Mali collaboration

If you are in Washington DC tomorrow...head to the Textile Museum. 😁

My collaborative piece ‘Hunting with Husband’ will be part of a one day exhibition of art quilts which were made using an embroidery from a Mali woman. These women have fled conflict induced gender based violence and are being taught skills for earning their own livelihood. ‘Sister Artists’ is a project under the umbrella of the Advocacy Project and Quilts for Change.
The work will be auctioned and the money will go back into the project in Mali.

Finished! Sister Artists

The binding is on. The label and the sleeve on the back. And the parcelling up has been done.

And the parcel started its journey to Washington DC at around noon today.
Hurrah!😁👍🏻

Sister Artists

Sister Artists
And the front!

Today I have been stitching the backing on...(while I sat for nearly 2 hours waiting at the hospital eye clinic. I am glad that I have had such helpful Dr.’s lately. )

I tried to keep the embroidery , done by the lady in Mali, the focus. Yet I wanted to set a scene as well.
The work had been called Hunting with Husband. In my head, the story showed the lady working in their plot while the husband gets rid of birds coming to take their harvest.

Sister Artists

So, teasing a bit, I have finished the embroidery. All that is left is backing and binding.

I hadn’t planned to put a backing and I really liked the way the back told the story of the stitching on the front. But when I was showing my friend the progress and mentioned leaving it like that, she suggested a backing. Her reasoning, that whoever would bid on it might be a bit reluctant on how to hang it and care for it. 

Closeup of part of the reverse. 

As I have thought about that, I realised it was wise advice. Someone who knows textiles might appreciate the view of the back. But if it were someone else, they might worry about threads catching, etc. 

The reverse of the stitching. 

So, I am putting on a backing and binding. I will show the complete version when that is finished. 

Another closeup. 

Sister Artists

close up of greenery in the foreground.

The fringe of the precious fabric (which didn’t work for this project). I turned the fringe upside down and secured it with a green crochet cotton thread.

Sister Artists

I am nearing the last of the stitching now. This is a closeup of the stitching on the tree leaves.

The fabric I used was actually shrubbery which I turned upside down to be clumps of leaves.

Sister Artists

so to the leaves for the trees.

I had a precious piece of fabric I knew was the right colour for the leaves. I cut it into sections that would work in an abstracted tree sort of way. 

That is until I had positioned and repositioned them. I just couldn’t settle on it. Then that night I realised the precious piece would just not work because there was not enough of it. If the tree trunks were smaller, maybe. But because they went from top to bottom, they needed more fabric to even just suggest the idea of a tree. 

Next morning, I went to the ‘ landscape’ section of my stash and found something better almost straight away. 

I fussy cut sections and worked with them to layout something much better. Not particularly the type of tree grown in Mali, but it gives the look of a view through the trees that I wanted. 

I am now stitching these clusters of fabric down. 

The precious piece does make a little showing... it had a fringe omit, so now it will become grass growing at the bottom of the trees. 

Sister Artists

Next step:
I wanted to make trees on either side of the scene. I liked the idea of something like bark cloth. But rather than the brick coloured bark cloth I have from Uganda, I found the mulberry bark I have to be a better colour choice. It picks up on the colour of the man’s hat and trousers.

I auditioned a few threads for stitching it down.

Sister Artists

Sister Artists- next step has been the side borders. I had this South African shwe shwe print that picked up more colour from the embroidery. It is more like quilting cotton weight, than the heavier fabric you normally see.  The fact that it has the different prints keeps it interesting.

And of course it wanted hand sewing, too! I finished last night. Took just over one skein of orange variegated thread from InStitches. I alternated running stitch and French knots.

Sister Artists

Now I have added the bottom border. I chose this African print from Tanzania. It brings it some of the colours of the embroidery. 

Running stitch 

I decided to use my adaptation of the Pekinese Stitch...the loops over running stitches. 

The threads are from InStitches , one of them the same as used on the scraps which make up the ground. 

When you see the piece in person, the lines that have been made by the loops are obvious. 

Heee you can see the difference made by covering the bold print with stitching. The original fabric is on the left. 

So the fabric is blended into the whole much better. 

Sister Artists

I have still been working on the embroidery from Mali. 
The kantha stitching with white sewing cotton is finished.

I have placed a batik piece at the top. Somewhat as a border, and so acting a bit like sky.

In order to knock back the butterfly print some, I have stitched over it in blue. You can see the difference in the upper right...the photo was taken just before completing that section.
Next is the fabric for the bottom.

Sister Artists

The last few weeks I have been making progress with the Sister Artists embroidery from Mali.

 I wanted to give some texture, so I decided that kantha stitch would work if I did it in white. I used pearle cotton to fill the people and the birds

And I used scraps from one of the Tanzanian fabrics I used in another project in order to build up the ground for the garden. I want to tell the story of a husband and wife. She’s digging the garden and he is protecting it from the birds.
I have been filling the background with kantha, but this time using white sewing thread. Some from Sulky I had left from another project. It has just a bit difference than normal sewing thread because it is a long staple cotton.

Sister Artists - Mali embroidery project

The other day I was following links, as you do, and came across a charity that is helping women to learn skills after suffering Gender Based Violence from the conflict in northern Mali. It is called Quilt For Change.

This project is Sister Artists. Together with The Advocacy Project and their Advocacy Quilts, people can volunteer to have one of the embroideries sent to you. Then you work with it to make it into an art quilt that showcases the embroidery. They partner with Sini Sanuman (“Healthy Tomorrow’), a leading Malian advocate for women’s rights.

The art quilt is then sent back to be auctioned off. The money is fed back into the programme adding to the micro-enterprise, Sini Brodage, where the women are learning sewing and tailoring skills.

I would love to take part and help them. I inquired, and was reassured that although it says American quilters, they would be happy for people from other places to take part.
So, you choose the embroidery you want to work with. At first, I thought, 'Oh no! they are not going to manage this before August!' If you scroll down on the Sister Artist page on the Advocacy Project website, you see the embroideries. It looks like there are not very many that have been chosen. So, I decided to go for it. I love that kind of thing!

But when it came to making my choice, I realised there are only a few left. Some of those taking part have not sent in their photos. Anyway...I still want to do it.

This is the embroidery I chose.

Hunting with husband in the field

So, now to be thinking while I wait for it to arrive. 😁

It is a Bank Holiday in America today, too. So, the earliest it can go out is tomorrow.

Beads going on a diversion - 3

More beads to work with white embroidery for Karen Ruane. Most are pastel colour beads, though some are a bit darker, yet small enough to still work with white.

wbead47


wbead48


wbead49


wbead50


wbead51


wbead52


wbead53


wbead54


wbead55


wbead56


wbead57


wbead58


wbead59


wbead60


and all 60 beads all together.

Let's see what Karen finds to do with them all!

beads going on a diversion - 2

More beads to work with white embroidery for Karen Ruane. Some have a touch of colour with them...either a bead with other colours or pastel colour bead.

Some use the 'wooden look' sequins on the offcuts of the embroidered cotton lawn I made my blouse from. I removed a lot of the sequins from the seam area and saved them.

As with the previous post with white beads, I have used the same bead twice (i.e. wbead25+wbead26) with slight variations before moving on to another bead.

wbead25


wbead26


wbead27


wbead28


wbead29


wbead30


wbead31


wbead32


wbead33


wbead34


wbead35


wbead36


wbead37


wbead38


wbead39


wbead40


wbead41


wbead42


wbead43


wbead44


wbead45


wbead46


And more beads tomorrow.