Day: September 12, 2020

Turkey Tracks: September 12, 2020

Margaret-Elaine Jinno’s Rice Bags with Sashiko

Quilty friend here in Camden, Margaret-Elaine, has been making rice bags with Sashiko embellishment. (Using Sashiko is her “prompt” for our Mt. Battie Modern Quilt Guild “Bee Inspired” challenge.)

I’ve always said that Margaret-Elaine is the best overall seamstress I know—but she is maybe tied with Sarahann Smith. (See the latter’s blog at http://sarahannsmith.com/.) Both of these two women sew a wide variety of projects—not just quilts.

Anyway, Margaret-Elaine sent me some pictures of a rice bag she had just made a few weeks back—and while dropping off something at her house, she showed me some panels she had made that were meant for the rice bags she was making.

Here’s the first bag she showed me—with chickens on one side. (She has chickens; I used to have chickens.)

Here are the panels she had completed, which she laid out on her front porch boards:

The snake on the bottom panel is there as this bag is meant for an Asian friend of hers who was born in the year of the snake.

Here are the three bags from these panels:

Many of us have been making rice bags, and we started with Kz Steven’s rice bag/komebukuro pattern. You can get it from her Etsy store—see kzstevens.com. The pattern discusses different size bags.

But Margaret-Elaine may now be using her own pattern.

These bags lend themselves to all kinds of embellishments, fabrics, patchwork, different types of ties, and so on. Creativity can run loose with these bags. You can see my bags from June 3, 2019, here: https://louisaenright.com/?s=Making+Komebukuro+Bags