."

and so the whatever stays in the imagination.

And some friends who say they DON'T want to do machine work WILL allow me to machine sew a border or a binding for them.... but THEY don't want to touch the machine. If you see a quilt by a Japanese artist you can be pretty sure that it is a 100% HAND made!

Anyway..... A few quilts chosen by me to show because of the use of oriental fabrics, beautiful quilting (that WHITE quilt has never had a cat near it!) and tiny piecing.