Jane Callender comes to Kuwait

In January Jane Callender flew in to give us a talk about and run a workshop in her indigo dyeing and shibori work. WOW!! no WOW already!! this was fantastic. If you ever see one of her talks or workshops advertised, go. and if you run a group looking for a speaker or workshop leader, she is your lady.

She flew in on the BA red eye, so I took her home to sleep the morning away, and then vaguely refreshed, we jumped in the car and went out on a look/see and photography trip. In the end, we only drove up the Arabian Gulf Road for about 10 miles, but it took us over 2 hours, because she kept needing to stop and take pictures. Normally it takes 20 minutes, - 30 tops depending on how bad the traffic is.

The following day we went to Sadu House to put up her display for her talk. She had brought with her several pieces of her work, and they looked fabulous hung on the racking around the central courtyard. Then on to the home of Paramjeet Bawa, who had volunteered her basement to hold the workshop in to prepare the indigo vats. Poor Cally almost had heart failure when she arrived. all the paving around the house, the stairs down to, and the floor in the basement are all white marble tiles. Indigo, obviously, is blue, and stains. There were going to be 20 people dipping and dyeing over the next 2 days - it was not going to be pretty!



this large piece was facing everyone diagonally across the courtyard as they came in, it is called Kaleidoscope, and 150cm square.

The rest are in no particular order, but just give a flavour of her work.











flushed with the success of the evening, we went home and got everything ready for the workshop the next day.
still convinced that she would be facing hideous bills for replacing acres of marble irevocably dyed blue, Cally still managed to put a brave face on and get things going. A run through of different techniques and we were off to make a shibori sampler. The silence was a testament to the level of concentration - I mean, when have you ever known 20 women in the same room, who all know each other pretty well, be quiet? For ages? Eventually, a few nimble fingered souls had stitched and gathered and were ready to dip their monstrous creations. 4 dips of a minute with 20 minutes in between. Did we have that much patience? And each time that magical moment when the cloth comes out of the vat coloured green and turns blue in front of your eyes. I love it.

2 days of this, which was just heaven, we stitched, we wrapped, we scrunched, we bound, and my, the work the ladies produced. It will be interesting to see if any of them use any of their creations in quilts or finished pieces for our exhibition in May.

Cally ended up staying with me for a week. I hope she went home with a good flavour of living in Kuwait - I tried to give her a sample of lots of things, and we were both exhausted by the end of the week. She took home a gazillion photos, and several pounds of excess baggage which we managed to get through ok because the plane was not full, phew! We took her to the fabric souk - twice, the heritage souk for dinner, for a pedicure at a nailbar in a shopping centre where we had valet parking, to the Friday market, to a concert by a local singing group, The Ahmadi singers, and took photos everywhere. I know that it was a fabulous week for me, and for the KTAA, and the ladies are still talking about the workshop and how fantastic it was. I got lots of brownie points for organising that. So I repeat, if you get the chance to listen to her or go to her workshop, you will not regret taking it. Promise.

still here...

I had no idea that it was so long ago that I last blogged. I mean I knew it was a while, but 5 months. that is shocking.

So what have I been up to in that time? Hopefully you will believe that I have been busy, there has to be something to show for all this time, right?

KTAA has monopolised a large chunk of my time. As president, I am involved in quite a bit of PR type work for the group, helping to put the name out there. I also have the day to day type admin of the group to coordinate,but I have a wonderful committee who work very hard so that I can have a great organisation to do the PR for.

We have continued to hold our monthly meetings. December was all about Feed sack quilts. One of our members, C, has a collection of these little beauties, and put together a talk about them. Sadly she ended up travelling, so I had to present it for her. It is a fascinating story, and so good that America woke up to the importance of these items in their quilting history. One of the best aspects of this was to discover that C has not only been collecting the sacks, but is making quilts with them. she doesn't believe in just building up a stash and doing nothing with them. brilliant.

