Martyrs Day

Today us Ugandan Martyrs Day. You can read more on it here.

Ugandan Bark Cloth

 I bought my first bark cloth the other week. I was wandering around a market celebrating fairtrade at the Uganda Museum. I found a woman who was selling things made out of bark cloth. All her items were lovely, but having little money I had to be strong and decide on one thing. I bought a small bag.

Bark cloth is made from the inner bark of a fig tree (so I've been informed). 

Bark cloth is traditionally used to make clothes. They have some nice examples at the Uganda museum. 

Now I just have to try and source a bolt of the stuff from somewhere so I can play with it.

Dress a girl around the world (and boy)

I recently stumbled across a great charity called "Dress a girl around the world"  through Louise Horder (@SewScrumptious), who is their UK ambassador. This charity encourages people to make dresses (and shorts) for underprivileged children around the world out of pillowcases, or leftover fabric. The patterns are easy to follow and the resulting clothes are really lovely.

As someone who has recently started working with an orphanage in Uganda (more on this later) I can really see the use in this charity. So many poor children in the world wear worn second hand clothes. having a nice piece of clothing that is theirs and was made just for them can make a big difference to their self-esteem. It may seem like a small thing when these children often don't have enough to eat. But  I think knowing that a stranger cares enough about them to hand-sew them something has the potential to improve their lives, if only minutely and for a short time. The photos of children receiving their clothes speaks volumes I think.

Malawi 2011

Uganda 2012

You can believe if I had a sewing machine I would be making up a batch of these straight away. However, as I don't I will instead be collecting a bundle of clothes from Louise in August and bring them back to Uganda with me instead. 

If you have some spare fabric and time please think about making some clothes for children around the world. You can read more on this, including where to get patterns and how to donate here on Louise's blog. There is also a useful magazine article pattern here.

Let's all dress some children!

A portrait postcard of an Indian school girl

I have a whole bundle of travel postcards in my head - waiting to be made into reality. I finally finished an Indian one last week.

Isn't she sweet? Off to school in her pinafore dress.

Beautiful African Fabrics

These are block printed on cotton. I bought them from a tailor's shop but I plan to do a proper hunt for a good fabric shop. I need more of these. There was such a beautiful selection (forgot my camera - sorry). Choosing just two was really hard!

I chose the red and green one because it made me think of tentacles. No idea what to do with these fabrics yet but the collection has begun!

A brief example of Australian quilting

I hastily snapped this pic whilst in bed under featured quilt. Hence the slightly crumpled look to the quilt. I thought it was a lovely example of quilting though. We went to Australia for two weeks around Easter and this quilt was made by a quilting group in Ballarat. 

Patchwork curtains in an Indian school

The school I used to work at in India used the prettiest patchwork curtains to separate classes. Three classes shared this room, separated by the curtains. The curtains were made by the mothers of the students who were taught to sew by the school.

Patterns: Hand art

This is my hand decorated with henna. I thought it was a beautiful enough pattern to share.

Baking paper: Makes excellent pattern paper

Although I filled my suitcase with craft supplies for our move to India (and then Uganda) every now and then I curse some essential item I forgot. Recently I discovered that I really didn't have any paper thin enough to allow me to trace a shape to make into a pattern.

So I did what I always do in this situation - I popped to the local supermarket and scoured their shelves.

Baking paper (available even in Uganda) makes excellent pattern paper. It's thin enough to trace through AND thin enough to pin to fabric to allow shape cutting. The fact that it's super cheap is an extra boon. To be honest I even used it in London. It's too useful!

The following photos show me using baking paper to make my felt map of Uganda.

Indian hand embroidery

When we were in Jaipur (India) over the Christmas holidays as well as block printing we also saw men embroidering fabric by hand. They were working on a man's wedding jacket and using real gold thread. It was beautiful work.

Safari Brooches

The other weekend I was lucky enough to go on a 3 day safari in the Maasai Mara in Kenya. It was brilliant! We saw so many animals I lost count and filled my camera with pictures. To celebrate I've been playing around with African animals as my theme and have started making some brooches in memory of the animals we saw.

