Intro to Kaga Yubinuki 1: Nami-sashi

Learn how to make your own Kaga yubinuki! This course will teach you:

  • How to read (and understand) a stitch map

  • How to make a base

  • Nami-sashi (the standard stitch)

  • Three variations each of two traditional patterns (yatarajima, ni-shoku uroko)

  • Tips, tricks, and troubshooting

No prerequisite knowledge of sewing, yubinuki, or Japanese is needed (though if you’ve used a needle before, it will make your life much easier!)

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Meet the Instructor

A young woman with long, curly blonde hair, wearing a plaid wool flat cap and a jacket, taking a selfie in Minato Mirai with the Cosmo World Ferris wheel in the background.

Rachel

IHi! I am the owner of the pair of hands you’ll be staring at throughout the yubinuki tutorials, just in case you were wondering what my face looks like (or even if I have one). You won’t see my face in any videos because my brain seems to think looking at a camera lens is the same thing as making eye contact and compensates by blinking more than is reasonable for any human being, so to save us both some discomfort, I’m introducing myself here instead.

I’ve been teaching since I was in grad school, though this is the first time I’ve ventured into pre-recorded, courses on-demand. (I’ve found it more unnerving than trying to teach high school students Japanese over Microsoft Teams during the pandemic. I do not recommend listening to your own voice for any length of time.) I hope you find these videos helpful and that you love Kaga yubinuki as much as I do. よろしくお願いします！

What you’ll learn

Colorful yubinuki bases, a blue mandrel, a small needle rest, and sewing needles on a watercolor fabric background.

    • Terminology and pattern reading

    • Constructing a base

    • Nami-sashi (the standard stitch)

    • Starting and finishing

    • Troubleshooting common problems

Three colorful Kaga yubinuki with striped patterns sitting on a white, green, and blue plaid fabric.

    • Fibonacci variant of a traditional yubinuki pattern

    • Three colorways: single-color gradient, gradient with contrasting color, and rainbow

    • How to change colors

Three colorful, geometric-patterned Kaga yubinuki placed on an abstract plaid fabric surface.

    • Three variations of the most ubiquitous of the traditional yubinuki patterns

    • Working with multiple threads

    • Managing interlocking threads

Course FAQ

  • Nope! This is a true beginner course, no fiber art experience of any kind necessary. The tutorials will walk you through each step and teach you everything you need to know to make your yubinuki.

  • Intro to Kaga Yubinuki is broken into five courses that are progressive in nature, meaning each builds on the skills of the previous course. That said, if you only want to learn specific patterns and don’t mind a challenge, you can take whichever course(s) most interest you.

  • Not at the moment, though I am looking into it for the future if there’s enough interest. In the meantime, you can find supply recommendations and links for where to buy them on the Morigokochi blog.

  • You can email me questions any time! I am happy to help, and after eight years teaching Japanese in a public high school, I am used to answering questions from the banal, to the highly technical, the existential, to the incredibly bizarre.