January's meeting was a talk about African Textiles from John Gillow. We flew him out from the UK, complete with a large supply of samples, and he talked us on a guided tour of Africa for a couple of hours. He was also able to meet Sheika Altaf at Sadu House again. he visited Kuwait a few years ago and assisted with a book and the permanent display at Sadu House.
February saw us holding a Kuwait themed evening. In this month the Kuwaitis celebrate both their National Day and Liberation Day, so we thought it appropriate to invite Ali Al Sulaiman, one of only 2 remaining traditional bisht makers in Kuwait to come to talk to us about his work. We were lucky also to secure the services of Dr Ali Al Najadah to act as translator and to help fill in any gaps for us. A bisht is a long garment worn by men over their dishdashas for prestige and on special occasions. If you have ever seen a picture of the Emir of Kuwait in the papers or on TV, he always wears a bisht, usually black with gold embroider around the neck. They can range from the lightest open weave to heavier warmer weaves, and are therefore able to be worn all year. The gold embroidery (zari) is worked to order by a team of male embroiderers. When finished, the embroidery is pounded with a heavy metal rod over a padded base to flatten the threads and to burnish them.
March gave us the opportunity to hear about the career of Dr Keireine Canavan, Programme Director at Cardiff School of Art and Design at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. We are lucky that in this instance we didn't have to fly her over as her family are here anyway and she was visiting them.
And then this month, last night actually, we arranged a private viewing for the KTAA of an exhibition of Costumes from the Arab world. this exhibition was organised by the Tareq Rajab museum in Kuwait. All the costumes, about 100, came from the Rajab's private collection, which holds about 5,000 items, and is the largest private collection of Arab costume in the world. The most difficult part of organising the exhibition was choosing what to display. The real treat of the evening was that for us, they removed the barrier, gave us white gloves and we were allowed to handle the clothing. We had a brilliant evening, being able to handle the dresses and see the embroidery up close has added a huge amount to our knowledge, and we are aware of just how huge and amazing a privilege this was.

So that is a brief up to now for the KTAA. Next up is our end of year exhibition, followed swiftly by our agm and final meeting of the year. this one I can really relax on, as it will be show and tell from the group of our ladies who recently visited South Africa. KTAA organises overseas textile based trips every year, and this time they travelled around the Drakensburg mountains and Johannesburg. I am green with envy as I was unable to go with them and they all had a brilliant time. so I am busy with organising the exhibition and the agm and finishing up work to enter for the exhibition.

I spent yesterday with Zain, a telecommunications company in the middle east. they were celebrating Earth day, and held a photo competition and asked KTAA to hold a mini exhibition of re-usable carrier bags. The organiser had visited UK last summer just when Anya Hindmarsh was launching the 'I'm not a plastic bag' campaign, and decided it was something to bring to Kuwait. I challenged members to make re-usable bags out of recycled materials. We had some great entries. To my surprise, I was invited to help cut the ribbon to open the photo exhibition - now that's a first!

Aside from that, my C&G tutor, Sian, is possibly relieved that I have breathed new life into my coursework efforts. this is largely down to a fellow student who lives in Australia. We have decided to try and give each other an electronic kick up the backside, and help each other work through the assignments. I think we can do it, but just at the moment, I am a little busy with finishing work off - see above.

Kuwait has been lovely for the past few weeks in amongst the dust storms. Not too warm, not too humid. flowers all in bloom. We did have a fairly dramatic storm a week or so ago. At first it seemed like a standard dust storm, but then it intensified, and was followed in by hail and mini tornadoes. Apparantly most unusual, but I've seen one photo of hail stones 9 inches deep around a car. Kuwait doesn't do hail. some of our friends were unfortunately out in the desert when the storm hit. they had a couple of car windows broken, and the back and one side of the car taken down to bare metal. not good.

As and when I get photos in for all of this I will add them, and will try to do better at posting more regularly, yes I will!!!

2nd KTAA meeting

We had a truly wonderful evening on October 23rd. The theme was an invitation to an Indian wedding, and we had a traditional dancer, music, food,stunning costumes, jewellery and shoes, incense, henna painting, bangle making, shawls and the most brilliant mandap, which is the support and canopy which they perform the wedding ceremony under, and over 130 people came along to join in the fun - some dressed in Indian costume. I have been waiting to see if I can get hold of some pictures, as I was so busy I did not have time to take any myself, but so far none have come through, so I will post this and then add pictures when I get some.

I don't know about most of you, but India in general, and Indian weddings in particular, is something I actually know very little about. I mean, I know where it is, but know very little about the geography of the country, where all these regions that we hear about are in relation to each other and on the map. So I found this a real eye opener on a lot of levels. The rituals vary from region to region, caste to caste, religion to religion. There are the beautiful saris that we all know, and the shalwar kameez, and then there is the ghagra choli and ghagra lehenga sharara, another whole range of tops and skirts with veils or shawls, heavily embroidered and beaded which is the direction the wedding outfits are taking. We pulled a lady from the audience and showed everyone how to put a sari on properly. I had several Indian ladies in the audience from different regions, so they were put on the spot and asked to fill in details which I had not been able to find.
They have pre wedding ceremonies, wedding ceremonies - incidentally it is becoming more common to have the party first and then the actual binding ceremony, and also post wedding ceremonies.
A store here called the Indian Heritage Centre provided everything for for the evening for us, except the dancer (who is 14 years old, has been learning the dances for 8 years, and has been taught at the Nritta Dhyana school of Indian Classical dance here in kuwait.) They did a cracking job, and have won another tranche of customers from the KTAA. They even provided raffle prizes and, in something of a coup, discount cards for all KTAA members. All in all, a truly wonderful evening.

