Applique illustration

There is an artist whose colourful, and warm appliques seem to have a mysterious healing power. Today PingMag talks to Tokyo-based Yoshie, who when she is not teaching workshops, seamlessly stitches and sews her illustrative embroidery art onto picture books, ads, and CD jackets to spread the love with mixed sewing media.

First, please introduce yourself!

I work as a picture book writer and illustrator. Since the end of 2005, I have been working freelance. Now I live in an old house which contains a studio, and I spend my days creating

Yoshie’s studio in her own house. Looks like a cozy work of art already!

You used to work in the apparel industry: How did it start with the picture books?

When I was a kid, I was always drawing. For a while, I wanted to become a veterinarian, and after that I wanted to work making something. I found a job in an apparel company, but I realised I wasn’t able to create the kind of world that I wanted to create. I wanted to make something with fabric and somehow naturally came back to the world of drawing that I was living in when I was a kid.

How do you think up picture book stories?

It is hard to explain, but in my mind, I just throw out fragments of ideas. So I always have all these thoughts racing around in my head! Sometimes I take memos and begin to build on ideas and start scene out of them. That is always the most exciting moment for me. Pulling together tiny little thoughts to build something new is a bit like making an applique picture.

See the full interview and more pictures over at PingMag.