Kyoto Quilt Festival 2025 – Prologue

Having recently returned from the Kyoto Quilt Festival, I wanted to share some of this experience with you.  But also I’d like to share the context of this event.

During the early 1980s when I lived in Hong Kong working as a fashion designer, I often went to Osaka to source textiles. I did not have a chance for sightseeing, and mostly experienced a male-centered industry in smoke-filled offices.

Starting in 2008, I started to travel to Japan again, to attend the Tokyo Quilt Festival. Honestly, it became an obsession, and I saved up my Star Alliance points all year to get a ticket to Tokyo. Eventually there was a direct flight from Denver to Tokyo!  I would fly into Narita, and take the Limousine Bus directly to the Tokyo Dome Hotel. In the morning I would wake up and look out the window, either looking down at the entrance to the Tokyo Dome (a baseball stadium), or on the other side…..looking across the vast expanse of the city.

Over those years I made many friends, and sought out meetings with the most talented quilters. In those early years the quilts were ALL handmade, with hand-applique and hand-stitched embroidery and sashiko stitching. What a delight it was to see these quilts eventually come to Houston and pick up big cash prizes.

However, over time I became aware that there was a very rigid system of quilt education. This is why so many quilts looked the same. It was because students were required to study with a certified teacher, and the teachers required them to copy their technique. Over time this has softened into a wider acceptance of creative exploration, and more recently there is more machine stitching.  In the early years I wondered why the sewing machine companies bothered to have a stand at the show, but with time they have broken through and gained acceptance in the Japanese quilting world.

In 2010 I organized and led a tour to Japan, that included the Tokyo Quilt Festival. It was such much fun to share my new passion with a group of intrepid quilters!

On March 11, 2011 the great earthquake and tsunami occurred, causing great damage. My friend Keiko Goke lived upon the hill in Sendai, and watched the tsunami wipe out much of her community down below. Many communities along the coast were wiped out.  We put out a call to our quilters here, to make and donate comfort quilts for survivors. Kathy Price of Mission of Love started working on how to ship the quilts to Japan, and how to distribute them those who had lost their homes.

3500 quilts poured into the eQuilter and Mission of Love warehouses. MOL had them bundled onto pallets and she found an airline that would donate the shipping space from the US to Japan. The customs paperwork was a series of hoops to jump through, then a truck was rented and a military chaplain went to a remote village that had been completely wiped out, and the quilts were distributed on a holiday at the only remaining Buddhist temple in the town.

(I’ve been thinking about this, because of the earthquake in Myanmar and Bangkok last week. It is not getting much press here – relative to the scale of the disaster – because we have our own political disaster unfolding in the news here. I have friends there who are safe, thankfully.)

As a result of that Japan disaster relief effort, more doors opened up to me. The Japanese quilting community was still relatively closed up until then, but I was invited to meet with the executive director of the quilt show. As I was ushered into the bowels of the Tokyo Dome and the management office, I was told that he “never” met with foreign visitors, and it was an honor to meet him. Our meeting was very formal and polite. The purpose of the meeting was to formally thank me for the comfort quilt relief effort.

As the following years unfolded, I continued to travel to Japan each January for the Tokyo Quilt Festival. I always added on time to visit other parts of Japan. One of my favorite side trips was a trip North to Nagano to photograph the Snow Monkeys!

In January of 2020 I traveled with my daughter Sophie Quinn, to introduce her to the Tokyo Quilt Festival. (Here we are at the Hedgehog Cafe in Tokyo) I had a meeting with the new director who asked me to help invite Western quilters to submit their quilts to the event. They were in the process of opening up to the world, which was evident from the international attendees….from Korea, Taiwan, Russia…..plus American and Australian tour groups.

What we did not know was that Covid was about to explode while we were there. By the time the week had passed, Japan was going into Covid lockdown. My friends told me to wear a mask at the show and on the flight home. We flew home through Hawaii, and Covid chased us there too. We stayed in a Maui hotel for 2 nights, and it was reported that a Chinese family in the hotel had Covid. It was a very scary time because we knew it was a deadly disease but we didn’t know how to protect ourselves. We were home around Feb 1 and shortly thereafter, as Covid shut down the world, it was announced that the Tokyo Quilt Festival we had attended would be the last one. It was the end of a glorious era.

As the tsunami of Covid rolled across the world and shut down businesses and events, quilt festivals in Japan came to a full stop. In the last couple years, small quilt festivals have been popping up again. I am told that the largest post-Tokyo quilt show now is the Yokohama show which is in November. I would like to attend that show in 2026.

In the Fall of 2020 my curated exhibit “For the Love of Gaia” opened at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln Nebraska. Included in the the exhibit was a beautiful indigo quilt “Wish for the Beautiful Earth” by master quilter Shizuko Kuroha, who we recently lost in October 2024.

Please watch for my next installment where I tell you all about the Kyoto Quilt Festival in March 2025!

Share Post: