My September 2012 trip to Shanghai, began in this bookstore in Iowa City, Iowa…  

…where I bought an exhibit catalog containing this image:

“Sea of Japan in Winter” (1983)

It is a quilt by Shizuko Kuroha, which appears to made largely of indigo fabrics from Japan.  This quilt inspired me to to make my own version of this pattern (Arabic Lattice block), which I would title “Portmanteau.”

“Portmanteau” would travel to China in the early part of 2012 as part of an exhibit “The Sum of Many Parts,” and I followed thereafter in September.  I attended the opening of the exhibit at Shanghai Museum of Textile and Costume, and was fortunate to meet Naomi McCallus (see photo below).  She commented on my fabric choices for “Portmanteau” and suggested that I would probably like a somewhat hard-to-find fabric that is unique to China and no longer made, simply called “lao bu” (old fabric).  It is hand-dyed (indigo), hand-woven fabric which was made on small in-home looms primarily for utilitarian purposes.  Naomi is a friend of Laurel Menser, who’d come to Shanghai from the US Embassy in Beijing to serve as tour-guide extraordinaire for Louisiana Bendolph and me during the first few days of our stay.  

So the next day, Laurel, my undaunted Chinese-speaking guide, and I, the wary tourist in a city the scale of which is beyond comparison, set out on our shared mission to locate the shop.  With the address scribbled on a scrap of paper in-hand, several cell phone calls to Naomi for clarification of the directions, two taxi rides across the river and back from two lost taxi drivers, and a short walk later, we finally found the obscure shop that sold lao bu. The shop owner was very soft-spoken and kind.  I had no concept of how much RMB to USD the fabric was going to cost, even with Laurel’s uber-patient, exacting exchange rate calculations.  She finally advised: if you want it, buy it.  It was great advice, and I did.  I have no idea how much the fabric finally cost or exactly how much yardage I brought home.  As I walked away with a large IKEA bag full of my lao bu, the shop keeper in the adjacent shop (pictured below on the right) would hardly let us advance without getting us to buy more at his shop.  Thankfully, fearless, savvy Laurel fended him off and we were on our way back to the Portman Ritz-Carlton.  We made a quick replenishment stop at the ATM, only to find my card didn’t work, and if I remember correctly, I ended up exchanging my last bit of US dollars into RMB at the “Bank of Laurel.” We then made our way to the European style grocery, which was fortunately only an escalator ride below the main floor of the hotel lobby.

Hui Feng, owner

Hui Feng Cloth Art Shop

34 Liuhekou Lu, Shanghai, China

The fabric smelled of mildew and so I decided to buy some detergent in the hotel store and wash the fabric in the tub of my room.  I panicked when I saw how much indigo was bleeding from the fabric and fearing I would stain the tub, I quickly drained the water and started frantically wringing out the fabric.  Only later did I learn that the indigo would not have stuck to or stained the porcelain tub, but nevertheless!

Fast-forward to the winter of 2013.  I finally figured out the quilt I wanted to make with my lao bu.  I combined three blocks (#’s 16, 17 and 44) detailed in Susan Briscoe’s book “Japanese Quilt Blocks.”

The result is a quilt I am calling “Blue Horizon.”  It is made with a combination of the lao bu fabric as well as new tea-dyed muslin and other woven neutrals.  At present, I don’t have a photo of the entire completed top as it is slightly too large to fit on my 8’x8′ design board.  The final photo (see below) is the quilt top folded on my ironing board, awaiting shipment to my hand-quilter.

 

 

And then, it all comes full circle…

On April 17, 2016, Naomi wrote to update me: