The three-layered quilt was imported from America to Japan. It was quickly adopted and adapted to become a favorite pastime for an estimated three million quilters in Japan today. Once adopted, Japan took this pastime seriously and systems were quickly built to teach adept and eager sewists how to make masterpieces. By the 1990s, Japanese quilt makers were world renowned for their traditional hand-pieced and hand-quilted quilts. Go inside the Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival and learn how it became the largest attended quilt event in the world. Japan’s journey from importer to trailblazer is a fascinating journey through Japanese history, cultural expectations, and the process by which one is deemed a ‘master quilter’ or not.
