Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Mexican textiles

My local quilt guild asked me to be their speaker for the February meeting. They want me to do a trunk show of my quilts I've made from my travels around the world, and the textiles I've collected.




I have several quilted wall hangings I've made with fabrics collected while on the trip for all my travels except for Mexico. I've been there a few times and have a brother who has lived there 25 years with his wife (who he met there) and their two daughters. He is a missionary. With the lecture coming up it gave me the incentive I needed to make "Fiesta Mexico". The first piece I used in the quilt is this small wool felted jacket I bought it in a second hand store in Texas. It is hand appliqued and embroidered beautifully. It is quite faded and I believe it's from the 50's or 60's.




Back view.



A women's dress I bought while in Mexico, hand embroidered.





detail of the flowers, I ironed on a stabilizer to the back.




So I put on my Mexican Fiesta music from Sirius radio, cut the jacket apart and began to place all of the fabrics on my design wall. The black striped fabric was hand woven in Mexico,(my brother brought it for me). I settled on a beginning design and used my daffodil dyed wool as lattice strips in between the blocks. With left over scraps of the green jacket I evened up all the blocks.





I cut the flowers off the dress, embroidered on a vine, then appliqued on the flowers. The stripe fabric became the outside boarder. I now am in the process of machine quilting the piece, and it is very thick sewing through the wool felt, batting and backing.


At the same time our local college is having a Global Awareness Festival. They spot light a different country every year this year being Mexico with art exhibits, lectures, music and traditional Mexican foods. I photographed this piece in their art exhibit, it uses the same stitches as the flowers on my dress. The label reads: Otomi Indians create colorful embroideries with plant and animal symbols.




This weaving description read: Clara Mendoza is a eleven year old niece of the great Zapotec weaver Nrnulfo Mendoza.



I photographed these cute mouse cookies at our last guild meeting. One of our talented members makes these treats.





Close up, the body is a maraschino cherry dipped in chocolate, with a Hershey kiss head. Too clever.










2 comments:

Deb Hardman said...

The quilt turned out so cute. You really cranked that one out fast. I wish I could go to your lecture. Why don't you do it again up here for ALCQ? I'll ask them to bring you up!

Melodie said...

I love the quilt!! It's beautiful! I don't think I could have come up with a design to incorporate such different pieces and have them look so fluid together!
I love the mice too........what are the ears?

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