This piece links Japan and England, in what hopefully is a contemporary style using traditional methods. The idea of playing with colour ‘layers’ fascinates me and having learnt various techniques on a course last year using mainly indigo I wanted to play around using fibre reactive dyes to achieve more unusual effects.

I have used the Japanese method of Karamatsu to create the pattern through stitch and double dyeing. The fabric is cotton and the threads were dyed at the same time, the blue in the centre was the first of two dye runs, the yellow the second colour added and the green the result. The quilting comes from the two different cultures, in theory if not in practice! The chain border is typically Northern English and the centre piece in theory is a traditional sashisko design appropriately stitched. I had fun creating this although I think it is fairly simplistic I like the idea of the two cultures meeting and blending through the medium of stitch.

The following show the detail of the chain and centre piece.