How to Make An African Quilt (Diary of recovery!)

This post was mostly written before the SAQA Europe/Middle East regional zoom meeting yesterday evening. The meeting did not have a specific topic to begin with, but the Rep’s guiding question of ‘to do and not to to lists’ got the group talking about how we are feeling in these times of uncertainty, pandemic and everything that comes with it – lockdowns, restrictions, canceled opportunities to exhibit, to travel and to meet at venues, or workshops that had to be postponed, perhaps for a repeated time. And during that conversation I realized that the making of the African quilt that I describe in the following lines is right down that path many of us mentioned – we want to be making, but we are somewhat blocked about making art. Quite a few of us have turned to making ‘functional quilts’, at least temporarily. While I have always made a functional quilt in between or alongside art quilts, it has become more difficult to make art quilts during the past few months, and having completed this African quilt was a good step for me and my well-being.

During the last few years I have been in close contact with a few African refugees (West Africa – Senegal) here in our town, and have learned a lot from them. A better appreciation of rain, for example – “rain’s a blessing” said Mariama once when I was complaining about a rainy grey and ugly fall day as we have so many in Germany. Or that we should take things with a lighter heart, a repeated suggestion from my special protegé – but I admit that that is a theoretical knowledge on my part only (so far?) - I am not good at taking things easy. Although I am much better at it when my African friends are around who make me laugh! It is always amazing how they refuse to be brought down by the difficulties they encounter in the ‘person’ of German bureaucracy and legislation, how they maintain a smile on their face, how they easily make one laugh and are always good to crack a joke, or tell us that everything is fine (although I know by the date of the month how far the ‘water level’ in their wallet is gone down).

And I have looked at fabrics from Africa differently, too. I am in a process of using a piece of mudcloth I brought back from South Africa last year (my, that’s long ago! we could travel!). And I have another piece of mudcloth that is biding its time for a good idea an be an accomplice to this one.

 

I recently finished a quilt from a large piece of West African fabric I acquired at Festival of Quilts from the wonderful AfricanFabric Shop  where I always go when I get to FoQ. I have bought a beautiful basket from them, too – not a good idea before going home on the plane, but I managed.

So when one of my African friends complained that his room in the refugee accomodation, very small but his very own, was so cold because it has three walls that go to the outside of the house and the heating system is not exactly up to modern standards, I went ahead and started making him a quilt. It needed to be done quickly, and he has a slightly different preference for colors than I do, so I relied on that African fabric as the main ‘backbone’ for a free cut drunkard’s path, which you can see in the lower part of the picture.

 

Of course, it wasn’t entirely enough, I added another indigo-dyed West-African fabric as accocmpaniment, as can be seen in the upper half of the picture.

This is a picture as I was putting the blocks together:

 

I put together a back fabric from several different fabrics and a superfluous block from the front.

 

And I used my circular quilting templates for the quilting (only the 4” template hasn’t resurfaced yet).

 

The finished piece looks like this:

Of course, it is not strictly speaking an African quilt. It is a quilt made from a few fabrics that originated in Africa, and it was made for a friend from Africa, but everything else about it just makes it a quilt blanket like any other quilt blanket. But a nice one, the recipient likes it and feels warmer sleeping under it. And life goes on, even as we are confined to a new ‘lockdown’ (light version).

Back in Africa - well, almost.

What kept me sane during those terrible two weeks at school was stitching in the evenings. I did a lot of knitting, and some sewing on projects which I have found out I must not post about anymore before the deadline that I am making them for. And I have been slowly catching up on my temperature quilt which I started in April and immediately fell behind with because so many other things were and are going on. (Until very recently I hadn't even taken any pictures.)

For one thing, in a typical Uta-manner I made it a bit too over-intellectual when I decided to do not only highest and lowest temperature of the day, but, due to the pattern I had set my mind on, the averages of highs and lows of the four days represented in the entire block AND the long-range-averages as well.

It looks good – well, I think it does – and by now I have sort of come into a rhythm and know what I am doing. But it is slow going, I keep getting confused about the averages – and I had not realized before beginning that there would be so much going on in the range of 10 to 14 degrees Celsius. I had to add new fabrics because the ones I had picked were running out, which of course adds to the variety. Finally, today, I have caught up to my first days in South Africa.

(Yes, I know, that is still quite a bit behind, but by far not as much as a week ago!)

