I am back tonight from my whirlwind visit to the Tokyo Quilt Festival!….just arrived home from the airport a few hours ago.
Watch for my Creative Nudge newsletter on Weds morning. I have photos of some absolutely breathtaking quilts, plus we are going to have a surprise video in a week or so.
My friends commented on how many other Asian quilters came to the show this time – not just Japanese quilters but also Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino, and Thai! We noticed there are a lot of Chinese students coming to work in Tokyo as well….working in restaurants. Tokyo is a melting pot, like most big cities, and the pot is being stirred!
Even though it was a very fast trip, I was busy with meetings the whole time, with old and new friends. As you may know, I moved to Hong Kong in 1982, and later after I moved to NYC to work on 7th Ave, I traveled to 10 Asian countries as an import designer. So whenever I get the chance to travel to Asia it feels like going home…on top of the fact that Sophie is from China!
When I first went to Japan in 1983, it was a man’s world. Some of my Japanese women friends say that it is still that way for them, which is frustrating in the quilting world. With the Yokohama quilt show having come to an end, more changes are coming…led by the ladies of the Japanese quilting world…and I can’t wait to see what they will do next!
Give me a day or two to catch my breath, and I’ll start posting some photos on my Flickr pages. I hand-carried 10 copies each of the 2 show books, and those will go online Monday. If you want first crack at them, send an email to Customer Service and they’ll send you a link once they are online.
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