VOYAGE 2014

 

This is my 3rd piece, it doesn't have a title yet. Again from a Zimbabwean rock painting. It's architectural design is very interesting. I used hand dyed cotton and a wonderful Mulberry bark cloth I found at the Birmingham show last year. It is much harder to use than the bark cloth from Uganda. I stenciled the giraffes using acrylic paint and a stencil I had made from paper.

 

 

 

Voyage 2014

"Ancient Beehive"

My second piece was inspired by an ancient rock painting from Zimbabwe, probably the Drakensburg Mountains. I used some of Magie's wonderful fabrics from Ghana and Gambia and some hand dyed cottons. The edge of the hive is trapuntoed and I machine quilted using rayon threads.

No need to cook

No need to cook - May 2014

The strawberry season is in full flow here in the south of France. The locally favoured and grown variety is the Gariguette, known for being smallish and full of sweet flavour.

I printed some cotton fabric in the colours I wanted, using my Gelli plate. Some of this fabric I used in the two sided border. The background was quilted with the words “gariguettes” and “fraises” (strawberries) and the large strawberry was fused before adding quilting and hand embroidery. The small strawberries were fused and machine quilted.

We have a punnet of Gariguettes waiting in the kitchen for tonight's dessert!

Glacier

One of the aerial views I wanted to do was a glacier. A diffcult one, but the pounded fabric I created last month was the perfec starting point. I unrolled and split a cotton ball and added this to add a bit more white to the quilt. Covered everything with a black tulle and stitched through it. This is how it turned out:

Raffia cloth

Piece no. 2 from me.  Raffia is my cloth this time.  Once again I'm in The Congo - but in the Kuba or Kasia region - towards the south of the country. There are a number of different types of kuba cloth.  Embriodered, Applique and 'velvet' or cut pile.  They are all made from raffia cloth.  Raffia cloth is difficult to weave and as raffia fibre cannot be plied a woven piece of raffia can only be as large and the longest length of raffia fibre.  The cut-pile cloth is the hardest to make and now the hardest to find as a new cloth. 

I have combined two types of kuba cloth here - embroidered and velvet, featuring a small piece of velvet on a background of 'embroidered' cloth. To imitate the embroidery I have stitched rayon yarn onto  the tea- dyed background.  (Best thing to do with tea in my opinion!!) 

Plain Raffia cloth was once used a currency.  3 m long embroidered and appliquéd Kuba cloths are used as dance skirts in ceremonies.