This year I attended the Japan Market again with my studio friend Alyssa from Stitchonomy! We’re sharing a studio space in Leiden so it was fun to come up with the products and stand design. We also did a collaboration in the form of a sushi embroidery kit! Here you can see the progress during the weeks leading up to the market, because we were so busy on the day itself that we barely took any pics!

The Japan Market commemorates the visit of Emperor Akihito in 2008 to Japanmuseum SieboldHuis. Every year during Pentecost the Rapenburg streets are transformed into a mini Japan festival with all kinds of stalls, activities and food. This year there were even more stalls than before, including a giant food court and martial arts demonstrations. We were really happy to have been selected for a stall!

This year I wanted even bigger stock than before. So I started sewing weeks in advance using my watercolour sushi fabric.

I also designed a kokeshi craft kit (I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened to the quality of this picture).

Here are the saskiko kits that Alyssa was working on, in modern colours like peach and petrol instead of the traditional blue and white.

The sushi embroidery kits were made using one of my sushi illustrations that you can also find on one of my fabrics.

Alyssa worked out the threads needed and wrote an instruction, but most importantly had the design printed on fabric.

There are two variations that you can make, the beginner stitching on the right and the more advanced satin stitch on the left. Alyssa made both of these samples and they looke really good!

Here we were packing all the planned embroidery kits. You can still purchase them here in Alyssa’s shop.

We decided to take things to the third dimension and cut some pegboards to size to make these wall displays. Overall I think that was the most major improvement from last year, when I felt that my items were overlooked because they were flat on the table. Now you could see everything clearly.

And a nice picture of all of us together, left to right Alyssa, Femke (back again like last year!), myself, Caro from HONoriginal and Saskia from LUREaLURE. Overall this was another great Japan Market with absolutely gorgeous weather and a great crowd moving past. We were right in front of the food court so I think we saw the most foot traffic right behind the food stalls themselves!

See you again soon!
~ Mardie