boro - "too good to waste"

I came across Boro quilts in a great book called " A World of Quilts" by Cassandra Ellis - in her book she says that 'Boro was born from the idea of mottainai, a Japanese term that meant 'too good to waste'. "  and that  in traditional boro, cotton and hemp scraps were patched and repaired to create textiles that would last a lifetime and beyond, sewn together over generations telling the story of a family its births, deaths and everything that went in between.

The colour palette used for Boro's is primarily indigo - so this got me thinking about finally putting to use all the pile - see above) of beautiful hemp fabrics that I've been collecting.  The aim is to come up with something in the boro and combining it with some antique Hmong and Dao embroidery pieces, sashiko and raw silk thread embroidered panels - I will keep you posted on how this goes.

In my search for inspiration on boro designs I came across this great site called " Kiminoboy's Japanese Fork Textiles: https://www.kimonoboy.com/short_history.html - this is a great little site with some really great info on all things textiles including the history of Japanese indigo - so if this has sparked an interest its well worth a look.