Japanese Block Quilt

  My Japanese Quilt Block top is finished. It has been so much fun choosing blocks from 

Susan Briscoe's book "125 Japanese Quilt Blocks". All the applique blocks and the 

repeated pieced block came from the book.

I have used old kimono fabrics  It all started with a roll of kimono fabric that I picked 

up in the Flea Market in Japan several years ago. This roll had never been made into a 

kimono but had been around for a while. This is how you buy fabric for a new kimono -

 in a 13" - 15" wide roll of about 13 metres. All through the project I wondered if I was 

going to have enough and look plenty left over - thank goodness.

But the other fabrics were all from scrap bags or smaller pieces that I had been 

given or collected over the years. And they too kept running out - what a fun challenge this 

quilt has been. I do think that sometimes having to make decisions like this when fabrics 

run out often makes the quilt more interesting - if a little stressful at times.

 

This is the fabric that I started with for making the blocks and if you look closely you can 

see that it didn't make enough blocks.

So this was added to surround the central block and a few random pieces were 

added to the border units..

Then of course that ran out too. So this was added to make the border units. 

Oh what fun, but I am really happy with how it turned out. It has been so good to get into 

these fabrics that I have been putting away for years to make something special and now

I think I have done it.

Now it is on the pin basting and quilting - I think the quilting will be a combination of machine 

and hand. Machine quilting in the ditch of the blocks and them hand quilting were it really shows. 

I am hoping it is going to be easy to hand quilt, but I suspect it may not be the best - it is a pretty tight weave, which made it great to machine piece with and hand applique onto it was fine, but hand quilting - we will see.