My new favorite red & white quilt….”Composition II” by Shoko Sakai, Japan

 

I “found” this red and white beauty at this years 16th European Patchwork Meeting 2010  in the Val d’Argent, Alsace (Region in France). It was part of the the “Nihon Vogue and JHIA (Japan Handicraft Instructor’s Association)  Exhibition in Liépvre at the Espace Exposition. For all Alsace Patchwork Meeting “pilgrims” that was Exhibition Site No. 20.

The quilt is 2 x 2 meters big and is pieced with “thousands” of little red and white squares. Shoko Sakai won a very well deserved gold prize in the traditional quilt category at the “10th Quilt Nihon Exhibition”, Tokyo. 

It reminded me of my “Little Elements of Fire” quilts, especially the" “all white” part. And as the red silk patches in  my quilt “deteriorate”  with every further washing I was thinking of making myself another version of my quilt anyway.  So this quilt definitely is a very welcome inspiration….

You will find some more pictures  in my flickr file.

I have to mention how Shoko Sakai quilted this. As you can (hopefully) see from the picture above she used red quilting and/or embroidery thread for the red blocks and white thread for the white ones. She quilted every big or small square block individually with sometimes very different patterns. I am not sure that everything is hand quilted but most of  it definitely is. It is perfectly quilted so there could be machine quilting on some of the blocks, i really could not tell.

Luckily (certainly no touching allowed) the quilt was not hanging plan on the wall therefore I was able to get a glimpse at the (all white) back of the quilt with some of the red quilting showing.