Bollywood

Last week we had the first meeting for the year of the Waverley Art Quilters. At our November meeting at the end of last year we were all given a brown paper bag with a variety of Indian style fabrics and were challenged to create a small quilt using the fabrics and using the theme of Bollywood.

We all received slightly different fabrics and here is a sample of some of them.

Some of the Fabrics

When I opened my little bag I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get any of the red fabric that some people got. Here's a photo of the fabric that I received.

My fabrics

We received 4 fabrics and the orange one on the right was quite wide and so I cut it in half so it gave the impression of 5 fabrics. I looked at them all over Christmas and couldn't quite decide what to do with them. They were only about 10 inches in length so none of them were long enough for a border.

Fabrics on my design wall

I fiddled around with a few ideas and got out some of my own fabric that I could use. I had been thinking of including a dancing Bollywood lady or doing a fancy indian styled applique when finally decided on an elephant. As you can see from the photo above I was going to have a yellow elephant. Then I remembered my colour theory and knew that I had to have some light, medium and darks. I had no darks and so changed my elephant to a dark brown.

I pieced the fabrics to make a background and fused the elephant onto it. The fabric I used for the elephant tended to fray a bit and so I sewed a narrow satin stitch around his edges.

Then came the fun part, I got to decorate him with embroidery threads and beads. I added some shisha mirrors in the border on the side.

Shisha mirrors

As I was sewing my quilt I started to fear that everyone else would do an elephant as well.

Bollywood ©2013 Linda Steele

When we revealed our quilts there was a huge variety of ideas including dancing girls, Taj Mahal, temples and only one other elephant!

I thought I had a lot of sparkle on my quilt until I saw some of the others. My little quilt seemed quite sedate. Maybe I'll add some more bling.

This month we are studying the work of Clarice Cliff.

Bye for now,
Linda