World in Stitches

Every now and then you take a risk. I was with people buying sari fabric at the LuLu Hypermarche in Doha, which, surprisingly, had a very good sari selecton, from the lower prices to the exquisite. My house guests loved going to the LuLu, and several bought sari fabrics at the LuLu dealer upstairs.

One time the salesman brought out sari fabric I had never seen before and never seen anything like it before - it was a creamy white, hand loomed, with gold metallic embellishments and weaving through it. At the end, where the fanciest part of the sari is, was a temple scene, all in gold and cream except for a row of umbrellas. The unbrellas were over elephant heads.

My Indian friends have told me it is an annual festival, held around February, in India where there are both elephants and unbrellas featured at one particular and very special temple. How totally fabulous is that?

I bought the fabric, I couldn’t resist. I have used all the lengths of creamy hand-woven fabric in countless ways, and the gold/cream trip of the sides was even in the Bride’s Bag, but the end - I sandwiched it and hand quilted it, and I use it as a wall hanging in my guest room. It never fails to give me joy with it’s serene, elegant and joyful colors.

This quilt began in a Mystery Night at Ramstein AFB, taught in 2002 (?) by Kimberly Einmo before her first book was published. Oh! We had so much fun, but making zillions of half square triangles was a chore.

The top went together quickly, but I had a photograph of a tombstone from when we visited Ireland, and I wanted to use it as a quilting motif in the white centers. I also found a Celtic border I liked, but it was very small, and I had to enlarge it over and over to get it to the proper size for my border.

The hand quilting took forever, partially because the white fabric was sort of rubbery, and hand quilting through it was tough. Aaarrgh! I didn’t finish hand quilting until I was back in the Kaiserslautern area for an emergency surgery, and had nothing to do by wait for my return flight to Doha and quilt!

My friend Shirley and I were bored, and we challenged one another to this quilt. We had the patternm by Mimi Shimp, but we both changed it dramatically - I wanted the blocks in the order they were sung, so enlarged them all to 18 x 18. We also used the beautiful duppioni silks readily available in Doha, and other more difficult fabrics.

The main motif was totally hand appliqued, but the minor motifs were machine appliqued.

We had given ourself 6 months to get the blocks finished, and another year to hand quilt the resulting top. The reality - after 2 1/2 years, I machine quilted the finished top just to get it done. I am not unhappy. I love this quilt, and I will hang it for one month every year, from December 6th - the Feast of St. Nicholas - until January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany.

Helene taught our Saturday group how to do this easy tiled quilt, another of the stack and slash quilts. Again, I doubled the number of fabrics to make a larger quilt. You use freezer paper ironed onto the top fat quarter to guide your slashes.

Our friend had a Grandmother shower for Cathy, and we all gave her presents for her new grandbaby. I made this baby quilt - it was one of my first adventures into machine applique, and I love it!

Sandy was leaving and I wanted her to have a little gift:

I sure hope I cut that thread off before I gave it to her! ;-P

Louise had a baby, a beautiful baby boy - who wouldn’t sleep for a while. I made quilts for both the baby and his beautiful big sister.

Naomi’s brand new baby needed a very Gulf baby quilt, so I did a camel with a braided tail. The black around the camel has crescent moons in it, a traditionally Islamic motif. Paper piecing has never been my favorite technique, but it is a lot easier when you blow a small pattern up 400%!

This is my beautiful daughter-in-law who was teaching English in France, and perfecting her French at the same time. I made her a Paris quilt with some really cool fabric I found that had cafe scenes and Eiffel towers on it.

The background fabric is ecru on ecru, an old map of Paris. The whole quilt was so much fun.

I made this for the first challenge the Qatar Quilters ever held. A khanjar is a curved daggar worn at the waist, primarily in Oman and Yemen. I wanted to use a piece of Damascus silk brocade left over from an evening dress (my husband had brought me the silk from Syria) and I wanted to do some embroidery and embellishment with the fabulous silver thread they use in Oman. I machine quilted a palm tree and my name in black thread on the black background. I kept it. I love this piece.