Amazon.com helpfully informs me that I purchased Kumiko Sudo's charming Omiyage almost exactly 8 years ago, on March 4, 2005.^[1] The book sat for another 3 years before I finally tried making something out of it.

Then it sat another 5 or so years until we needed a bunch of omiyage for our families in Japan.

Top/front. Though I made a bunch of kumi for drawstrings, the casings were so tight that I ended up using thinner bradshaw twined cords instead. However, the piece does feature abstract glass beads in red/white/blue.

One of the things I eventually discovered is that although Americans traditionally quilt with cotton—and these little bags are basically three-D quilt projects—Japanese scrap craft is based on silk—e.g. temari and the like.

Silk is much easier to sew.

bottom, showing my lovely technique. Not...This bag is cotton fabric, perle cotton drawstrings and glass beads, with assorted fibers (old sewing thread) making up the tassels. The page was created 15apr13, so the bag was presumeably finished by then;)

Particularly if your hand strength is compromised from age, arthritis and the like. I love these little bags, and I love my red white and blue collection of cottons, but if I make any more—and lately I've been doing zippered pouches, which allow for much greater bead embroidery embellishments—I think I'll stick to that nice thin silk, at least for all the exterior, quilted bits. —Even on the inside, that drawing up of the bottom would work better on the much thinner, softer hand, though.

showing interior. I love this collage-y style print;) Having one of these with that might actually inspire me to make just one more in cotton;)

Link to notes for making this bag (Still pretty rough and unfinished...next time I make a bunch of these I'll see about cleaning up.) Overall, you can see that my points meet poorly, plus no doubt a number of other flaws and failures persnickety quilters would deprecate. (I mean, I saw some instructions that had you throwing half your pieces away to steal one extra warp/weft thread's width from one side to achieve perfect points. That, to me, is so antithetical to the whole point of using scraps that I couldn't bear it. While I did actually purchase, new, some of the fabric used in these projects, even with something as important as this I was still upcycling odds and ends acquired here and there.)

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.