Japanese Bunka Shishu Emroidery Art & More

Just back from another frolic through the shops. Went to the flooring store to pick out a chunk of carpet for my stairs. I have gone back and forth on whether to put carpet on them or not. The deciding factor was this week when I was painting the walls, and came to realize just how cold that staircase can really get...brrrr...I'm still shivering. The upstairs is as cozy as a nest, but the bottom of the stair would freeze a polar bear. I found two delightfully fun pieces, because the owner of the shop is catching on swiftly to my eccentric artsy style, and showed me into a back storage room where he had a wild crazy patterned colorful rug scrap left over from a local Mexican restaurant he had done. The other scrap was also from a restaurant but it was deep blue with bright colored yellow and pale green flowers on it. Now both will do, but I couldn't make up my mind until he gets that crazy Mexican rug out where I can see it better. He has to do a bit of digging to do that but he promised me he will have it out by this week. The floral rug scrap reminds me a bit of 60's and 70's flower power, so I'm leaning towards the Mexican rug. We shall see...now to the goodies!

 I was almost fooled by this lovely piece, which I thought at first was a painting. I saw the lady put it on the shelf and was attracted to it immediately. Lucky for me no one else was in the aisle so I snatched it up for the low price of $10.

This my friends is not a painting at all, but a beautiful textile. I was not familiar at all with this type of textile until I picked this piece up. It is called, Japanese Bunka shishu embroidery.

 It is a wonderful form of punch needle embroidery, that began at the turn of the 20th century in Japan with the invention of rayon embroidery floss. You can just see the artists initials D W here in the lower right hand corner.

This art form became wildly popular in the United States during the 1980's and is still very popular in some circles today.

Unlike other punch-needle type's of embroidery, this type, with the aid of the special hollow needle, is worked entirely from the top of the fabric, following a drawn and sometimes numbered pattern.

 Short and long stitches are used to make the pattern and shadowing, and other technique's create depth and form, giving a very three dimensional painting like look.

The lady that made this was very good at this type of needlework, and her instructor even certified the piece, which makes me wonder if it was entered into an art show or competition of some sort?!

This is what is written on the back. "Japanese Bunka Embroidery Hand crafted By Diane Whitmor 9-1-85 Certified By Linda Carpenter Certified Instructor." I am happy to have the name of the artist and the instructor, but even with these aids, I was unable to find out anything more about these two talented women. I am very happy to be able to have this art for my walls.

 This little Colonial print in a frame is not old, but I thought at $6.99 it was worth the frame alone. It was really in dingy shape and it had a much greyer look to the paint. However, a vigorous application of rubbing alcohol with a paper towel soon remedied that. It removed most of the grey and took it down to the paler yellow white and I was much happier. I like the little print, but if I get tired of it, the frame will do nicely for some of my other pictures. I do think the sheep in the meadow are fun don't you?! Reproduction Colonial shabby chic is not usually my thing, but as I've said before there are always exceptions.

 When I found this book on crib quilts I was truly delighted. It has been a while since I've found any good quilt books and especially ones that deal with quilt history as this one does. It is loaded with great historical information as well as pictures and I have enjoyed every minute of reading and perusing its pages.

This tender message was written in the flyleaf and I can just imagine the smile on the Moms face when she received it. No doubt she was an avid quilter and I only hope it wasn't tragedy that led to the disposal of this book to Goodwill. Maybe she had two many books, perish the thought, and had to downsize?! Whatever the reason, I am glad to have found this book, and will be happy to add it to my library.

The lovely thing about this book is that its back cover was as beautiful and interesting as its front cover. I don't often photograph both front and back of a book, but this one was so nice, it was truly worth sharing. If you like history about quilts, and you like crib quilts, as I do, this book is worth looking for and purchasing. I found it for $3.99 and am so happy I did.

I have been suffering from the cold a bit since I came back from the tropics. The floors feel sometimes like they could give me frostbite, so when I saw these sweet fluffy socks I just snatched them right up. They are brand new, but sold by Goodwill, at three pairs for just $4.99. I just know my feet will feel toasty in them and can hardy wait to get them on my old cold feet.