“Osaka 2018 (mono no aware)”

approximately 68” square

quilted cotton remnants, various collected vintage Japanese textiles, secondhand indigo dye samples, upcycled denim

2024

This is a very sentimental piece and has been a long time coming. In 2018, I went to teach English in Japan. The move marked the closing of a chapter in my life - a long term relationship had ended and I was leaving Oakland, where I had lived for the past 10 years, without knowing anything about the future. My experience abroad was not my first, but it was challenging and transformative. I shed many aspects of my former self, becoming happier and healthier, and experienced a deeper sense of what it means to be on my own.

While I was in Japan, based in Osaka, I collected beautiful scraps of vintage and secondhand textiles from flea markets. It wasn’t until 2020 that I finally pieced them together into a dark and subdued grid of indigoes surrounded by a ‘piano key’ border. I then struggled to finish it, disliking the back I had created and tearing the quilting stitches out before letting it languish for another few years.

Finally, in 2024, I happened upon a bag of shibori (indigo tie dye) samples that someone had donated and I immediately knew they would complement this unfinished quilt. I created an improv collage using those samples, two ‘tenugui’ I had gotten in Japan - cotton wall hangings, scraps from the textiles used for the quilt front, plus other remnants of cotton and upcycled denim.

I had originally thought to name the quilt Mono No Aware, which is the Japanese expression signifying the bittersweet feeling one has when experiencing the awareness of life’s temporary nature. But, perhaps the flip side of that name could be ‘this too shall pass’ - often said amidst pain and suffering. The process of making, and finishing!, this quilt has been an act of reflection and closure for my past selves and how far I’ve come.