Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Country French and India


Last year my artquilting group, Threads of Sanity, did a traveling book project. We each chose a theme and did a page for each other over the course of about 9 months. My theme was world folk art, and for my own page I did what is dear to me, Country French. I had always noticed the similarity between the expensive Pierre Deux type expensive fabric and the inexpensive, hippie-ish made in India cottons. With a little research, I discovered that travelers brought the Indian designs back to France many centuries ago, and thus the mystery in my mind was solved. I also discovered that the paisley design originated in the far East and printers in Paisley, Scotland became known for their fine printing of the design, and thus it was named after that town. I took a country French scarf design from a textile book, scanned it, flipped and repeated it, then printed it out of my computer on cotton. I quilted it and added a little elephant as a tribute to India, where I must have been in the fabric business in another life.

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