Little Art Quilts

And more little quilts while I work on my stars. I want to sew tonight and get off this computer for a while. I am trying to take photos of the step by step process I use for the Batik stars. In the mean time I loved these two little quilts. The black and white one has some hand stitching as well as staples. This happened when my daughter needed something stapled together (crafty thing that she is) and I just had to try it on the quilt I was working on. FUN FUN FUN

Fun Fun Day, Manyana

Well here it is. The certificate and prize giving out at Manyana Village. What a FUN FUN day that was.

I would just like to say a word about going out into a village and teaching. There is a BIG miss conception here about teaching ladies (or men) a new skill. Firstly we were asked how many sewing machines we needed to hire...... HOLD ON... I will not go and teach these lovely willing ladies how to do something they cannot continue. Most of them do not even have power in their homes, how are they supposed to use a sewing machine even if they could afford it....NO...We will teach by hand, and on fabrics they can afford. The quilting fabrics are expensive anyways, well, add on customs, VAT, shipping etc. One yard is about what they spend on food for a week. We found some good but cheaper quality cotton as well as explaining how to use the dreaded Polycotton. These ladies did these quilts all by HAND. They can also make bags, baby balls, pillow cases...things they can sell in and around the village as well as craft fairs.

Congratulations ladies of Manyana, you did a fantastic job. Well done :)
A special thanks must go out to my mother Mrs Case (handing out the certificates) for it was she that did all the hard work on the syllabus and preparations, fabric hunting....ah heck, she did all the background work to make this happen. Lorato and KT for their skills as teachers. We have to of course teach in Setswana and they did a fantastic job at it. Thanks to Ludibo and the Lutheran Church for funding this program and finding us to do this. You are all stars in my book.

Batik stars

I have chosen this quilt to walk through with the processes and thoughts unique to quilting in Botswana. The first thing that comes to mind is that I do a lot of sewing and dream of having a nice Burnina quilting machine. Two problems on this front. Firstly there is no one in Botswana that can fix one anyway. There are ways around this, friends go back and forth to South Africa and I know they would take it, I just hate asking friends for favors. Secondly I am a widowed mother of two lovely kids so the expense is above what I can do. Singer is well known here so I stick with my old and faithful. She has never let me down but does not have the fancy stuff you will see in other blogs about quilters. Here it is good old fashioned sewing for now :)

This quilt will have stars of different colours in bands of bright batik sashing. I just cant decide which center I like, I think I am going for the middle one. The top one is nice but looks like ears of a star. The bottom one I think is just to fussy. I liked the idea originally of the different colour for the center but when I see it I think in the whole quilt it will look messy. So middle it is. Off to sew more while I watch some Boston Legal.

Small 8" Quilts framed

When I work on small quilts I tend to have a lot of stuff next to me. I had cut out this lovely African lady and places her down next to me. WOW I would not have necessarily picked this fabric for the background but I was in love at the marriage of the two fabrics. The hues and colors just were meant to be. The strips on the side were not a fluke, I had paired them to be with her. I had cut a frayed them for extra texture and love weaving fabrics so that was a natural for me.

Color Play

I am a simplest at heart. I love plain squares with color as the play factor. I spend hours coloring my grid paper for a new quilt in the color series. Here is MY new bed quilt. For 10 years I had the first quilt I ever made on my bed and it bothered me as I did not understand the maths involved in quilting at the time, and it did not match my mind. I have saved up squares of my favorite fabrics in the colors in my bedroom. Pink, Purple, Blue, Turquoise and green. This is a square king size bed, so the quilt pattern is a perfect square which is my favorite for designing. I love maths and patterns which all show up in the color play series. Here is another in the series to show the love of color play.