Mending in Otsukuroi manner

The jacket is made by a high-end Italian brand with an high qualified wool fabric.

As requested by the customer, I used the plain ikat cotton fabric made in Kyushu.
Then I tried to fill with the regular Sashiko stitches, but I found somehow something’s not right.

Maybe was the jacket too formal for this kind of stitches?

After giving myself some thinking and researches, I tried in another way.

My inspiration was the symbols used in old maps in Japan that were expressing nature such as rice farm and rivers in the way of pictogram. So I adapted this idea into the stitches.

It worked.

Leaving the empty space is very important to keep an aesthetic in whole and to make the stitches stand out.

The voice ‘‘Not too much, hold my desire back.’’ was repeating in my head like mantra during stitching :-)

Material: Ikat cotton fabric, Daruma cotton threads