I have not traveled widely, but I hope to some day. I keep a big binder of travel articles, and one thing that always draws me in is photos of markets and their displays of spices.
This year, I bought a huge collection of photos from the estate sale of a couple who had traveled the world in the 1990s and early 2000s. Among their photos, I found these two that inspired me for this theme:
I decided to stick with those simple shapes of bowls and piles of spices, but I used more heavily patterned fabrics to portray the bowls, instead of the solid colors shown in the photo. These are all scraps of my own handwoven fabrics, and to me they evoke the feeling of travel in exotic locales. I turned the selvedges up to be the top of the bowl, and then tucked in triangles of wool felt and vintage velveteen for the pyramids of spice powders. I did some hand-stitching on the felt, and also did blanket stitch around the cut edges of the handwoven fabrics.
As always, there are things that could be improved in this piece -- it would be fun to embroider the names of the spices in the background. But I do love the warm spicy colors, and the fact that my handwoven fabrics are now out on display instead of tucked away in a box.
To read a little more about this piece, you can also visit my home blog, Deep in the Heart of Textiles.
Bags of spices was the first thing I thought of for this challenge, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work into a quilt. You did, and the textures of the bowls, along with the stitching, works so well! Love those earthy, spicy colors!
ReplyDeleteThat is just adorable. I love your choice of fabrics and the hand-stitching. Great work!
ReplyDeleteyou definitely captured the feeling of piles of spices and I really like your fabric choices - very warm and inviting which suits the theme really well.
ReplyDeleteThis is wonderful! Your hand woven fabrics make perfect bowls and you've really captured the feeling of a spice market :)
ReplyDeleteWe have visited spice markets on our travels Gwen and your quilt definitely evokes them. It is a very tactile piece I can just imagine stroking some of those lovely handwoven fabrics :)
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