KTAA first meeting

We finally got the 2007/08 season underway with our first meeting on Tuesday night. It was held at Sadu House, and we had about 50-60 people turn up, plus another 45 or so from another group who were meeting on the same night and came along to see what we were all about. Once I had stopped feeling ill with worry, I really enjoyed myself.

We had plenty of time first for people to look around Sadu house, and for some it was their first visit, and to renew their membership, and then I had to do my bit and welcome everyone. I don't think I managed to insult anyone - haven't been told of any complete cock ups anyway, so fingers crossed I got away with it! Sheika Altaf then did a small talk about how she came to be involved with the start of the KTAA in 1994, when just 6 people got together because they were interested in weaving..... something about little acorns springs to mind here. Once we had got all that out of the way, we got onto the interesting stuff and had a show and tell. I started the ball rolling by showing the little beaded doll brooches I'd got at the quilt festival in Birmingham made by the South African children whose parent(s) had died from Aids. We had jackets from south China, a throw from Peru, a hand embroidered table cloth, a mirror cover from Uzbekistan, a drape to cover bed linen also from Uzbekistan, both very old pieces, a rug from Morocco, a couple of quilts, and a painted wall hanging from India. I'm sure there were more, but my mind has gone blank - I don't think there were any cuddly toys or microwaves! And crawling all over the place, were the ubiquitous press photographers that come to all manner of events in kuwait. every time I looked up there was another telephoto lense up my left nostril! So no surprises for guessing that a couple of days later we were in the paper. And again today. Hey ho, no peace for the wicked!!
Just in case Sian is reading this, I have been slowly progressing with some course work, doing some weaving samples, and rubbings from them, and about to start playing with colour studies. that should get me off the hook for a couple of minutes anyway! I actually spent this afternoon making a couple of pieces of quilting. Our quilt group here has gone back to basics as we have a lot of new members, and we have been given a Kaleidoscope pattern to make up.

I also had a go at the disappearing nine patch as demonstrated by Helen on her blog a couple of months ago.
It is so much fun to do, and looks far more complicated than it is, which is always good value.

tomorrow is our Monday equivalent, so back to work, and for me that is a trip to the fabric souk with some new members tomorrow morning, and then out to the British Business Forum introduction to Kuwait evening at the Hilton resort. should be fun.

summer holidays part two....

So having taken on the floods, the traffic and the emergency services, got to my friends wedding, and out again, I collected my daughter, and battled my way out to Birmingham airport, from where we flew to Scotland to join my dh and stepson. We had a fantastic week on the west coast, not far from Tarbert. Glorious sunshine, lots of playing about in the water, barbecues and chilling with friends. It is a beautiful place to visit.
My thoughts and prayers though remain with the thousands of people who were affected by the floods, not only in this area, but in the north west as well. their lives have been devastated, and it will be many months before they experience something like normality again.
From Scotland, we flew to spain, and spent 2 more fantatic weeks relaxing in the sunshine, and playing in the pool. We visited the aquarium at Valencia one day, and drove miles around some pretty precarious hilly tracks (roads is too dignified) on another, seeing some fantastic scenery on the way, ate some great tapas, drank lots of tinto verrano, (my spanish drink) and read the entire library of books in the villa. 6 if you're interested.
When we came back from Spain, we dropped my daughter back with her father, my stepson back with his mother, and then dh and I departed next day for Budapest. This city comes highly recommended. easy to get around, with buses, trams, metro and trolleybuses. plenty to see and do, some great restaurants, and shamefully, they speak pretty immaculate english. to be fair though, Hungarian is one of the most impenetrable languages in the world. We had 4 wonderful days there, filled with wonderful things to do, including the ethnography museum filled with beautiful folk costumes from the different regions and classes of the country from 100 years ago. sorry, no photos, my camera battery died. Dh then returned to Kuwait, and I headed to Birmingham for the last 2 days of IFQ at the NEC.