Which makes for the title of this post… and I finally read Lyric Kinard’s blog posts about our days in Johannesburg, where she has posted many nice pictures and written about our lovely evenings in the ‘international hut’ on campus.

The group of international quilters who were staying in the same house during the festival became to be friends and we are thinking about preparing an exhibition together, certainly with some quilts that are using some of the fabrics we bought when we were being taken on our textile tour of Johannesburg. For that I have been thinking what I want to do, using a piece of mud cloth I picked up from the remnant bag when we all went wild at Amatuli’s .

I thought I knew where I was heading as I was going to add some red and then stitch some text onto it. 

Then I found this piece of leftover linen from a former jacket of my husband’s (in the picture on the left) and was wondering whether this would be more in line with the quality of weave of the mudcloth than the red linen, which is much finer…and only until I did a bit of digging in the garden today, working on the compost heap, and there surfaced a piece of cloth that seems to have been hidden in that heap for a while. 

I did not put it there on purpose. Honestly! But it might well find its way into something. Perhaps even into the mudcloth piece, it being a special kind of mudcloth itself. I will rinse it and see what it looks like and then decide on how to proceed. Right now I can't even tell how big it is...

Hotter than Africa

My plane landed in Munich at 7.28 a.m. this morning and I was met by my husband and son. I have to admit I am a bit pleased about myself that I managed – with the help of Erla Cilliers, current chair lady of the Pretoria Jacarande Quilt Guild – to pack 90 quilts into one suitcase. When I went to Johannesburg, I was carrying thirty quilts from Germany, coming back, I also brought 30 from Ireland and 30 from South Africa. Thanks to Erla’s ingenious idea of putting them in vacuum bags they all fit into one (large) suitcase, 

and my personal stuff was left to fend with the additional carry-on I had brought along. On the train from Pretoria to the Johannesburg airport I was assured of another passenger’s respect about my strength that I could deal with so many bags… One of the first things I did after entering the house was to opend that suitcase and the vacuum bags to give the quilts air to breath again, hoping they won’t have been condensed for too long so they still look like quilts and not like French pancakes.

Having come back from a mild African winter I am amazed at how hot and humid it is here in Germany. And when I check on the weather app, it tells me that it is only three to four degrees Celsius warmer, but definitely it is much more humid that I have experienced it in the past two weeks. I am lucky that I don’t have to go back to work/school right away but have another while to ‘get back’ because it feels like I will need a bit to ‘get Africa out of my system’ again. I had an absolutely wonderful time – the trip to Kruger, the many animals I saw, the festival with the numerous nice and lovely people and some very interesting quilts to see. But while on Heronbridge College campus it also felt a bit like we were out of the world. 

Our view from the terrace - although this picture is a bit misleading
because you cannot really see the plastic washed up on the other side of the river
coming from an illegal squatter camp up the river.

 

 

Secluded from the South Africa outside, which did not really infiltrate the festival ongoings on campus, except for one incident when a party of attendees who had gone off campus for dinner saw how a car that was waiting in line at the road construction site right outside campus was attacked by somebody who was trying to break the window. He did not succeed, was driven away right away, and the group from the festival was not even directly affected, but that was a bit of a signal that there is a quite different South Africa outside of the gate. And everybody got very concerned when I mentioned that I was planning to spend one night in a hotel in Johannesburg before going back home Sunday night. That is absolutely not possible, alone in a hotel in Johannesburg… Various options were discussed, whether I should hire a private guide and airport transfer, or how I would be able to deal with the situation. I always thought it should be possible if I moved cautiously, but in the end Erla Cilliers invited me over to stay at her place and we had a lovely two days as she showed me around Pretoria, we went for a walk in the morning and a lovely breakfast on Sunday and certainly it was more fun to be in her company than to sit in a hotel room by myself at night.

In terms of textiles it was a very interesting week, too, because last Wednesday the international teachers and visitors who brought an exhibition to the festival were taken on a special tour of Johannesburg. This included the Oriental Bazar, with shopping options, 

Samosas for lunch... very delicious!

a Shwe Shwe fabric shop, with shopping options, 

and in the end a wonderful shop with lots of lots of interesting African Art and Craft items, including a wide range of ‘up-Africa fabrics’ which we took good advantage of. The day ended in a fabric swopping session in the evening in the lounge of our accomodation where we showed our finds, shared pieces and had a fabric fit.

More on my African textile experiences tomorrow.