It’s Japanese quilt season!

Yokohama World Quilt Festival

Made by the *Hayashi Bōti University* student collaboration

True confession: These are not my favorites. The day after the show, I posted my absolute favorites over on my blog, Only in Japan. Here’s the link! (And if you don’t already subscribe, hey, you should! There’s a place to do that at the top of the home page.)

Japan’s best international quilt show happens in Yokohama every November, and it absolutely boggles how every year it manages to become spectacular in new ways! This year, the number of quilts featuring multiple textile techniques—dyeing, applique, embroidery, beading & more—really exploded! It was so hard to edit down to only a few of my favorites, but I’ll try to show you a range of fabulousness that will make you say WOW, WOW, WOW.

First of all (this is the Japanagram, after all!)…

Quilts with Japanese Themes

This one is traditionally pieced from lovely old indigo prints

This one contrasts the worn Japanese boro feeling of traditional cotton kimono fabrics with precise piecing and quilting

Japanese and Western motifs compare and contrast in this multimedia study in traditional Japanese red and white

*Artists: Patchwork Quilt Class Pokoapoko*

In this one, the traditional Japanese farmer cottons are layered in a lively pattern that evokes Japanese boro in a different way

This one evokes sitting on blue tarps under the falling cherry blossoms for a hanami picnic…

Summer fireworks

Winner of the Yokohama Mayor’s Award *Artist: Minako Hirota*

And this delightful homage to Japanese student comfort food is also an amazing example of the technique of using net to hold compositions of other materials in place.

Traditionally pieced quilts

These are masterpieces of choosing the perfect fabric swatch for each square