Living in the Washington D.C. area certainly has its advantages. There are so many cultural opportunities available. An annual event that occurs for two weeks every summer on the National Mall is the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The festival celebrates several US and foreign cultures each year with music, crafts, food and demonstrations. This year Kenya and China were the featured nations.
Last Thursday, Jin Yuanshan, a patchwork artist and one of the participants in the Festival, visited our shop hoping to have the chance to meet me. Unfortunately, I was out of town but she delighted the entire staff and shared some of her beautiful creations. When I returned, I learned that she would be demonstrating at the Festival on Saturday, July 5th. So I went into Washington with Barb Hollinger, one of our Studio staff members.
Jin Yuanshan had so many of her beautiful creations with her and was sharing her techniques. I am so pleased that I had the chance to meet this truly inspirational and prolific artist.
Ms. Jin works almost entirely in silk and does all of her work by hand (a woman after my own heart). I would describe many of her pieces as organized crazy patch. She never throws any scraps away but just makes smaller pieces with the leftovers. The pieces are joined together with silk thread with an over-cast stitch similar to the stitch used to connect English paper piecing.
She also does dimensional pieces where she rolls or folds scraps of silk to create beautiful layered medallions. She carries small squares with her everywhere she goes and in spare moments folds them, runs a needle through them and strings them for use later.
And back here in Great Falls…..The reason I wasn’t here when Ms Jin stopped by the Studio was that we were visiting our grandchildren (and their parents). We were only gone four days. I swear that before I left I picked every single zucchini on the plants in our garden (except for the ones that were only two inches long). I came home to this. Thank goodness there are several women in my husband’s office who love giant zucchini. Five of them were very happy.
Oh, I noticed that I am wearing my “Nats” shirt…….In case you didn’t know, I am a huge baseball fan….and either go to, watch, or listen to every Washington Nationals game that I can.
Jinny – Love your Blog and so enjoyed seeing the work by Jin. So lovely! I know you are a big Nats fan and my grandson is now with the Colorado Rockies and was in DC 2 weeks ago with his wife and two little girls. We watched the games on TV and I looked through the stands to see if I could find you there. Miss those wonderful Seminars. Those are sure some big zucchini. Mary
Yes. Those zucchini grow really fast. With the weather you’ve been having, I’m not surprised.
I met Ms. Jin the first day or two of the festival and knew you had to meet each other. Through her interpreter, I let her know that she absolutely had to visit your shop and meet you. It warms my quilter’s heart to know that you were able to admire each others work!
As you can see from the blog, Jinny thoroughly enjoyed her visit. Thanks so much for being the catalyst which made this happen.