Trip to Tokyo

I got to travel to Tokyo last week with my friend Merikay Waldvogel. SHE made the trip, but sent a lot of photos - a vicarious thrill for a quilter home in snowy Kansas.

Merikay has enjoyed judging the Tokyo Great International Quilt Festival for several years. Her judge’s choice for this year's show is I Love Feedsacks #1.

It's a sentimental choice for a judge from Tennessee - finding feedsacks in a Japanese quilter's work.

Merikay sent a lot of photos - here are a few detail shots I really like.

Merikay treated herself to a manicure before she left. She may have enjoyed that as much as the trip!

I Needed This Today

Just finished piecing this today - I like it! I needed this today!!!!

1960

This is a good time to tidy - clean offices, files - to discard, pass on  ... My friend Cindy sent some photos so I thought I'd share them with you. She sent them because I love quilts - and she has no idea where they came from. Somewhere in Kansas, likely. Oh how I love their aprons, their expressions ...

Luckily, this photo had some information written on the back in pencil:

1960
Goldie Hutton
Mrs Graden
Inly (?) Pennell
Myrtle Hoffs
Ruth Rathjan
Faye Bishop
Winfred Secrest
Mrs Fifnogle
Nora Witt

Notice the plentiful use of white backgrounds, something we all strove to get away from for years. And now that is back, with the look of modern quilting.

My friend Karla is deconstructing a 1980s quilt she made for her daughter's birth. It features bright cross-stitch blocks and she plans to replace the fading '80s sashing fabric with something modern to celebrate the birth of her first grandchild. We admired the blocks yesterday and brainstormed about the bright colors she could use to sash them together now. But she shook her head and said her daughter would like white ... WHITE!!!