Okan Arts 12-day tour, Kyoto Textile Adventure, takes you to Kyoto and Sayoko’s world of machiya. Learn more +here
By Patricia Belyea
KYOTO JP I can imagine Sayoko Hayashi when she was six years old. Her mother bought her a book on how to make a doll. As Sayoko spent hours immersed in the world of needle and thread, she began to dream that she could sew everything!
Fast forward to Sayoko at the age of 34. She and her cousin became aware of American patchwork. They each made quilts and together held an exhibition in a traditional machiya transformed into a gallery.The contrast between her American patchwork hanging in an Edo-era Japanese wooden townhouse sparked a resolve in Sayoko. She had grown up in a machiya along Kyoto's historic Fushimi Kaido Road. And now she wanted to make quilts featuring machiya! (Today she carefully preserves and maintains her family’s machiya as her studio.)
In 1998, she began creating her first Machiya Quilt. Rather than simply reproducing the architecture, she wanted to capture the feeling of these old houses — their tiled roofs, wooden latticework, plaster walls, and the sense of the people who lived behind their doors.
When I visited Sayoko at her machiya studio, I saw some of the quilts she has created over the past 28 years. Along with Kyoto townhouses, her work depicts thatched-roof farmhouses, cedar forests, torii gates, a local brewery, and other familiar features of her surroundings.
As Sayoko spoke about her work, she became wonderfully animated. For someone who has spent decades quietly stitching intricate quilts, Sayoko is no wallflower!Sayoko explained:
"When I encounter a building or landscape that moves me, my first thought is, 'I want to sew it.' Almost immediately, the scene is transformed in my mind into a simplified composition and a working design. As I imagine the vintage kimono fabrics I will use and the complete drawing, the finished work already clearly exists in my mind."
And then the work begins. It can take over a year for Sayoko to complete one of her entirely hand-stitched quilts.
Sayoko begins with a photograph of a building or landscape, flattens the perspective, and creates a full-scale drawing. She then drafts a precise sewing pattern, numbering hundreds of individual pieces.
Each template is cut separately, traced onto fabric, and sewn together with extraordinary accuracy. Almost every piece is a different shape or size. A small error can affect the dimensions of the entire work.
Her fabric choices are equally thoughtful. Lustrous silk becomes ceramic oof tiles. Cotton and linen suggest weathered wooden pillars. Textured chirimen crepe gives the perfect texture for stone walls.
She doesn't paint or add color to her designs. Instead, she builds each image from the colors and textures of the textiles she has gathered, mostly vintage kimono fabrics that have already lived another life.
The construction is surprising. Working from the bottom upward, Sayoko builds her landscapes layer by layer. First she pieces the main elements, then appliqués the details. The sky is sewn last.
Although the finished works can be monumental, the process is painstakingly intimate. Every detail is made with needle and thread, and tremendous patience.
Sayoko describes the long hours of stitching not as a burden, but as a source of profound joy.
A few days after my studio visit, I attended the first day of Sayoko's four-day exhibition at the Kyoto Museum of Culture Annex Hall. Seeing the full body of her work presented together offered a wonderful opportunity to appreciate the breadth of her artistic vision.
Her quilts preserve the character of Kyoto's old houses, but they also carry something of Sayoko herself — her childhood memories, her affection for her mother, her love of old textiles, and her seemingly boundless desire to keep creating.
Perhaps this is what makes her work so special. Her quilts celebrate the places she knows and loves, while bringing new life to vintage Japanese textiles. They are both personal expressions and a quiet record of a changing Japan.
BONUS CONTENT
Does Sayoko teach? Yes! She has 20 students and meets with groups of five to six twice a month for a two-hour session.
To show me how she teaches, Sayoko laid out her lesson samples on her big table. Students begin by making four simple pieces, each taking four months to complete. That's a 16-month introduction! Next, they move on to a larger composition, which typically takes a full year to finish.
A FINAL WORD
Sayoko's late mother often said this when she sat beside Sayoko while sewing: Sayoko seemed like a child who was born with a needle in her hand.
Sayoko’s lifetime love of stitching shines through in her precisely crafted quilts!
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ABOUT US: Okan Arts, a petite family business, is co-owned by mother-daughter duo Patricia Belyea and Victoria Stone. Patricia and Victoria import vintage Japanese textiles, host in-person and online creative quilting experiences, and lead textile tours to Japan and the UK.
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