Emma and Adele

This week, I followed up on a very interesting parcel that arrived, quite unexpectedly, in the mail. It contained three gorgeous fat quarters of hand-printed Ghanian batiks, and the pattern for a table runner which used them along with plain black fabric. The package came from Adele, from Grande Prairie - someone I'd never met before. She had lived in Ghana for some months a couple of years ago, and spent a good bit of time working with Emma (pictured in the top photo), a young Ghanaian woman who makes batik fabrics. She brought some of the fabrics back to Canada with her, and has had some success in


selling them locally. She was writing to me to ask if I might be interested in selling her fabrics through my business. The fabrics themselves are of superior quality - with a lovely "hand" to them, and with the wax well removed (not an easy job). Adele and I talked this weekend, and to make a long story short, I am going to start carrying kits which include her fabrics right away - I'll have them in time for Quilt Canada - and have also ordered samples from which to order more fabric. I'm thrilled that this connection has come about - all because Adele came across my website and realized that we shared the same interest in supporting African women in business. The curved table mat and the indigo and white bed quilt were both made by Adele, and are great examples of ways to use this beautiful fabric. The photos beneath the samples give you some idea how rich they are. One of the lovely things is that the motifs have been scaled down so that they're more appropriate for quilting. I hope that if you're in Halifax for Quilt Canada, that you'll stop by the Kitambaa booth to see these for yourself firsthand. There's nothing like smoothing your own hand over the cotton to get a sense of what it would feel like in a quilt!

Ablade Glover and Ghana's No. 1 Taxi Driver

An artist who has been extremely influential in Ghana's art world is Ablade Glover. He had a special exhibit showing at the Artists' Alliance in Accra when we visited it, and the multitudinous splashes of bright colour are evocative of Ghanaian markets and crowds, so much so that you can almost feel the heat and the press of bodies going on around you when you look at the paintings. Or hear people calling out to one another, or small confrontations as negotiations on pricing take place. Everything is so fluid - always something new going on around you or coming towards you or up above you or down at pavement level. With simple lines and shapes and colours, the paintings achieve something that words alone can't convey. The two paintings shown here just give you a taste of his work. The man photographed below, however, is not Ablade Glover, but Harry Jo, Ghana's No. 1 taxi driver. He reliably took us everywhere we wanted to go during our week in Accra. His English was good and his sense of humour even better. So if you're ever going to
Ghana, give me a call, and I'll give you his phone number! (I promised him I would publish his photo and give you all this information!!!)

Ghana

Ghana is the first country in West Africa that I've ever visited. It has the same flavour as many countries in Africa, and yet is very different. We came here to explore the crafts, textiles and art found in this place, and have not been disappointed. From meeting Hawa selling her beads, to Esther making magnificent batik fabrics, to the Kente stalls, it has been as much and more than we hoped for. The evening after we arrived, we were fortunate enough to go out for dinner with Trish Graham, a long term Ghana resident originally from Canada, and Maggie Relph and her husband, from the UK-based African Fabric Shop. They gave us the names of
some wonderful contacts, and their phone numbers, and we have been following up on these ever since. It is hot, hot, hot and steamy, steamy, steamy here, so we are drinking gallons of water and placing ourselves in close proximity to any fans we can find, but it is all worth it. Internet connections are very iffy here, so I probably won't be posting again until after we fly on to London on Sunday, but wanted to let you know that all is well, and we can't wait to show you the glass and painted beads, and the cloth we have purchased here. Stay tuned . . .