One of the colors we love best is Indigo Blue. This beautiful color appeals to almost everyone, and is based on a fermented plant-based dye. The ancient natural dye was used to make the original denim cloth for blue jeans. One of the places we think of when we say Indigo Quilts…is Japan.
This year there seemed to be less of these traditional pieced Indigo quilts in the Tokyo Quilt Festival. In past years we’ve seen these quilts made from recycled and vintage Indigo yarn-dyes, shibori (tie-dyes), stencil prints and yukata remnants. Quilters will go to temple flea markets and buy up these vintage indigo pieces. Perhaps now most of these fabrics are tucked away in quilters’ stashes?
Fortunately we have contemporary fabric manufacturers who reproduce these fabrics so we can collect and sew with a new generation of Indigo fabrics. They are factory-printed instead of dyed with fermented Indigo plants, but they are colorfast and beautiful! We are loving the new Cotton/Linen Indigo yarn-dyes from Kaufman, and the Sashiko Sampler Panels in the Nuno collection from Moda.
Many customers are surprised to find out that we carry a full range of Sashiko Threads, Needles and Thimbles. After years of traveling to Tokyo, collecting Indigo Boro quilts and vintage Sashiko samplers, I decided we should support a new wave of Sashiko stitching.
The collage image above features a detail of an Indigo quilt from the Tokyo show, surrounded by Japanese-inspired Indigo fabrics in stock now. This includes the new Cotton/Linen Nuno Sashiko Sampler Panels. Enjoy!
(The quilter’s name is shown in the Japanese characters from the artist statement.)
sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul
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eQuilter Classroom & Travel Calendar:
Mar 14-17 – Carter Center in Atlanta
Mar 28-30 – ‘Love Your Mother’ exhibit at Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago
Apr 1 – Quilting Arts TV, Cleveland
Apr 12-14 – Jean Wells for FRCQ workshop – in eQuilter Classroom
Apr 23-29 – Nantes France (lecture Fri 4/26)
June 27-30 – Jane Tenorio-Coscarelli workshop – eQuilter Classroom
July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy
Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing Workshops @ eQuilter – REGISTRATION
NOW OPEN
