Quilt Challenge: Oaxaca

Joan and I met through a matchmaker.  The matchmaker, Joann, is a retired HR woman, with the skills to efficiently get things done.  Joann knew I'd bought my sewing machine at a pawn shop last spring, and in an email introduction asked me to tell Joan about the purchase.  In just a couple of email sentences, I told Joan about the pawn shops in the Centro Historico.  She responded, and I responded, and soon we figured out we are both quilters.  It was Joan who suggested that we should meet.  As soon as she walked into Brujula Cafe, on Macedonia Alcala, we felt like Very Old Friends! 

Joan, from San Francisco, has taken up quilting in the past few years, and we giggled like girls can do when we discovered we both were completely awed with the Gee's Bend quilt exhibit.  Pretty soon, we talked about a Challenge.  In the quilting community, a Challenge is a pretty common tool for a kick in pants of the creative process.  Maybe other arts have something similar, with a different name.  Choosing Daily Life in Oaxaca as the theme was the obvious decision.  We went a step further:  using only fabrics we can find in Oaxaca.  oh dear.  The Telas Parisina, and Modatelas, are the two fabric stores in Oaxaca, and have a pretty awful selection.  Mostly synthetics, and this time of year, lots of polar fleece.  Quilters want lovely, clean, soft COTTON.  And, we had to at least get it started before the end of January, when I was leaving Oaxaca.  So, we gave ourselves a challenge on many levels!

Joan had a pretty quick idea of her piece, and of course I had a thousand ideas shouting for the top slot.  Just when I thought I had made a firm decision of how I'd begin (I never know what the finished piece will look like), I'd see something that made me change my mind.  I have always had commitment issues. Throw in the week away from the city in early January, and I was already behind schedule!

A trip to two fabric shops, and I bought a collection of yucky-feeling solid colors, and a few pieces of yucky-feeling prints, all synthetic.  Both, very typical of the modern city.  My inspiration came from a spanish lesson.  I was filling-in-the-blank with correct verb and tense for a story of Rufino Tamayo, the late accomplished painter from Oaxaca.  One sentence included "sensuous" and "watermelons" together, and I knew I had my theme!  Food! 

Joan and I met, with friends, for lunch the last week I was in the city, and I showed her the very beginnings of my first piece in the series, Sandias (watermelons). 

In the beginning of January, there was an group of exhibits at the Oaxacan Painters Museum, that included an exhibit of hand-embroidered handkerchiefs with comments about domestic violence.   Here is what Joan created:

Joan wrote, "I finished my piece and it certainly was a "challenge!"   As I mentioned, my theme was violence against women and I tried to make it look as Mexicano as possible.  I was inspired by the embroidered pieces at the city museum to embroider sayings that I saw on the walls around Oaxaca relating to the violence; and, as I never embroidered before, the letters look just as simple and crude as some on the the handkerchiefs.:-).   It's all very "oaxaquena."  Anyway, it's nothing like anything I've ever done before and the material was certainly a challenge, but it was a fun process,  So I'm happy that we decided to do this regardless of the crudeness of the outcome."

Here are the two unfinished pieces I created.  I have actually finished them both, but haven't taken photos yet.  Both are direct copies of Tamayo's Sandias, but created with cloth rather than paint.  I had a good challenge choosing how to make that thin, white bit between the red part and the rind of the melon, and chose to create the illusion of that inedible part with  thread and stitching.  As elementary-level as it appears, these two small quilts were both good lessons for me.  And, as always, I cut without a pattern or straight edge, using my cutter like a pencil on paper. There will be more Sandias, but this week I'm working on other things.  That's for another post!