Monday 17 October 2011

I call it finished... after 10 years...

I hereby name this quilt Dharavi - after the Indian slum it now makes me think of. Look at the quilt as though it is a birds eye view.






Mum quilted it with swirls in the centre - over the slum roofs. The swirls remind me of dust moving in little eddies with the wind, or with the monsoon rains that pour and pour through the bits of plastic and tin used as housing.




Surrounding the patchwork of roofs made from varying found materials are people walking in bright colours. There are some make-shift tenements that have escaped the boundaries of the legal slum.




Then there is the ribbon border- depicting barbed wire. Legal slums have very specific boundaries. The ribbon border is made of three different materials, just as the barbed wire fences would be made from whatever wire is on hand.




Lastly, the slum is surrounded by tall buildings. Slums are always next to high-rise buildings. It's where the workers live while they are doing the building.... then the high-rise tenants move in, and they don't want a slum view from their windows.... so the slum dwellers move once again, taking their temporary dwellings to another site where they will hopefully be employed to make concrete once again.

Saturday 15 October 2011

Luca is one

This is my little nephew Luca.

For his first birthday I quickly (and I mean quickly) whipped up this little quilt/playmat.


What a great panel! It has both roads and train tracks. Whip it down on any dirty floor space and let the little one vroom and broom to his (or her) heart's content!


Happy birthday darlin'. Love from Aunty Lozza. xxx

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Freshly Quilted

I just felt like moving in the gentle trance of the stitcher...



...line-following... the hum of the machine... they seem to induce trance-like states... our minds flow...they think of other things... but they don't worry... and they don't feel pain....


This little mini quilt has been sitting around for quite some time... (okay, that's over a year).. now it is quilted. Binding to follow very soon. I feel sure it won't be sitting around like this for long. These birds want to be in the air.


(Birds In The Air miniature quilt designed by Lori Smith).