Stuff I've Made: Quilts with West African Wax Prints

African Market quilt.

I was trying to show a colleague my West African wax print quilts that I made shortly after our trip to Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana & Cote d'Ivoire in 2006.  And realized that I have mentioned them but never put them up on this site.  The Roommate had 2 snow days last week (I had none!), so he took some photos for me. Thanks, Honey! 

So, we did our last big backpacking/overland trip for 5 weeks through West Africa.  Last because we're getting pretty old to be lugging backpacks around and sitting on buses for hours, staying in places with shared baths, etc.  We've done that all over the world, partly to stretch our travel & souvenir-buying $$, but also because riding buses (not renting a car & driver) and staying in hostels is a great way to see how the local people live. We don't cover as much ground and certainly travel inefficiently, but on the other hand it's a great way to find out what's happening, plus watch some wonderful Nigerian movies on the bus, and get off and do bird-watching every time the bus driver takes yet another unscheduled break. We are usually the only non-locals on the bus, always of great interest and high entertainment value, plus people are generally quite friendly and curious about who we are and what we are doing there.  

Reverse of African Fabric Shop.

We knew we wanted to buy as much kente, kuba, bogolon textiles, and wax print fabric as we could carry on the plane (about 40 lbs/each). So we took old clothes and shoes that we left behind, and just stuffed our backpacks! We used a scale in a little neighborhood market to check & were thrilled when we got to the airport & checked in with 79 lbs!  

Reverse of African Market quilt.

We've spent time in markets all over the world (we love them, in fact, and go out of our way to be in town on market day), but found them to be so crowded that you spent the whole time worrying about being pick-pocketed.  Also, they are HUGE, so it's really hard to find what you want; i.e., the textile stores!  When we finally found the fabric section in the Accra market, we discovered that the prices weren't that much better, and the selection wasn't any different in the less crowded, well-organized shops a little bit out from the city center.  

African Fabric Shop.

Speaking of fabric shops...they were wonderful. (A few photos here.) Clean, organized, & often with marked prices--a real luxury.  So the second quilt I made is called African Fabric Shop.  I used pieces of all 44 fabrics I bought, (as I did with the Market quilt), but tried to make them a bit more orderly.  Both of these quilts are smaller (3' x 4' or so), and we use them all the time in the sun room when we're reading or watching a movie.  Bella also loves them, which is really all we care about.

The last picture, below, is to show you the great machine-quilting my friend Mala Ramakrishnan, of Classic Quilts Dubai did.  Mala is an amazing quilter & a true artist, so I always felt safe giving her my quilts & saying, "Whatever you think will look best."  Both are quilted with the same pattern, to make them a matched set, along with the same fabric selections being used in both. 

Last Quilt Update

A photo to show you the quilt, which is now finished & on our bed.  I had to bind it, which required lots of handwork (and you know I hate that stuff).  I am trying to take a Gertie approach to handwork & think of it as relaxing...so, zen stitching!  

I even finished up after our yoga class this morning!  Everybody say, "Ommmmmm!"  ॐ

The Last Quilt (?)

I made this quilt when we lived in Abu Dhabi.  I'm calling it the Last Quilt because I don't really plan on making many more quilts. (How many do you need? We only have 2 beds!)

A friend helped pick out the main fabric & then I did a bunch of tests w/ the leaves, green swirly, dark purple & the pale purple to see which showed off the pattern the best.  I originally thought I'd use the dark purple, too, but though it matched, it was just too dark, & because it is solid, too boring w/ the pale purple (which has a pattern, but hard to see in these photos).  You can see which version won out above.  I really like how it's sort of an optical illusion:  is the green floating on the pale purple?  

Here are a few more up close photos which show the swirly machine quilting.  I like it because it matches the swirliness of the green fabric, too.  Denise at Upstairs Quilting machine-quilted it for me & it looks amazing.  It has bamboo/cotton batting inside, which she said was really nice to work with.

Below you can see that the actual quilt top was rather small, so I added three borders. First the checkerboard using the dark purple.  Then I (fortunately) had plenty of the leaf fabric, so made that border nice & wide.  But even then, when I pulled it out of the box in the basement a while back, I could see it wouldn't be big enough for our queen-sized beds.  So I found the plain purple border (far right in photo below) at Hancock Fabric and added that.  That's the fabric I'll do the binding with, too.  

For the back, again, I was thinking Last Quilt, so I made an attempt to use up as many scraps & fat quarter sets as I could.  It's very scrappy & doesn't match at all, but I think it's sort of fun.  And we can flip over the quilt every once in a while for a change.

I had so many great sets that friends have given me over the years; you can see two of them here, but we don't really have the sort of house where I have lots of quilted things laying around or hanging, and so I attempted to use a small percentage of them up--at least I'll see them a bit more now that they are no longer living in a box of fat quarters!

Tilly always does such a good job remembering to add a song...I often forget, but there is always music in my head--my big problem is getting that song out so I can concentrate!  

Here's a fun one:  Travis Tritt, Here's a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)