I started off by sketching animals onto calico and then painting over them with my fabric dyes. This was fun.

Our cleaner thought I was quite, quite mad when she discovered all the drying fabric scraps I'd littered the bedroom with though.

Once they were dry I started embroidering the animals. Then, I cut them out and sewed them onto felt for the backing.

I've finished three badges so far. What do you think? The lion is my favourite so far.

I have an elephant planned. What other animals should I do? 

An African Cricket

I made this little chap today. I think he's rather fetching.

Piles of goodies in Jaipur

In Jaipur we were treated to piles of gorgeous things that the shop owner pulled out to show us whilst we drank tea. The above are silk bed covers. The photo below is Indian patchwork made up from pieces of old clothes. 

Block printing in Jaipur

Woodblock printing is a technique used on fabric and paper throughout Asia. Jaipur is particularly famous for it. This being so when our taxi driver offered to take us to a 'textiles place' I had to say yes. I was really glad I did as it turned out to be a shop with a small studio attached showing the different techniques used.

So many blocks!

The technique involves dipping a carved wooden block into dye and then pressing it onto fabric (or paper).

Above you can see some table-cloths in the process of being made. These are waiting for the next layer.

Here the worker is applying the next layer of block.

The pads where the colour is applied (above).

They also showed us one quick run of the process.

The bit where it got washed in salt water and changed from red to green was pretty magical.

This was a great technique to see being done in person. It made me itch to block print my own fabric!

A souvenir of Bangalore

I've been working fairly slowly the last few weeks on a new project. I want to make souvenir postcards of places I travel to so as I'm currently living in Bangalore I started there.

I used different materials and techniques to make it. The background is painted with fabric water colour dye and finished with pastels. The main body of the rickshaw is appliquéd onto the background. I stuck it down with bondaweb and stitched it down. The details are added in running stitch with embroidery thread. 

The front and back have pelmet vilene in-between them to make the whole postcard stiff.

I embroidered the back to make it more postcard-like.

Exciting new Indian clothes: but bad material

I know that I've kind of fallen out of the blogging world in the last few weeks. That's because I've moved to India! I've been busy moving from hotels to a flat and settling in. I have unpacked my craft materials and am in the process of making something for a friend so stay posted - I'll be blogging that soon.

For now I thought I'd share these amazing "dresses" (they're not dresses but I don't know what they're called - help anyone?) that I bought the other day. These are my first Indian clothes and I'm hoping they will allow me to blend in a little (ha ha ha - unlikely!). I love the patterns on these. I'm particularly smitten with the one on the right because of the garish clashing of bright pink and lime green. Awesomeness. 

The only downside to these is that the quality of the cotton is really bad. I'd been told this would be the case with Indian cottons but it's still a little surprising. The cotton is very thin and kind of rough. Definitely not cosy. I'm hoping with a few more washes it'll soften up.

Packing the (craft) essentials

So I started to put things I wanted to take to India into my suitcase......

I seem to have no space for clothes....

I love Vaccinations

I love vaccinations! They're awesome.

A country of mystery (and felt)

This is both a very exciting and stressful time for me. I'm really excited and yet nervous. There is a very real possibility that in September I'll be moving countries again. Yay!

The catch is that we don't yet know where we'll be going. The three likeliest countries are India, Brazil or Uganda. Right now I'm really rooting for Uganda. The decision is not really ours - it's in the hands of work (not mine). This has been going on for months and months and months and still we're no closer to knowing where we'll be going. The unknowing is beginning to make me feel a little crazy. I'm preparing as best I can by putting my excess stuff up for sale on e-bay, getting vaccinated and so on.

Oh and by making these felt map outlines of the three contenders. Tee hee.

Which country will win? Which do you think we'll end up going to?

(Note: All three maps are available in my Etsy shop. I also take custom orders for any other country)