Almost famous

Well that is not true but I could not resist using the title from the movie.

So the other day I had a visitor.
No let's start a little earlier.

The other day I had an e-mail form a certain Naomi Ichikawa who happens to be the editor of the Japanese quilt magazine 'Patchwork tsushin'. She said she was coming to London to see the K. Fassett exhibition at the Textile Museum and was wondering if she could interview and photograph me and my quilts for the magazine which will run a feature on modern quilters.

Naomi and me in front of my 'Single Girl quilt'

So I sat down and felt numb for a bit until all of a sudden panic set in because at that point my house was nowhere near being finished. Never mind being presentable. I explained it all in a mail and Naomi was really relaxed about it. Then a week later the photographer contacted me and we discussed options of going to Kew Gardens in case my place would be still in disarray.

Naomi kindly sent me the current issue of the magazine which I actually had my beady eye on anyway but didn't really know how to get hold of.

But in the end my builders made every effort to get it done for the photo shoot and my house was just about finished when the day came.

So last Thursday morning after a restless night of sleep I opened the door to Naomi and Hugh (the photographer) and we spend 2 fantastic hours chatting and snapping. I was a bit taken aback by how much I featured in the images as I kind of thought it would be quilts and maybe one head shot of me but Naomi also had an interest on how I live and how quilts feature in my daily life.

Naomi is so, so lovely and even brought me a little fabric gift from Japan from a fabric designer who lives in Kyoto. The cloth is so exquisite and was wrapped so nicely. I really need to get to Japan asap.

What was also really interesting during our conversation was to learn something about perception. Naomi asked me what I perceive to be Asian fabric designs. This was a tricky question and I said that I couldn't really say what I perceive to be Asian but that I thought a lot of the Echino designs to be Japanese and in general many of the Kokka fabric designs. Kokka has this trefle range which in the main are very small intricate designs in many repetitions of which I used some in this quilt. To me this is also typical Japanese (in the absence of actual proof as I sadly have not been to Japan yet). Naomi was surprised to hear this as the Japanese actually perceive the Echino designs to look Scandinavian. I pointed out that to me Scandinavian was for example the recent Lotta Jansdotter fabric collections and that really surprised her even more.  It is just interesting how different cultures have different perceptions on even such mundane things as fabric designs. I am wondering what is your perception of some of the fabric designs that come from Japan or Asia ?

The feature will only be published towards the end of the year which will give me many more months to get even more excited about it than I already am.