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. 

Workt By Hand: Quilt Show at the Brooklyn Museum

Flying Geese, 1847

We spent a few days in NYC recently (no, I didn't go to Mood; instead I spent my retirement savings at the Strand Bookstore!)...and happened upon a quilt exhibition, Workt By Hand, at the Brooklyn Museum!  

The idea of the show was to place value on the work of the women who made these quilts, who weren't paid for their work (except the joy of keeping their families warm). 

Flying Geese, again!

Of course I took photos, and thought you'd like to see some.  One impressive aspect of these quilts is they were much older than the ones I usually see in exhibitions.  Easily pre-dating many of the Amish quilts we've seen in Pennsylvania, or the quilts in the collection at the Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, NE by 30 years or so!  

 As always, clicking on the photo will get you the largest version available...

Delectable Mountains, 1850

Wedding Ring, 1850

Another view of Wedding Ring, 1850

Star of Bethlehem, 1850 - ALL silk

Tumbling Blocks, 1850, the colors are mostly silk

Maltese Cross, 1870

Log Cabin, 1890 (Barn Raising Arrangement)

Double Wedding Ring, 1930

Details...a few from the Esprit Amish Quilt Collection show in Lancaster

The actual quilting (what holds the 3 pieces of fabric together) is actually the most difficult part of quilting.  Piecing?  Deciding what color to use and how to arrange the block--easy peasy!  But the quilting--it's hard and from the one time I hand-quilted a very small (3' x 3') quilt, I mostly remember lots of needle pricks!  But if you look closely, quilting, the handstitched designs that are the backbone of a sturdy & beautiful quilt, are the most time-consuming and the most detailed part of most quilts you'll see...certainly the most detailed part of these Amish masterpieces.  (Remember, click on a photo to see the original size & get even more detail.) 

This one is my new desktop background!  Like being lost in colorful city blocks!

Music?  I Fall to Pieces by Patsy Cline.  Oh, Patsy, I love how you're just a beat slower than the music!

Live from Lancaster! Amish Quilts from the Esprit Collection

We made a special trip to the Lancaster Quilt & Textile Museum to see all 82 quilts from the Esprit Amish Quilt Collection in one place.  They are amazing, mostly from about 1880 - 1925, made from solid-color pieces of wool.  Known for their graphic quality and modern art sensibility, Amish quilts made a big splash when they were exhibited as art at the Whitney in NYC in 1971.

Lancaster is a great little town, in the heart of Amish country...very charming & lots to see & do. Sunday afternoons are a good time to be out and about as the Amish head out in their carriages to socialize.

Here are a very few of the 82 quilts, just to show you some of our favorites.  I'll put some detail shots on the next post. Enjoy!

A quick note about the collection: they are in financial troubles and really need a donor to help them find a new home (though the collection will remain together & be used for shows; but will spend more of its time in storage than on show).  If you're an oil baroness or google heir, please contact them at the link above!

Music?  Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend?  by Marilyn (who else?)  To explain the pun, two of the above quilts are called Diamond in the Square...sorry!

Bella models the W. African fabric quilt; knitted socks

You may have seen the list of items I've made (I've made more, but don't necessarily have pics, or haven't put them up); this in particular, a tablecloth & 2 small quilts I made of fabric we bought in Ghana & Burkina Faso.

Well, it's winter here now (cold & rainy tonight), and Bella is staying warm by avoiding the hard wood floors and the leather love seat!

And here are some nice warm wool socks from back in the late 1980s when I was knitting socks a lot.  They're the Roommate's.  They haven't been worn that much (wool doesn't look good at all when you live in the Middle East!), so they're 20+ yrs old but in great shape...I can never make the same thing twice, hence the mis-match.

Do you love the bedspread pictured above?  It's a print from India.

Other stuff I've made: Quilts

West African Fabric Shop

I'm always raving about West African textiles & the roommate's & my 5-week shopping trip there...here are some quilts to show you what I made.  I bought a lot of fabric, and haven't made much of a dent in it, so plan to use more for dresses, shirts for the roommate, etc...

The first quilt (they are smallish 6' x 4' or so each) is called West African Fabric shop and shows nice orderly rows of fabric, one each of every kind I bought!  A friend in Dubai machine-quilted them for me.

The Anarchy of the African Market

The second quilt is titled The Anarchy of the African Market.  We like markets and find that they are a good place to observe the local people just being people, not selling things to tourists, or performing in any way.  We like to walk around a good market for a long time.  But the markets in Africa are pretty chaotic, to say the least, and really, downright scary.  (This doesn't include the much smaller, much harder-to-get-to markets of Goram Goram, Burkina Faso, or in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, which were fun, friendly, not crowded and very interesting--though not if you were looking for tourist treasure.)  So this 2nd quilt tries to reflect that anarchy and explains why I ended up not buying much fabric at the markets!  And mostly why we skedaddled after 20-30 minutes...we did try to go a few times, in Ouagadougou, in Accra, in Lame, and in Tamale, in northern Ghana, but never lasted a half hour--scary!  Jammed so tight you knew you were a target for robbery (I get nervous about this anywhere in the world), and also, it was pretty easy to lose each other!  Yikes.

This last one is a table cloth, and it sort of quilted itself, because as I sewed each strip on, I sewed it to the backing, then I just put the binding on.  Hope you like seeing these.  Comments? Questions?

Here's a mix of classic highlife music to get you in the mood.  I'd recommend looking for a classic highlife (50s-60s) CD online, or at the library, to get a better taste of this amazing music.