New Book
October 16, 2023
I was on duty at the Embroiderers Guild Stand at this years State Quilt show this week and had a wonderful time catching up with old friends, past students and other people. I had to check out all the stalls and at Be Be Bold, who specialise in Japanese materials (they were my importers for materials when I was teaching), Jane said "I have a new book". So I bought it.
Nothing I don't already know as far as the contents is concerned but it is a lovely book and I do like the use of Counted Sashiko as the title. Western stitchers understand this far better than Kogin.
She has 200 Hishizashi patterns included in the book. You can find 700 Hishizashi patterns that you can download for free here on this blog, so I don't need those but the names of the patterns are all there. I searched forever for these and only found confusing results. The history section is also good but the Kogin from the west coast isn't included. (It was only used for making straps to remove wood from the forest.) The other useful section was the traditional and substitute western fabrics that can be used. I ended up having to import my threads and the fabric by the bolt when I started stitching Kogin as nothing was available here.
The book has lots of basic beginner projects for those who want to try this technique but I think I will make this bag for my grand daughters.
I made a similar shaped bag that I taught as an advanced Kogin class some years ago but it was for teaching techniques and I think the girls would like the one from the book better. (My bag was a sampler of all the Hishi Zashi patterns.)