As I sit here and stitch away, I have been thinking about how multi-skilled contemporary quiltmaking is really prompting us to be. personally I have never seen quiltmaking and my great love, interperpretative stitchery aka creative embroidery as being any more than two backwaters of the same needlearts pond.

So far this piece is really an embroidery with beginning bits done with the aid of bonding/applique – how quickly that enables colour to be laid down. Of course other skills allow that, too , such as painting, spraying, printing of all kinds, various hand dying technqiues and stencilling.

Since the “Tree of Life” quilt, (mid may archive ) I have been thinking about my own personal language via symbols. These received a boost today as I read the posting on Dijanne Cevaals’ blog of some wonderful and carved fabric printing stamps from dried gourds. In one of the comments a responder gave the source of the meanings of many of these , although Dijanne herself with her familiarity with Africa clearly knows and understands what she has acquired, and appropriately with her strong connection with Africa she will probably use them in some interpretive way, too.

As I stitch away, I am listening to Craig Unger’s House of Bush House of Saud which explores the incredible links between the two families which have so influenced American , Middle Eastern and World, politics and economies since the 1970’s. Fascinating even if only a quarter of it is true. Talk about global interconnectedness. Joseph O’connor’s Star of the Sea, set between Ireland, the Atlantic and New York 1847, was wonderfully read by John Kavanagh. Once I am propped up in bed for the night I am reading Che by John Lee Anderson, a large tome which if I read it lying down threatens to break my nose if I nod off. I am enjoying it immensely, having tracked down the book after enjoying the movie Motorcycle Diaries, covering just a couple of years’ travel around the southernpart of South America while Che was still a young man. In the movie it is clear several experiences impact on him deeply, and just suggest why he became such an icon of idealism in the latter C20th. The movie left me wanting to know more about his life.