Quilting is the technique of stitching layers of cloth together to form a thicker, sturdier material. It originated as a way to repair and reuse worn-out fabric, sometimes with layers of padding added for warmth. But over centuries, appreciation for the inherent beauty of quilted textiles has elevated them to an art form.
Quilts Japan: The 16th Quilt Nihon, a new exhibition at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, showcases quilt art at its most refined.
Quilting is practiced internationally and plays a prominent role in the textile arts of Asia, Europe, and America. Many countries have distinctive quilting traditions with colors and designs drawn from indigenous plants, religious symbols, and architecture. Japan and North America have each evolved distinctive styles of quilting. North American quilts are usually large rectangular bed covers. Some are built from patchwork squares that together form a repeating pattern or a collection of related images. Others have an overall symmetrical design with geometric or botanical motifs radiating outward from the center.
In Japan, both garments and bedding are quilted with the sashiko technique: closely-spaced lines of stitching used like a drawing tool to create patterns or pictures. Fabrics dyed dark blue with indigo are ubiquitous. In both countries, some artists honor the tradition of repurposing used cloth, from vintage cottons to silk kimonos. Others choose fabrics and colors solely to create an image. Over the past century, quilt traditions have crossed oceans; all of these techniques can be found in Quilts Japan.
The Quilt Nihon is a renowned international competition held biannually in Japan. A jury of textile artists and designers awards prizes, and a curated exhibition of the winners tours internationally. The 2019 competition drew 347 finalists from ten countries; 36 are on display in La Conner, the last stop on the tour. Artists enter their quilts in one of three categories: Traditional, Contemporary, or Miniature.
Traditional quilts are inspired by or based on historical designs. The influence of American Amish and Quaker quilts is strong in this category, even among Asian artists. For her quilt “Hand to Hand, Make a Circle,” Toyoko Nakajima has created an ornate interpretation of the Bethlehem Star: an eight-pointed medallion blanketed with patchwork flowers. The pieces of colored fabric are so small the flowers look like they were painted. The ferns that frame the star are drawn with fine lines of tiny stitches sewn by hand.
Kazue Murayama’s “Wind in Baltimore” is based on a traditional American design called the Baltimore Album: a grid of patchwork squares with different but complementary images. Flowers and plants are the theme of this quilt. Next to it is “The Wind in Baltimore II,” similiar in design but about one twentieth the size. Quilts in the Miniature category cannot just be small in size; the design and techniques such as piecing and stitching must also be reduced in scale. Maruyama’s full-size quilt is a tour de force, but seeing the two quilts side-by-side makes clear the skill required to work in miniature.
Quilts in the Contemporary category “demonstrate originality and independent ideas.” These are the most interesting works in the show, encompassing a wide range of designs, from geometric and abstract to representational and narrative. Artists in this category have made inventive use of the basic quilting techniques of piecing and stitching. Reiko Saito’s “Sky in the Dawn” is a free-form patchwork of horizontal strips of fabric whose colors graduate from dark indigo blue at the bottom to pale sunshine yellow at the top, held together with dozens of different patterns of sashiko stitching.
“My Dear Ocean” by So Young Chung is an almost photographic image of a breaching whale. The thousands of scraps of fabric held by rows of meandering yet tightly-spaced stitches render the ocean’s colors and textures more like a tapestry than a quilt. Hisako Yamamura created “La La La – Scribbles by 5-Year Old Itsuki,” a whimsical quilt of bright-colored random-sized patches. Her grandson’s drawings and letters are reproduced in lines of contrasting stitching.
Many people quilt as a hobby or pastime. Machine-quilted products from bedspreads to potholders are widely available in stores and online. True artists’ quilts are distinguished by their complex and beautiful designs, their exceptional use of color, their skilled handwork, and their use of tradition in innovative new works. All of these qualities are on view in Quilts Japan: the 16th Quilt Nihon. It’s well worth a trip to La Conner.
‘Quilts Japan: the 16th Quilt Nihon’ at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, WA through October 13. Information at 360-466-4288 or qfamuseum.org.
