A little more than creating a quilt.

Being back in the studio I have the advantage of having all of my creative narratives around me.  Books are just one inspiration and each new one sits on the desk until I have a chance to review it completely.   This exciting stack has been there since December last year.!!!

I use them constantly for  ideas and critical techniques.

But it can’t always be that way, however. In the space I travel, I use the time available to me to my advantage and I gather photographs, sketches and ‘stuff’, (fabric, and embroidered textiles) and eventually they become inspiration for my art and my creations.

Nepal

I visited Nepal with the Destination Craft Show  in March  and I shouldn’t have been surprised that the textiles I saw there would take me to unknown places.

Realistically, fabric is everywhere we look no matter where we are.

The image below is of a man sewing in the street, the cars whizzing by, the dust settling on his machine disturbed by hundreds of feet, cows and all types of vehicles and yet, he doggedly sewed on. I loved the textures of his hat, his vest shirt and scarf.

It proves that the use of the stitch ties us to the past and is part of our everyday life. I would love to be able to interpret that in fabric, but its a little beyond me right now.

However, the fabric I bought in Nepal is being used in a very different way this week. I call it painting with cloth and its just perfect for my quilt, ‘Finding Frida’ It has nothing to do with Nepal, its Mexican inspired…… or then again does it?

The plain fabric I bought is dyed with a huge amount of saturation, the cotton is fine and just wonderful for the brilliance I’m looking for in this piece.

India.

This quilt was an intuitive response to an image  took of a building near the Taj Mahal a few years ago. The image was drawn while working in Italy and became a quilt in my studio using an old jacket made in India as background fabric.  It’s not fancy, but it’s the relationship of fabric, image and stitch that excites me. This quilt makes a connection to the trip that I was on.

The refining of the process requires a little practice, but an experiment like this is time well spent to create.

I’m about to embark on yet another journey to India.

Travel with me to India in September with Mc Calls and Craft Tours