The Ainu People
The Ainu are an indigenous people from the northern region of the Japan. The only thing that I know about them is from seeing their designs, when scrolling through pinterest, looking for Sashiko designs. Below is just one example of their designs, which I have used as inspiration.
My Process
I salvaged a chore jacket a while ago and kept it in mind to embellish with Ainu designs.
I have a copy of photoshop, so blowing the design up and editing it to requirements was doable. If you don’t have photoshop, then I recommend GIMP or struggle with a basic editor such as paint.net. The results were, the outline below. Note that I have inverted the colours for the next step.
I then printed the design out on A3 paper and joined it together. To transfer the image to fabric, I used a cheap LED lightbox.
I then ironed on some applique webbing to the back and cut out my fabric.
The paper was then removed and the applique fabric design was applied to the chore jacket. Note, the image below should have the design that then needs to be embroidered, but this is an earlier iteration without it. I have superimposed what it should look like in the second image.
I then stitched around my “applique” using my Sashiko machine. You can see the orange stitches in the image above. On my next project, I used zig-zag stitches and that came out quite well.
The last part of the process was to use Sashiko cotton to embroider around the pattern, using a combination of straight “sashiko” stitches and chain stitches.
The Finished Product
