Along the Spice Road to China - Moving Along

Because I wanted to incorporate the use of thermofax screens in the design, I took some photographs to burn into screens.

 

Several were peppercorns spread on a sheet of paper and one was even those hot spicy varieties of pepper.  Ultimately I did not use those screens.  Instead I picked some images from copyright free graphics and clip art to make screens and also used a stencil of Chinese characters (apparently about the Yellow River).

I knew that I wanted to frame my photo in some way and settled on a collage approach using a mix of commercial and hand dyed cottons, some upholstery samples, and pieces from a hand dyed silk scarf which I cut randomly into squares and rectangles. 

I wanted this background collage to be textured and then printed so decided that I would write out several stories with permanent marker across the fabric to give the base a texture and to record the hidden stories on the quilt. 

I started writing three stories onto larger parts of the fabric but as the collage started to come together I switched to writing on the precut pieces as a time saving measure since by now the deadline was less than 30 days away.  I used several colors of permanent marker and wrote one story about our family trip to China in 2007, one story of my “pretend” traveling spice selling family from many centuries in the past, and then one about the basic research I did on black pepper and its use in China.

These pieces were backed with MistyFuse, arranged and adhered to a batting of cotton/bamboo.  Then they were free motion zigzag stitched around all sides and through the batting.  Meanwhile I was also working on a way to transfer my photo image.  While it looked fairly clear on the computer screen there was pollution hanging in the air that day and everything in the distance seemed hazy.

I tried ironing freezer paper to a good quality muslin and putting it through our printer and was not happy with the results.  Next, I tried a product that gave me a plastic looking image that included splotchy areas.  That was a big “no” also.  After going to the Quilter’s Unlimited quilt show just a few short weeks before the deadline, I found the product that produced the best results from one of the vendors.  

I printed the photo in four sections to fit the space I had allocated for it on the base fabric.  This was also fused and the horizontal and vertical edges that joined the four pieces were stitched together with a narrow zigzag.  On the back went a layer of felt as the backing.

Above, I am auditioning fabrics and determining the best placement for the window element of the collage.

Along the Spice Road to China - Getting Started

This is Elizabeth's story about the creation of her Black Pepper from China quilt:

When first asked to create a piece for this exhibit I was both honored and overwhelmed.  I’ve never done anything like this before and the list of other participants was a bit intimidating.  I choked down the urge to say “mine could never measure up to what these people create” and then I said, “OK, I will participate”.  Over the summer months I thought about what I could do and started collecting fabrics that had the feel that I wanted in representing China. 

I picked China because in 2007 I was fortunate enough to travel there for 10 days with my then 14-year old son and husband.  We stayed for a week in Xian, where the Terra Cotta Army was the highlight, and a long weekend in Beijing where we signed up for a day trip to visit The Great Wall of China. 

The Great Wall of China is certainly remarkable in many ways. 

We visited on a beautiful fall day and it was almost surreal to think about the wall’s history and that I was actually walking in the footsteps of so many other humans.  I even called my mother back in the USA just to let her know that we were talking to each other while I stood on the wall. 

We walked to a spot as far as tourists were allowed to go and encountered a sign saying “Frontier-visitors stops walking”.  The choice of English words seemed humorous to us so I took a photo. When the call for quilts arrived, one of the parameters was that the viewer should be looking as though through a window.  As I studied my photos of China, that photo kept coming up in my group of favorites.  

I decided that it would be my window and the focus of my quilt. Even though I had a photo of a spice shop, it did not seem to have the historic feel I was seeking.   

I had several choices to make about the spice I picked which was pepper.  I could go with the hot spicy varieties or black pepper.  After some research about the use of pepper in China, I discovered that the spicy ones were not used in the cuisine in the area of The Great Wall.  Thus, I chose black pepper which was traded by spice merchants all across Asia.  I envisioned my family as spice traders walking, by foot or with a donkey and cart along the well-worn path, stopping at villages to barter our black pepper in exchange for all the supplies one would need on a long journey.