Tokyo Quilt Festival 2016 – Part 1
Hello beautiful people 🙂
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen a few of these pictures before, but I wanted to share some of my favorites from the Tokyo Quilt Festival. We were able to time our trip to Thailand just right so that we could spend a day in Tokyo on our return journey just to attend the festival.
Since there were so many absolutely fabulous quilts, I’ve broken the pictures into two posts. I have a lot to share with you!
This was my first time in Tokyo so I was happy when my husband and I were easily able to navigate a couple of trains to the festival with no problems.
We couldn’t help but giggle about how much we stuck out. I’m not particularly tall by American standards, but in Japan, I feel like a giant! I took this picture at eye level while we were waiting to be let in. Our height gave us the advantage of seeing the quilts a little more clearly than our neighbors. ha 🙂
I had to snap a picture right as the chaos was beginning – look at all those quilts!
As expected, most of the signs with the quilt and artist names were written in Japanese, so I’m going to have a difficult time sharing all their details. In an effort to give these talented artists as much credit as possible, I took a picture of each photographed quilt’s sign and have posted it on my Flickr account. If you’re talented enough to read kanji (jealous – I’m learning!), please visit my album HERE to read all the details about these works of art.
I have to start with one of my favorites! The neat part about not being able to read the signs of modern quilts is that I can make my own interpretation of what the quilt is representing. For instance, I see jellyfish here, but the title actually translates to something like “A Fantasy of Water and Light.” I really like the mix of modern design and the traditional log cabins in the background.
These colors here are magnificent! I’m always drawn to the bright and cheerful quilts.
This one too! My friend tells me that this title translates to “Fireworks” which seems fitting! The colors also drew me in here as well. The straight lines quilting from the center of the explosion really added a neat element. If I remember correctly, it was hand quilted.
There were several quilts with a 3D element that I found intriguing.
This snail quilt was the winner in the junior category . How fun!
I really loved this log cabin bag – maybe I have a new love for traditional elements used in modern ways?
Possibly, I’m just loving log cabins right now! How cool is this modern take on the log cabin, called “Log Cabin 1.”
I was drawn into the block that looked like a face. That’s some impressive matchstick quilting too.
This “Tumbling Blocks” quilt intrigued me, both for the design and construction. The blocks looked pieced together but were appliquéd to the background as one big piece.
Nothing says bright and fun like yellow!
I was so impressed by the construction on this quilt – isn’t it cool?!
Look at that brilliant fussy cutting. Swoon!
More log cabin fun – a sweet little “House of Sweets.”
Hopefully you were able to “ooo and aww” like me . I admit that I had expected to be impressed but the Tokyo Quilt Festival really blew me out of the water. The quilts were amazingly designed and constructed and so full of impressive artistry. Part 2 coming soon!