In January, I spent time in Japan visiting my daughter's family. While there, we attended the the Ryukyu Lantern Festival, which display around 5,000 Chinese lanterns that adorned the premises of Murasaki Mura in the village of Yomitan.
In the dark night sky, the paper lanterns glow and sway in the light breeze.
Murasaki Mura is a popular cultural theme park, hence the funny panda pretend ride with one of my granddaughters. This theme park features a typical Ryukyuan town from the 14th and 15th centuries.
It was so pretty to see all the variety of illuminated lanterns.
When I came home, I discovered a book called "Kake-Juke" where the author, Kimiko Sudo, a fabric artist, told stories of her life using fabric textile scenes.
When I saw her Japanese lanterns scene, (pictured above) I got a little excited and wondered if my daughter would like her own lantern wall mural to remind her of this festival. I sent my daughter a photo of the design I saw in this book. She said she liked it and if I wanted to create this scene for her family, to go ahead and make her whatever I wanted. So, I did. Of course.
I used the artist's designs but instead of only quilting the lantern on the left, I used my Japanese fabric scraps to make the black, floral lantern too.
In the book, the artist hangs her murals on a bamboo hanger, exactly like the one above that I found on Amazon. Here is the link if you want one too.
I love the details achieved by using the Japanese fabrics. The black cording made perfect hangers for the lanterns. I burned the edges of the cording hangers so they wouldn't fray.
I've completed one more mural which I'll show you at a later time. Until then, enjoy this little video from the lantern festival. I'm sure it'll give you more of the flavor of this beautiful paper lantern festival.
Happy sewing! xoxo Grandma
You can get some of the items I mentioned in this post from Amazon:
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