What a treat the IFQ was. I know that many of you visited for at least one day, and like me were absolutely blown away by it all. I caught up with Maggie Grey on the WOW stand, and with Angie Hughes of Ledbury Art Place, and met Ruth Isset at long last. I was there with the Faces of Arabia stand from Kuwait. You will have seen some of the quilts previously on this blog, but this one was new. and he would have pretty much stopped you in your tracks as you walked past our stand.
He is by Jenny Bowker, Australian quilter, and the lady who came to judge our show in May. We invited her to submit a quilt to show with ours at Birmingham.


However, the star of the show as far as we were concerned was our own Paramjeet Bawa. she took up quilting 5 years ago, and was persuaded to enter one of her quilts, called 'Duststorm', into the pictorial competition. She was placed second, won the amateur award, the best use of colour award, and the judges award. We later found out that she had also won the viewers choice award. the quilt then went to Houston, and today, Paramjeet has found out that it received an honourable mention there. Are we proud bunnies or what?!!! For those of you who didn't make it to the show, or didn't see it, here it is:

















There followed a week of visiting friends, travelling the length and breadth of the country, before returning to Ledbury, and a 21/2 day workshop with Angie Hughes. Now that is the way to finish a holiday, well nearly. there were 4 of us, in the heat of a proper summers weekend playing, sorry, working with mixed media, and having so much fun. I will add photos to this when I get my work back from the art teacher I have lent it to. The Ledbury Art place offers all sorts of wonderful workshops throughout the year, but this was the first time I have been able to fit one in.

My last textile trip of the holidays was to the Forge Mill Needle museum in Redditch to see the finalists in the Charles Henry Foyle Trust competition. The winner Karin Millson, lives in the Middle East, and has just finished a C&G level 3 Diploma in design and stitched textiles with Sian Martin and Distant Stitch. (the same course I am on). The pieces was a hanging, and was a very clear winner. Congratulations to Karin.

So anyway, that is why I have been out of contact for so long, promise not to let it be so long til the next post. Now I am concentrating on the first meeting of the KTAA, but more of that next post.

Sanded in!

Well, admit it, it makes a change from snowed in! Kuwait, and quite a lot of the gulf region, has been having a sandstorm for the past 3 days. it is showing signs of clearing, but I remain unconvinced, as its done that once before and come back worse. it's not like a blizzard, with it blowing a gale in your face, but it just sort of hangs in the air. visiblity is not very far at all, sometimes down to feet rather than yards (or even metres!), and breathing becomes interesting! the sand is so fine, that even staying indoors is no guarantee that you will avoid it, as it comes in round the doors and windows, and through the ac vents, and everything is coated in a fine layer of the stuff - a bit like a middle eastern version of Miss Haversham's wedding feast!!!
One advantage of the sand storm has been not feeling guilty about staying in and sewing. The kuwait textile arts association is having their year end exhibition at the end of this month, and while I wasn't too fussed about having anything in it, now that I am to be their next president I felt guilty about my apathy, and decided I needed to get something done. So I have been slaving over a hot sewing machine, and made a self portrait, 18"x18", and a 30"x45" quilted wall hanging, and a bag, and will finish the secret garden piece that I made a few weeks ago for the Textile Challenges group monthly challenge, and about to start a pair of fairy shoes, and maybe a bracelet, if I have the time after I have put hanging sleeves and labels on the backs of all the quilts. I particularly wanted to do some non-quilted pieces, as I'd done the talk on my embroidery, and have had great fun running up the bag, and know I will enjoy the shoes. We are having a bit reveal at the quilt group meeting on Monday 28th, so no piccies til after then, in case anyone here decides to read this. the exhibition runs May 30th til June 2nd, and I will be practically living there! have forewarned dh about this, and he reminded me that we have a party here on the 31st to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. (actual date 27th May) I had not forgotten, it's written in my diary after all, but maybe it was a good thing he mentioned it!

a talk and an election

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I did a talk to the KTAA quilting group about my C&G embroidery course a few weeks ago. this went down so well, that they asked if I would do it again only more for the main KTAA meeting on April 28th. in the first flush of relief and exhilaration at getting through it, I said yes. what came across from the feedback after the first talk was that they would all have like to have seen more of my design work, and something of the design process. the first part of that was slightly problematic, I have not got my design boards any more, BUT...one of my partners in crime at college took some photos of them during our year end exhibition. I sent her an email, asking if by any chance she still had them, and whether she could send them to me. and I waited, and I waited, and then finally, 3 days before the talk they arrived. she had been away and not picked up her messages! the relief at seeing them was huge. I took them on a memory stick to the local printers who made them poster size.



















