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

Ferns for Preniac Pilgrims

Ferns for Preniac Pilgrims

Another in my series of fern quilts from an idea by Melody Johnson. This one is yellow and purple, not the blue that it seems in the photo.

Why this title , you ask? At the end of May , I spent a week near to Cahors in southwest France on a course about dyeing and colour. It was at Studio Preniac, a gorgeous gite complex run by Liz and Bill. The teacher was Ruth Issett, a textile artist from the UK known for the fabulous use of colour in her work. After our initial dyeing sessions, I worked mainly with the complementary colours yellow and purple. Above Preniac by about 400 yards was a famous track along which strode pilgrims, both now and for centuries past, on their way to Saint Jacques de Compostelle in Spain. In this region of France the climate is much damper than where we live in the Gard and many ferns grow in the undergrowth by the side of the path.

Hence the name of my third Voyage quilt!! The ferns are fused onto the pieced yellow background and are outlined with free machine quilting. I added a little hand embroidery and the quilt was finished by the pillow case method, no binding being needed.

Hope you like it; I look forward to seeing all the other third voyage quilts and to catching up with many of you in Birmingham in August.

Fragments....

My third piece has been a working sample for a larger abstract work I am finishing at the moment. I have tried to express the route travelled through the creative journey,  discarding the fragments of old ideas and techniques and searching for the glimmers of inspiration  that gather together to become the next design. 


The fabric was coloured with procion dyes and some wax pigments then over laid with the 'fragments' of organza and painted and distressed fusible web. The 'glimmers' were scraps of gold leaf applied with ormaline.

Prevailing Winds

It seems that the wind blows 24 hours a day here in the Sonoran Desert.   This time of year, stepping out of your air conditioned home feels like stepping from the refrigerator directly into a blast furnace!  The wind in the desert carries everything from dust to bits of garbage.  When the monsoon season starts on June 15, the wind from the west will bring humidity and (hopefully) rain.  Since the beginning of this year, we have had just 1/3 of an inch of rain here in Phoenix.  When and if the rains come this summer, they will provide nearly all of our moisture for the year and bring fantastic thunder and lightning storms as well as the dreaded "haboobs" or dust storms.    This piece, "Prevailing Winds", is a commemoration of the ever constant wind blowing around me bringing inspiration and hope for the future. 

I created the quilt with commercial batiks and hand-dyed fabrics and fibers using a technique called "quilt-lique", developed and coined by a friend of mine, Betty Hahn.  Quilt-lique is an easy way to construct the quilt using freezer paper and temporary fabric glue.  It is a fun and creative process.  The quilt is machine quilted incorporating some hand stitching.

Frances Murphy

Sorrow of the Dendari Warriors

When she was in Ghana in January, Magie introduced me to the man in the art market who does the repairs for all the antique textile buyers. He has bags of old bits of kente, indigo strips and other bits. It is like a treasure trove of pieces and was one of the treats I gave myself before leaving Ghana was to buy a bunch to tide me over in cold Canada.

So, having these glorious bits hanging around,  one Saturday morning I woke up early with an idea. I got all the blues out and started playing with them. I also wanted to incorporate some of the wooden masks I got from the Mali trader, and then the cowry shells and the porcupine quills just seemed to fit. By the end of the day, the piece was complete. I was starving but feeling VERY satisfied. 

 As to the name, the cowry shells made me think of tears, maybe because I was leaving, the Dendari are not an African tribe, though there is a Dendi tribe in Mali, and the warriors are the masks of course.

I have never had a piece go together so quickly. It was a joy to do, and probably my farewell to Africa piece. Now it is on to another journey.

India again!
I have enough inspirational photos from my holiday in India to make many quilts. In fact I had so many ideas I didnt really know which way to go next.
I really want to have a good display of work at the FOQ to go with my Flower kits (printed by Fiona's block printer and made up by the men in the workshop) and i really want to show a variety of different techniques

I wanted to experiment with new ways of working so started by selecting some of my photos and doing some drawings.
Several samples later I put together my 3rd Voyage

The shapes on the left are the fruit and vegetables on display, the next a vase in a museum in Bhuj, the next shows the circles of pigment for sale in the market, underneath the untensils in a house in the Kutch and the last one a door in Pushkar. 

I really love the size of the quilts. It was Magie who persuaded me to agree to go for the bigger size and I just love it. 

I am off to israel in July so I am hoping that the next couple of quilts may be based on things that I see when i am there.

Voyager No.3

"Taming Bridget Riley"

I am very pleased with this piece because it evolved very naturally. I was playing with my black and white fabrics and pieced the background. The checks and zig zags created such optical chaos, reminding me of Bridget Riley the 'Pop' artist of the 60's & 70's! Using a beautiful piece of purple and pink fabric I cut out the shapes and 'nailed' them down to try and tame the optical movement.