Opposites

My 3rd piece for this year is finished. If everything and everybody would be the same, life would be very boring. And boring is something that I don't like. That is one of the reasons that I like opposites. When you talk about opposites in color, the first one which comes to my mind is black and white and the second one is lines and circles. As you can see in this piece I used both of these. The background is made from a bleached uneven woven linnen, the black is a smooth Kona.

Lagging Behind

This morning I saw that Magie had posted her third voyage piece- and delightful it is- and I also have some of that stripey fabric in my stash - bought from Magie of course. But it made me feel very guilty. I am well aware I have been lagging behind, and have been going through a bit of a malaise of inspiration of any sort. So this morning I got up- and yay behold- second day of sunshine in a row- not a spot of rain to be seen. It's amazing what a bit of sunshine does to the spirit. As our  topics include where I am , where I have been I decided to  look at my work and really no collection of my work  would be complete without something pomegranate.  I simply love the fruit of the pomegranate, it's shape, it's colour and  it's taste, and all the mythical stories associated with the fruit and in particular that of Persephone- and  in 2010 when I lived in France there was a lovely pomegranate tree in the garden ( which I often photographed). So here is my second piece- simply pomegranate tree- I am hoping it will kickstart a spurt of creativity!!

At last here is Voyage 3 for me - so far I've not found a title for it.  The lime green with the orange worm like design is ny own hand printed fabric - using an old printing block form the African Wax Print Industry.   The other fabrics are kola and indigo dyed by my friend Musa Jaiteh.  I'm very pleased with the edging - I didn't want to use binding and am still not that good at zig-zagging the edge but I feel I did a pretty good job this time!   I may well add some handstitching in the 'worms' in an effort to make them look more like leaves!  Also - we have 'shrunk in the wash' a little!  When it comes to the crunch - you guys may decide I have to do another one... 

 

  Magie Relph Voyage 3 - detail

Elephant Story.

This time I looked to my fabrics for inspiration. I wanted to use the bark cloth from Kenya and remembered the Elephant Story form Zimbabwe.

When God first made elephants their favouite food was butterflies. They ate huge numbers. God didn't want all the butterflies to be eaten so he told tthe elephants that he would make a tree with leaves like butterflies which would taste delicious. The Mopane Tree has been the elephants favouite food ever since, and there are hundreds of butterflies in Southern Africa.
Alison Farmer