A Ugandan Homecoming

There is a sense of coming home, arriving back in Uganda. Village life continues much as it has for many, many years. The women are still harvesting corn, coffee, sorgum and ground nuts, while the men haul huge bunches of green bananas up onto their bicycles and transport them to market. The smells are so familiar - dust coupled with exhaust fumes; while the songbirds fill the air with sound. We are back in Mbarara, after a week in Kampala, and the same "firm" mattresses await us, and we stock up on bottled water to combat the mid-day heat.

It's good to be here, and we look forward to the coming week, when Alice will arrive so we can plan the workshop together (and assemble the new sewing machines). Then on Sunday, all the Bitengye Designers come to Mbarara, and the workshop proper starts on Monday morning. We are feeling a little older than we were at the beginning of this project, but the women (who thought we might never come back), are just as determined as ever to get to work and get sewing. Truly amazing!

How I Spent My Summer Holidays - Pacific Rim, Vancouver Island

What a summer we've had on the west coast this year! Day after day of sunshine, breaking all previously-set records. I've spent huge chunks of it outside in one place or another, enjoying the beauty of it all, and filling up my "creative well" with all sorts of images and ideas to feed me during the winter to come. It's not that I haven't stitched and quilted, but these have been things to do in the cool of the morning, or when travelling, rather than central to my everyday studio practice.
These first few images are from Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I went

camping there for a week in July, with my husband David. We re-acquainted ourselves with the joys of tenting, and making a campfire, and took walks on the beach and through the rain forest, often accompanied by our daughter Jessie, who makes her home in Tofino (it's Jessie who's perched up in the cedar in one of these photos). I spent some time with my sketch book, trying to capture the lines of the waves, as surfers rode them in to shore; and the lines of ferns growing under the canopy of coniferous trees, and the lines of long-dead cedars arising from the bog. (Did you know that cedars can remain standing 100 years after they die? Something to do

with the oil in the wood.) And I took lots and lots of photos - moss hanging from trees, boardwalk pathways through the forest, asparagus ferns, the curve of bare branches - its all fodder for future work.
But I think the biggest value of spending lots of time walking and observing and just be-ing in places like this, is that is slows one down enough to pay attention, to actually see. We miss so much when we travel too fast. And this ability to pay attention serves us well in the creative life. In fact it's essential to it. Being in the forest allows me to connect with it in a visceral way, and that connection will show in my work. Nothing tangible, exactly, but I know it matters somehow, even if I can't quite put words to the "why" of it. I hope your summer has been rich in experience and in filling your own creative wells. It's good to re-connect with you after this hiatus, and I'll be sharing more of my summer with you in future blog posts, as the days begin to shorten and the 
temperature begins to cool.

Adventures with Indigo

Like many others, I have always been drawn to the colour indigo. It reminds me of my favourite pair of bell-bottomed blue jeans from back in the sixties and the overalls I dressed my children in when they were little. Then there are the Japanese and African fabrics I've found and admired in more recent years. Who knows, but there's undeniably something quite magic about this blue. The urge to work with indigo fabric I've made myself has become quite strong of late, so for the last two days, under the able instruction of Margaret (who has had a little more experience than Joan or Pamala or I), my backyared has become an indigo dye studio. Margaret began 

by showing us how the fabric can be folded or tied or pleated to create different patterns. We admired some of her own work, then prepared our own "indigo vat" using a starter kit I'd purchased from Maiwa. I think the first time I saw an indigo vat was in Morocco in 1974, having no notion at that time that this was something I might like to do one day. Amazing! While the vat fermented, gradually turning from a dark blue to a clear greeny-yellow colour, we prepared our fabrics. And then the dyeing and dipping began. When pieces emerged from the vat, they were a yucky green colour, but as they reacted with oxygen in the air, they deepened to a glorious dark blue. In no time at all, the grass was covered with our first pieces. Some proved too light, and needed a second dipping. Some didn't turn out quite as we'd imagined, in fact every piece was a surprise when we opened it up, but we were thrilled with it
all. And there was enough left in the vat at the end to try over-dyeing some black and white fabric, and to include an old flannel sheet that has been in my husband's family for eons, and a white cotton coverlet that I'd recently found at the Free Store on Hornby. The whole experience was very earthy, satisfying some deep longing in me to work directly with this amazing colour. I'm already looking forward to trying out new ways of manipulating the fabric to produce new textures on the fabric, and wondering if it's possible to thicken indigo and print with it. Time to do a little more research. Until next time, may you enjoy this summer however you choose to spend your creative energy.

