In the last 200 years, “Sashiko” has been developing its form by those who stitch Sashiko. Also today, Sashiko changes. I do not resist the change. I just hope that the change will be done by someone who is sincere to the culture, who cares about the upstream.
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Although there is no Right and Wrong in Sashiko, we can find a variety of “values” in Sashiko. The value changes when a form changes. For Sashiko, the value would be: “How strong the fabric is after stitching”, “The size of fabric to keep the warmth”, “The stitching to prove women’s skill”, and of course “the beauty in Sashiko”. All the value – the purpose of their stitching is “Correct”: and therefore, there is no Right and Wrong in Sashiko (In fact, it is wrong to define that only “the pattern“ is the value of Sashiko since it is changing the significance of its culture).
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I often wonder what is the “value” we carry. We care about many forms of value listed above, but most importantly, we care how much stitching we put into. As you can tell by looking at our photos, we have intensive stitching in “relatively small” sized fabric. This account exists to explain “why” our value exists, but one reason is the story I had shared yesterday: “Spirit”. We are putting our “spirit” into the Sashiko pieces: often telling the fabric to support/encourage/enrich someone’s life. For that, most of Our items are “available for sale”. I just want the person, who would care for it the same way as we do, to have it.
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「刺し子」と一言に言っても、様々な形がございます。地域によっては○○刺し子と名付けられている場所もあり、あるいは全く違う名称で呼ばれている可能性もあります。様々な形があれば、もちろん様々な「価値観」が存在します。その価値観が「なぜ刺し子なのか」への道筋を示してくれる重要な物語だったりします。
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幼少期から見てきている私達の刺し子の一番の価値観は、「刺し子そのもの」です。「総量」と言い換えても良いかもしれない。デザインも、目的も、大きさも、色合いも、継ぎ接ぎも、全て大切な要素ですが、「みっちり刺し子をする」というのが当たり前であり、また大切にしている価値です。日本人が日本を感じられる針仕事を残していきたいと思うのです。
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2022-09-12 23:26:09
Fabulous! I recently discovered you. I am enjoying listening and watching you demonstrating this beautiful Japanese traditional artistry in stitching of various geometric shape patterns on your YouTube channel. I have discovered a lady on one of the YouTube channels who demonstrates how to draw the geometric shape patterns, which appears to provide an understanding of the direction for stitching for me. Thank you for sharing your passion in this particular Japanese historical form of stitching. Peace and kindness with prayers always. 💜💜👏👏☕👌