if you search for the hashtag sashiko on instagram in japanese, you'll find lots of posts with pretty embroidered, square doilies called hanafukin. one of my wholesalers has hanafukin packs in their range, so i gave it a try to decide whether i wanted to include the pre-printed hanafukin in my sashiko range (answer: yes!).
fukin means kitchen or tea or hand towel, i.e. a cloth used in the household for drying and wiping, an everyday object. hanafukin is the pretty embroidered version, which then has more decorative purposes as a table set, tablecloth, as a small towel for travelling, on a tray, as a coaster, ...
typically, a loose, light, absorbent cotton fabric, similar to muslin, called sarashi, is used for this purpose. this fabric is also very humble and is mainly used for everyday purposes. it comes in slightly different densities, so that it can be used for everything from bandages to towels. the width of the fabric is only about 30 cm.
for a hanafukin, the fabric is doubled and then embroidered, which gives the end product a really great, soft, airy feel and makes the hanafukin very stable and resilient, even if it doesn't really need to be as a decorative object. but it still reminds you of its original purpose.
as already mentioned, i wanted to do this myself and chose a pre-printed fabric for it. i only had to sew it together on one side, turn it and then embroider it. the two selvedges edges remain unstitched and are then fixed by the embroidery.
and because i've never worked hitomezashi (these are patterns that are based on a grid and where the stitches have to be a predetermined length) patterns before and wanted to know how it works with unshin (the technique that takes up a lot of stitches on the needle and is therefore super fast), i chose the kaki no hana pattern:
front side:
back side:
and this is the pack with the pre-printed fabric:
i used ‘the sashiko thread curated by upcycle stitches’, which is also available in my webshop, as well as the hanafukin packs with a few different patterns to choose from, each with blue or white fabric.
i really enjoyed stitching the hanafukin. sometimes a pre-printed project is great for relaxing and clearing my head and just working away. i will definitely be making more of these. one with a free pattern on unprinted sarashi fabric (which is also available in my shop) is one of my current wip (of which i have too many at the moment) ...
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