Boro Boro and Chiku Chiku

Before I get to my topic of the week, I have to take a moment to emote over the wealth of talent and information exhibited in the readers of my blog. A few weeks ago I included requests from ladies who had written to me and the response to both was wonderful.

Yvonne found a retreat center, and she thanks you for all the suggestions.

The response to Cara’s plea for making a quilt from wrestling singlets was overwhelming. There were five offers to help from quilters experienced in working with difficult fabrics, and one of them actually lives near Cara in Carson City, Nevada! I’m not sure how it will all come out, but I’ve asked her to share the story 😊. What a wonderful, sharing group you are!

And now for this week’s post:

This past week Lori, Susan and I went on an adventure to the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts.

Their current exhibit is spectacular! It’s called Chiku-Chiku and contains the work of Japanese fiber artist Akiko Ike. Her story is fascinating:

Ike further explains Chiku Chiku:

She not only uses a thick cotton thread, but she uses it doubled. This is a close up of two pieces of fabric being overlapped and patched together with her chiku chiku stitches:

When I was in Japan I learned about shibori dyeing, and even did a bit of it (click here for that post). We also learned a lot about indigo dyeing (that post can be found here). This piece, made from a variety of indigo shibori fabrics, also contains bright red patches stitched on in the boro style.

So what is Boro? You probably won’t be surprised that I have a post about my own personal adventure mending with a Boro type technique (click here to read all about it). While on my trip to Japan I purchased a small scrap of authentic boro that was made into a pin, which I wore while at the museum ~ and snuck into this photo:

Ike stitches on garments as well as larger pieces of fabric.

She creates small pieces too. We were delighted by these squares attached to a cord that were hung and laid all over the gallery.

with the extras piled in a corner ~ WOW!

The museum staff did an amazing job of displaying all of her wonderful work. The huge fish in her Koinobori collection were surrounded by her squares.

I had not heard of Koinobori before. Have you?

They are beautiful!

Some of her work was subtle:

Other pieces were colorful and geometric:

and all were filled with her wonderful stitching, even the diapers (yes – diapers) which were strung together and hanging from the ceiling:

Many or her pieces had patches sewn on the top, but some had the patches behind.

Ike had pieces made from ombre type fabrics.

We were very intrigued by this similar work that was stitched on a cheesecloth-like fabric.

It was verrrrry sheer and we wondered what it would have been used for. After chatting we surmised that perhaps panels like this would have been hung as room dividers in Japan. Any thoughts?

I think one of the most interesting aspects of her work was the way she changed her thread color to make the background look as if it had changed color too! Just look at the orange area in the crane piece below. The orange looks like it changes, but does it???

Another term I learned was:

And here’s an example:

The density of stitches on the next hanging blew me away:

As did the entire exhibit. Ike will be teaching a class at the museum and her quilts will be on display through August 27th. I highly recommend a visit!

The museum will also be hosting a virtual auction August 3-7. Click here to visit their website for information on all the happenings there.

The gift shop is filled with wonderful items too. In fact, I was blessed to be able to purchase the last of Ike’s hand made chiku chiku scissors cases, with the scissors.

I treasure it.