Enjoying Sashiko at home

Some years ago I made a series of Sashiko samples as part of course I was following at the time. I bagged each piece out (by that I mean I put the sashiko piece right sides together with a plain backing, stitched all the way round on the sewing machine, turned it through, then hand-stitched the gap). I added loops and buttons, so that the three pieces could work as a wall-hanging.

However, earlier this year, a birthday gift from a friend set me off again with Sashiko. The present was a set of five blue fabric squares, produced by the Olympus Thread Manufacturing Company which had traditional Sashiko stitch patterns on them. Although the kit showed five different thread colours, I chose to stitch with white thread on each square. I thoroughly enjoyed my stitching.

Sashiko kit produced by Olympus Thread Manufacturing Company Limited

Next, because I am a quilter, I decided to make each square into a mini-quilt so they could act as drinks mats. I used a cotton wadding and added a navy blue, fold and white Japanese-style fan motif fabric for the backing. I stitched the three layers together one-eighth of an inch from the edge, then added a narrow binding from a blue cotton fabric with a slight texture print, which I stitched on by machine at the front and finished by hand at the back.

At this point I remembered my previous sashiko pieces and thought that I might re-purpose them for a practical use. So I layered up and bound the larger of the three pieces with wadding, added a new backing, then joined the two smaller pieces and bound them too. These now serve as very useful place-mats for TV dinners for two!

Sashiko traditionally uses a soft cotton thread but I decided to use what I had in hand, which was a reel of white coton a broder.

I did have a sashiko needle in my studio, also produced by Olympus so I used this for the task, which definitely made the stitching easy and comfortable.