so here they are, and full credit to Sue Jewkes, who took the pictures and got them to me in time. the first one above shows all six boards, from the top left, living forms, based on seahorses - particularly their tails, below that is a photo montage of a bluebell wood for the landscape/geological features board, and below that in a book, is the man made items and structures board, based on the cast iron decorations at Great Malvern Station. sorry you can't see that one so well. back to the top right, the water and sky board, based on an Escher print. we had to do one board in only black and white, so this was it. below that is the folk culture, history and religion board, which I based on the legend of the phoenix, and finally below that is my media board, based on my daughter's drawings. they were very popular, and actually quite good for me to see them again, you forget so quickly what you were doing/thinking and where you were going at the time. I then mocked up some design work process pieces, starting with that old chestnut weaving 2 pages from a magazine and isolating areas of interest. honestly, you would have thought I had invented the wheel, they had never seen anything like it. so then of course I had to agree to running a design workshop in the autumn.
the first half of the evening was taken up with the KTAA agm. as a result of which, I am now the new President. Pleased to say they elected me before my talk, but I think it would have been ok either way round! My first job is running, in tandem with my predecessor, the annual exhibition of work, some of which will be going to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August. Photos to follow. So wish me luck, and if any of you have any brilliant ideas for talks for our monthly meetings, let me know. the KTAA stands for kuwait textile arts association by the way, so any textile related subject is allowed, and it can be macro or micro focused.

travels, talks, courses and spending sprees

Well, I'm back from my travels and all set to go. I took my daughter back to England to spend the Easter holidays with her father, and took the time to catch up with my sons and friends, and to do a one day course at Art Van Go.
The travelling was pretty tedious as it usually is, 6 and a half hours on a plane is not my idea of fun, I would take sewing things with me, but the last time I did the combination of a metal daisy wheel cutter and a silver needle case brought the entire security team into play and held up the queue for far too long while I took everything out and showed them that it wasn't a bomb or the makings of one. and who needs that every time they travel? Sons and friends were all suitably pleased to see me, and we had the first of several boozy evenings together at the pub - what joy! well it is when there aren't any pubs out here at all.
I drove across country to get to Art Van Go, found it and then my B&B, which was excellent, so if any of you are planning to go to a course there, I will let you have the details. Comfy bed, delicious home made food, and hosts as chatty or not as you want them to be. and then the course. It was actually the first one I have done with them, living as I did in Herefordshire, it's not always so easy to get to Hertfordshire for the day, obviously it is much easier from Kuwait! anyway, I digress, as usual. the course was on dyeing and painting, and learning the differences between the two, devised and led by Viv because she reckons over the years the discussions about this subject alone would fill several books. She had about 3 different watching sessions with her doing the most talking and doing, interspersed with us doing the doing and some talking and several whoops moments and lots of ooh and ahh type moments. she put a gazillion bottles of stuff out and said help yourself. kids in sweety shops would not come close, but 12 women had pretty inane grins on their faces for most of the day!!! I wanted to do this course because I will have to do some dyeing/fabric colouring experiments for my C&G course, and having never done any before, wanted to get some sort of heads up first. not a bad decision.
Unfortunately, going on a course at AVG is a very dangerous thing. my credit card went into serious meltdown, and my luggage weight was in serious danger of being well over limit. however, I have reformed the plastic remains of my card, and just got away with a smile at check in. phew!! it was a brilliant day, and then the following morning I went back in to meet Sharon Osbourne, who was demonstrating techniques and chatting, and spent some more!! how useless am I. AVG loved me though!! maybe its just as well that I live in Kuwait and can't get there too often.
Since I've been back, I've finished a machine embroidered picture for Textile Challenges March challenge, which was the theme of doors and windows, using fabric, paper and a found object. I had finally had some inspiration the day before I left for England, typical! It's called secret garden. I have also been making quilt squares for various friends who are moving on over the next few weeks - looking forward to seeing the finished quilts. Can't say more in case any of them read this before we give them their quilts, but it'll be good. Am now finally making a start of a couple of quilts that need to be finished by May 25th - do I stand a chance? Not nearly, but I'll give it a go. We are having the KTAA annual exhibition at the end of May and then, gulp, they are going on to Birmingham for Quilts UK. I definitely don't stand a chance. And as if that is not enough to be going on with, I am repeating my C&G talk, with additions, to the whole KTAA next week, I also need to make some ATCs and some inchies for 2 different groups, AND (yes Sian I am still enrolled in your group) blooming well get on with my C&G stuff before I get the order of the boot. No pressure then! keep smiling everyone, I am, or is that insanity looming large?!!!