Hello, I am Veronica Piccolo, ITA certified teacher from Italy.

From the 25th to the 28th of July, I took part in an event dedicated to textile craftsmanship.

A little town in the Italian Alps (Cavareno in the Non Valley, famous for its apples) decided to fill their vacant shops with craftswomen and their works during their summer festival.

I joined a sashiko teacher (Barbara Simonetto from Sashiko.it ) and a Japanese artist (Kiyoko Miyagoshi) and together we set up a Japanese shop, with all our precious arts and also a little space for teatime. My boyfriend also did some kumihimo bracelets for the occasion.
Every day we gave workshops so the people who came to the shop had the occasion to know a little more about Japanese art and culture. The organizers told us that we brought something really new and interesting to the event.

I changed the subject of the workshop every day so people could try different tsumami techniques and come back day after day. I prepared plum blossoms, hydrangeas, irises, and roses.

I did a little introduction with historical information, then I showed them the folding techniques and explained to them the starch glue method. Unfortunately I did not have enough starch glue so we used other glues like craft glue and thick wallpaper glue. Everyone started slowly but in the end they gained ability and the results were great. A 10 years old boy
also attended the first day.

Barbara-san gave sashiko lessons, and Kiyoko-san brought temari and sankakugoma workshops.

I have been very happy to spend some days in the mountains, enjoying the cool weather and the good food, while spreading tsumami zaiku to people that probably wouldn’t have had another possibility to get in touch with Japanese culture.