Tokyo Post 14 April

 Today was quilt shop day.  

First up was Mother's Dream quilt shop, home of well known Japanese author and quilter Reiko Kato (you have probably seen her Sunbonnet Sue variations in magazines). The shop is in the right hand half of the building.

It's not that big inside but stuffed with many samples of her work and creations from her books. There are quite a few kits packaged up for sale, selection packs of fabric for applique, some fabric on bolts, and a selection of hardware and quilting tools.  I was helped by two friendly staff who didn't volunteer any English. One of them may have been Reiko Kato but I don't know, she was definitely in charge but also very nice.  I quite enjoyed looking around and picked up some kits to make small applique bags and some packs of fabric for applique.

Then it was over to QuiltParty, which is Yoko Saito's shop.  This was a much bigger affair, surprisingly big for Tokyo, bigger than many UK quilt shops including my local one.  

There was a copious amount of fabric on bolts, including both Japanese and American fabrics. Also large quantities of fat quarters. There were some packets of precut fabrics. Not so many kits here, although they had kitted up what looked like the fabric only to go with some of the projects from her most recent book.  Quite a wide selection of hardware, bag handles, quilting tools, some stabilisers, and more speciality projects such as heavy papery drawstrings, homespun woven webbing straps, some beads and embroidery threads for embellishment, and of course a lot of her books.  Again, I think the staff mainly spoke only Japanese but they were quite helpful. And the fabric seemed so cheap compared to the UK! I was especially after the textured homespun wovens that you see so much of in Japanese books but are quite scarce in the UK.  Their FQs were only 220 yen each which I think is only around £1.40 - you can't get a cheap print fabric FQ for that in the UK.  So I piled up on various colours of the textured homespun, and also picked up a couple of half meters plus some packets of precuts. They had the wooden handles I see in the Japanese books, much more reasonably than at Yuzawaya, so I got some of those. I also got some of the webbing and drawstring.

It's hard to buy for future projects without any specific details, but hopefully I've covered the bases to try out some more of the projects in my existing Japanese quilt book collection.

I had some time before meeting a friend for supper, so I headed over to Harajuku and Takeshita Street. I remember when we briefly visited here in 2016 on a guided tour, the guide said that the balance was tipping away from the trendy young Japanese visitor in favour of tourists. Well the balance has definitely gone all the way now, it was a mob scene of tourists thronging the length of the street and almost all the shops now are food shops, sweet shops or souvenir shops.  Although I couldn't resist buying a small version of the multicoloured candy floss that you can see being made in the picture, the larger ones were as big as umbrellas.

I did a trial repack tonight and put all the heavy fabric in the suitcase, and pulled out the lighter clothes to put in the folding bags. I get the train to college on Sunday thankfully so I won't have to fight the rush hour.  I haven't actually been on one of the trains where they squash you in, but a few times I've been in a pretty tight squeeze when I've been travelling early in the morning rush.  Still better than commuting in London: everyone is wearing a mask, everyone is immaculate, they are all silent, and all trying to be very considerate about any bag or pack they are carrying.