Early Days of Summer

The month of June has been full of a number of marvellous thing. Most recently, I was pleased to be able to visit FibreArts in Madeira Park (on the Sunshine Coast), for the opening of the exhibit Architextiles. The yurts gallery was the ideal venue in which to exhibit five pieces from each of six artists. The interpretations of the theme varied widely, from inukshuks to cod fish to gargoyles, but each grouping formed a cohesive whole - each was an example of "working in a series". I had never been to the yurts before, but it was well worth the two ferry rides and very long day to do so. I would highly

 recommend it to anyone venturing up the Sunshine Coast this summer. Most of the month of June has been spent over on Hornby Island, though, where I have gathered images, both in my mind and in photographs. I'm not sure where they might crop up in my work, but am certain that observing keenly and just be-ing time is just as important to the creative process as making art. It's as though in so doing, I am training myself to really see. Sometimes I chose to put the camera away, and just be in the moment - watching a pod of killer whales swimming close in beside the ferry on our way to Powell River

on Saturday, or drinking in the scarlet and magenta of the sun setting that night, hearing the birdsong of at least 6 different birds early in the morning, gathering rocks with my grand-daughter on the shore, and later, watching her sturdy little naked body going running across the hard packed sand and into the water at Tribune Bay. All of it is part of living a creative life, and I love it. I wish each of you a summer full of great adventures and small wonders.

Incomparable Buttons - from South Africa

I have been carrying buttons made by the Incomparable Button Company of South Africa almost since I started Kitambaa Designs seven years ago. These are handmade buttons, and hand-painted too. They're all made of clay, fired at a very high temperature, which means they can withstand washing in a washing machine. If you drop them on a cement floor they will break, but otherwise they stand up very well indeed. I have just put the collection I carry up on my website - www.kitambaa.com - so you can access them easily year round, and not just at quilt shows. The uses for these buttons are endless. The knitters amongst you may see them as buttons on a cardigan, while embellishers will see them as ways to add an extra something to your quilts. Someone sent me a photo earlier this year of these buttons used to decorate the top of wooden boxes, and many people have used them on greeting cards. You may well have seen the wall-quilts I've made incorporating these buttons - the most recent one became one of my "Limited Edition Kits" - "A Gathering of Guinea Fowl" - and sold out almost immediately. There are more designs in the works at the moment, and I'll be sure to post them here as soon as they're ready. In the meantime, I thought you'd be interested in seeing a photo of the women who make these buttons, all dressed here in traditional costumes. If I ever make it back to Johannesburg again, I hope very much to be able to visit them. In the meantime, I am

 delighted to be able to carry their products. Perhaps they might challenge you to create a quilt using one or more cards of buttons? Until next time, Happy Quilting!

What Else Have I Been Doing?

In the gaps between shows, and the tired moments sitting in my cosy spot on the couch at the end of the day, I have managed to work on a few smallish projects of my own over the last few weeks. The arrival of Molly Mae Shepherd at the end of April awakened a somewhat dormant desire to knit. And knitting little things is so much more do-able than big people sweaters. Molly's first Gabby-knitted sweater is being blocked as I write, and only needs one button sewn in place before I can present it to her. I've already given Nora her first knitting lesson, as you can see, and she was only too happy to get involved, winding the yarn around herself with great enthusiasm. So I've just started knitting a cardigan for her, to match Molly's.

Meanwhile I'm getting back to an African improvisational piece that's been on the go for some weeks. I've been using African textiles and crafts as my inspiration - making up the design after a few preliminary sketches. The plan is to make six more of these, then to hang them together, joined by brass beads from Ghana. Still a way to go. This project is collaborative. I do the piecing and quilting and then hand it over to my friend Joan Darling, who adds the beading.

And ever since my copy of Quilting Arts arrived on the doorstep about three months ago with a photo of one of Dijanne Cevaal's Travellers Blankets on the front cover, I have been seeing hand stitching everywhere, and am very drawn to it. While in Gibsons I started stitching some African indigo scraps in bright perle cottons. And I can't seem to stop. Someone asked me yesterday what it was going to be when it's finished, and I have no idea. I'm just enjoying the rhythm of sitting down and making up where I put the threads as I go. I put wool on the back of each piece to help keep it firm, and have loved needling through it. Now I wish I'd never taken the old family blankets to the Goodwill! I'll have to keep my eyes open for somebody elses castoffs.

And lastly, I've been doing some more screen-printing. I had some African fabric with guinea fowl on it last year, but ran out. These drawings are my own rendering of that fabric, and intended to be used with fusible web on the back, and then cut out and added as detail to a composition. I think I might try it next time on some brighter gold fabric, but there doesn't seem to be any of that in stock right now. I guess I'll have to put it aside and get to work on my piece for the La Conner show - "Abstracted". It's due at the end of this month, so no more procrastinating! So that's what I'm up to, and I plan to blog about the process for my abstracted piece, so stay tuned. And Happy Quilting until next time!

Nanaimo Quilt Show - and a Few of my Favourites

May is a busy month, by any standards. For the quilt show enthusiast, it is full of so many possibilities that one must pick and choose what events to take in. For me this meant attending the Sunshine Coast Quilt Show and the Nanaimo Quilt Show. And there was so much to see at both - such a variety of quilts - something to please everyone. I've selected photos of just a few of the quilts from Nanaimo - those with an African theme - because I just can't show you everything. The first quilt is Avril Valentine's. It began as a Kitambaa kitted wall-hanging, but wow, what she's done to expand it is fabulous! Avril was so excited to show it to me, as well she should be. The second quilt, made by Bev Cottrell, has a wonderful story to it. She attended my African Collage class just shortly after the death of her husband of 60 years. A friend had persuaded her to go, and she really felt as though she was drowning in class. In fact I think she wanted to crawl into a little hole in the ground when we did the walkabout at the end of the workshop. But she took her beginnings

home and laid all the pieces out on the floor. She rearranged what she had made and she took some bits apart and she made other new elements, the whole design process taking her weeks. But it all came together in the most beautiful way, and when she looked up, and it was done, she had also come through the worst of her grieving for her husband. Thank you, Bev, for sharing your story. You are a strong and courageous woman, and your story is a gift to us. Lillian Charron made the third piece, and I just love the simplicity of it - the implied story and the sense of space and possibility. Kathy Calder's African Collage comes next, and I am wowed by the

 colours and the movement in it, and the balance between all the elements. When Kathy was in class, she kept apologizing for doing something quite different from everyone else. I thought it was terrific at the time, and still do.  And lastly are two pieces from the grannies exhibit in aid of the Stephen Lewis Foundation - the first by Pat Cruzcor and the second by Noreen Duncan. There were many powerful pieces in this exhibit, but these were two of those that touched me most. The entire exhibit is still to be seen at many locations in BC, and you can go online to Royal City Gogos to see where it will be in the future. As for me, I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the quilts on exhibit, but am happy to be home again, getting the website in a bit better shape, and making new work. Thank you to all of you who visited my booth and supported me at both shows, and to the show organizers too, who helped things run as smoothly as possible. By the way, I heard a rumour somewhere that I was going out of business. Well I want to reassure you that it just isn't true! I have narrowed my focus considerably, and am now sticking with all things African and quilt related, at least from the Kitambaa point of view. But I'm still very much alive and well as is Kitambaa. I hope each of you out there in blogland is enjoying your own creative life. Good to catch up with you, and I hope to share more of my journey more regularly with you over the coming months. Until next time, Happy Quilting!