Chinese Connection

I took a visit to Chicago's China Town. The weather was hot but the food was delicious! The area has a lot of little shops with all kinds of nooks & crannies. I did see some beautiful hand embroidered pictures of various sizes. I didn't particularly like the frames but that could be fixed. No, I didn't purchase one although I was tempted. Some were done in single strands of silk while others were done in magnificent gold work. I liked the koi fish embroidered in gold and silk.
I did take some pictures around the area of some ceramic tiles with Chinese motifs. That will be on a future post as I'm not set up to transfer pictures at the moment. You'll just have to wait and wonder (grin). On that note, here is some eye candy with a Chinese connection.
Chinese Coin Quilt
Chinese New Year
Chinese Lantern free pattern
Chinese Fan Quilt Block
Chinese Dragon
Art Quilt by Diane Wright
China Rose by Melody Crust
Chinese Embroidery
Chinese Silk Embroidery
Antique Chinese Textiles 
Photo Gallery
Asian Art - this one is not Chinese but worth a look. The pictures are beautiful!
The photo above came from here.
I did find out that in my search for Chinese hand embroidered gold work, that I had more success when I searched for Chinese metallic & silk embroidery.

Books

I just love Books and I have lots of them! I retired from teaching in 1997 and have been collecting an assortment of textile related books ever since. For some reason, Asian designs have always intrigued me. Here's some from my collection. I turned the photo on its edge to make it easier to read the titles.

I have a small collection of Japanese fabrics too. About 50 - 70 pieces (fat quarters & smaller) was inherited from an older lady friend who passed away a few years ago.

I found a few Asian things you might be interested in:
Check out the Chinese Lantern Quilt Block 
Japanese Fans by Marsha Evans Moore
Expedition Asian Wall Hanging  
Asian Fan Placemat  
Studio Aika  has lots of interesting information about Sashiko. Check out the Sashiko tutorials.
If you want to get started stitching Sashiko, I recommend Susan Briscoe's The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook. Susan also blogs about Sashiko and other stitching.