Trip Round the World - version 4

One of my favorite quilt patterns is the "Trip Round the World" pattern. I am making one for my Mom as a raffle quilt for her church. Just for fun, I put together the top and bottom. All I need to do now is pin and quilt the 3 layers together. To pin the layers of the quilt together I need to iron the clean washing - or I can just move it. The washing is on the table that I use to pin quilts together........

The first photo is of the quilt top and the 2nd photo is of the backing.

More Fabric Landscapes - A trade

A very good friend of mine lives in Germany, and I would love Ann Johnston's book " Color by Accident: Low-Water Immersion Dyeing" so..... As Amazon won't post books to South Africa, I have to make another plan.....I'll leave you to guess the trade......meanwhile a photo of my latest Shweshwe landscape

Forays into Fabric Dyeing

In past posts I have spoken of the City and Guilds quilting course I am doing (far too slowly at this stage.....). Well, the next step is to learn to dye my own fabrics. What an adventure and huge learning curve.  I am supposed to be doing Low Water Immersion Dying. That's not what came out :LOL  The colours are too solid. I am pretty impressed with the colours of the dyed fabric though.... (The yellows have come out a bit brown in the photo - I'll take more photos when it stops raining and the sun is out - it could take days :LOL)

So.... round number 2 is "on the boil". This is great fun. The internet is also a wonderful place - what did we do without it? It's so easy to research what went wrong and how to fix it.

Dancing the Happy Dance

I received wonderful news last week - an art gallery in Durban has offered to exhibit some of my fabric landscapes and fabric postcards as part of the 8th Annual Affordable Art Show at the Artspace Gallery in Durban.. I am so excited that I can' find the words to describe it. In a funny kind of way, this is a nice counter to feeling my work is not quite good enough!

Here are some photos of the work that is being exhibited:

Market Day

Saturday morning is market day where we stay...... I took my camera along this morning.....

Look at the wonderful hats from Tibet - it is definitely on the list of purchases.It is made from flour sacks or rice sacks - not sure which one.

The remaining photos are works of art from my favorite Zimbabwean artists - everything from a painting to welded metal African animals.... The African Warthog is definitely on the list of purchases.......

Shweshwe Landscape Series

It would seem I have stumbled on a series.... It would seem that I am developing a passion for making Shweshwe landscapes....You can use exactly the same fabrics in 100's of different ways... No two landscapes are the same. This is the Third in the series....

Shweshwe landscapes

The end of the school year has sneaked  up on us and it's time to make gifts for the teachers who have given so much of their time and energy educating our children. What gifts shall we give? Fortunately, it is fairly simple to whip up a couple of fabric landscapes. I might have mentioned before that the manufacturers of Shweshwe fabric introduced a new range of bright almost luminous colours this year. It's a stunning range. I LOVE working with it and have made the following 2 fabric landscapes as gifts for 2 of the teachers - they are similar but slightly different: