waste not, want not

another book to add to the vast collection

Mottainai: The Fabric of Life

Lessons in Frugality from Traditional Japan

an exhibition catalogue from the Portland Japanese Garden featuring works from the collections of  Kei Kawasaki of Gallery Kei in Kyoto an Stephen Szczepanek of Sri in Brooklyn

written in both Japanese and English.

Asa is the general Japanese term for baste fibre, hemp is taima

shown on a piece of my handspun hemp, handwoven, indigo/shibori cloth

most of us are now familiar with sashiko, once used as a mending stitch to hold together and strengthen rags it has taken on a more decorative use.

The fabric is my boro/indigo/sashiko quilt, still a work in progress  

the last time I was in Japan I was given a bundle of fibre that looked like very fine papery wood and encouraged to go home and “weave something”. Nobody seemed to know what the fibre was.

I wove it on a cotton warp, soaking wet and it was not easy. I now think it might have been elm or ohyo.

All 60 pages have beautiful photographs and brief descriptions. For those of you outside the U.S. the postage was more than the cover price of the book.

Mottainai can be translated as “waste nothing”.

 

 

 

 

About these ads