What is SAKIORI?

Sakiori cloth

In Tsugaru where I live, the silk and the cotten were very valuable.

Because of its harsh climate,cotten couldn’t grow in Tsugaru.So the flax was most commonly used for daily clothings even in the winter snowy weather.

The flax is comfortable in the summer, but the flax is so coarse in textile that it can not prevent the chilliness, so the Tsugaru style cross sticth called Koginsashi was used to fill the coarse textile, so that it can withstand the cold.

As the time passed, it has gotten easier to obtain the cotton. But the cotton cloth were still valuable. So to never waste the cloth, the old cloth was recycled to create a new textile.This is called Sakiori.

If the clothing were torn, it was first repaired by stitching. Then when it became unusable as a clothing, it was remade into a quilted bed cover . Finally when the clothes is worn out, it was taken apart and torn into narrow pieces. Then it was used as an horizontal thread to weave the textile. By doing so, even when the fabric is weak, it can be made into a very strong and durable textile, so that it can be reused as if it is a brand new woven fabric.

When it was difficult to spin cotton into a new yarn and make a kimono, people in Tsugaru used their wisdom to create Sakiori.