The weeks seem to be flying by.
I usually travel ten months of the year to far-flung places, sharing my ideas on Textile Art, photography and travel.
Sixteen months have gone by, and the world has changed due to the Covid Virus. I’m home working in the studio, and goodness knows how long it will be before I get on one of those big white birds with engines again.
I’m sharing a piece of textile art that travels with me. It’s always in my carry on luggage, and when I get to a hotel room, it is placed under my computer as a comfort mat.
For the past months, it’s been sitting by my desk in the great room downstairs.

I guess you could say this is a Textile diary. The background fabric is handwoven indigo from Guatemala; the embroidery in the centre is the way the pieces of fabric are joined because this is a skirt worn by the women of one of the areas I visit.
Each piece on this quilt is a memory. There is a Lady with a basket on her head carrying a fish, small pieces of embroidery from Mexico, India, Thailand and Laos. Beads from Kenya, Japanese indigo and the small water birds I see when I’m in Asilomar, California.
It represents a year of travel.
Almost all of the fabric is vintage or antique and created by the invisible hands of others.
I’ve stitched all of it with Aurifil thread from 50 weight, 40 weight, 12 weight. A little by machine but primarily by hand, most of it was worked in a hotel room somewhere in the world.

I decided to use up some of my Indigo pieces for another quilt. A Siddi Quilt (sometimes called a Kanartaka or a Kawadi quilt).

The Siddis are Indians of East African descent. Their quilts are distinctive in their use of colour and the technique used in which patches of repurposed clothing are placed over a cotton sari foundation and hand stitched with a running stitch. They work from the outer border toward the middle.

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