Customer Reviews

Japanese Country Quilting: Sashiko Patterns and Projects for Beginners

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Traditional Japanese country clothes were quilted for warmth. The quilting patterns on the natural indigo dyed hemp or cotton are called sashiko and often take the form of repeating, geometric patterns.

Karen Matsunaga gives a nice background into the daily life of her Japanese family, and also the history of some of the traditional patterns.

The book has five complete projects, plus sashiko stitching pattern. The patterns are printed on grids, with helpful directional lines to show the direction in which the stitching should take place. Recommended for anyone starting out in sashiko quilting

I found this book to be a useful introduction to sashiko. It begins with a history of the craft and shows examples of how sashiko has been used in the past. It goes on to introduce a good variety of stitches, with reasonably easy-to-follow directions and diagrams, and finishes up with some sample projects. The book doesn't get five stars, though, because for a book that's supposed to be for beginners, it was rather a dry read, didn't have enough step-by-step illustrations to really show how things were supposed to come together, and could've used more interior color photos to show readers more examples of finished sashiko. So, it's a good, useful book, and I do recommend it, but I expect I'll wind up using it more for a stitch reference than an idea source.

I ordered this book because I bought a piece of fabric pre-printed with a sashiko design. I needed some basics to get me started. This book gave me a very interesting history of how sashiko got started in Japan and how to get started on my project. The rest of the book included numerous designs. (I also found some additional tips at a few websites.)

I happened to meet two women who had done several sashiko projects on a jacket, purse, dish towels and on quilts. That gave me ideas of how and where sashiko designs can be used. So I may tackle some of the designs from the book in some future projects.

Just started with the new Sashiko machine, and this is a great help! Thanks for all the wonderful tips.

I have recently gotten interested in sashiko and have finished two projects. This book offered many variations of sashiko patterns with hints on stitching directions and resizing them to fit your space. The examples of finished projects in the book offered many ideas for further use in projects of my own. Sashiko offers a unique surface embellishment and a wonderful background for applique. Sashiko is an easy type of stitching to learn offering quick visible results. I'm hooked.

This book works fine as an intro to sashiko history, though it's not as useful as other books for detailed how-to images of the stitching. The projects are cute but the line drawings with them are sometimes hard to understand for the beginner sewer. Fascinating look at the cultural context of sashiko though, and gives you a library of patterns to use and expand on in your own projects.