This is a photo looking up into a small Buddhist Pagoda in Kunming, China……
I do love the mix of colors, although I am not sure that my color sense would ever allow me to put those particular ones together.
But more importantly, I enjoy the architectural styling and the depth that you see.
And I wonder if that is something that I could recreate in fabric?
Maybe I will give it a try one day….but probably with different colors!!!
Now that the Mozambique trip is officially over, I can go back to showing photos and designs that inspire me to make quilts…..more quilts than I would EVER be able to make!!!
In 2018, we spent several weeks in China and one Friday, I went out for a walk in Kunming. I ended up in an area that had lots of military statues and murals. If you like, you can read about the outing HERE.
Among the stonework, I found this stylized flower garden…..
Can’t you see this made with various green strips of fabric for the stems and leaves and bright ovals for the flowers.
Now that I look at the photo, I see the one flower that is different. I wonder why they did that!!!!
As I always say…..Inspiration is EVERYWHERE!!!!
Yesterday, I posted about my entry in the “I’m so Blue” guild challenge.
Normally, I am finishing my challenges on the day that they are due, or maybe the day before if I am really organized, but, with this one, the idea came quickly and I was finished over a month before the due date…. UN-HEARD OF!!
Just after I finished it, I was talking to another guild member (Sue) and she said that she would make it different by using the other spelling/meaning of blue……ie BLEW!!
Just after our conversation, we made another trip to Kunming, China where I spied this wonderful bronze statue…..
I adored the look on the man’s face….
….not to mention the little boy at the back…..
Now THAT is a great example of “BLEW”!!
When we returned home, I called Sue and asked if she had ever acted on her inspiration. She said that she had not and that I was welcome to use the idea.
I started with the photo itself, tweaking it to enhance the color…..
I used the pinwheel as my inspiration and added a bunch of small pinwheels and two larger 3-D pinwheels….
….and added the beaded “stick” to meet the embellishment and blue requirements.
I made a couple of paper quilts to test out the quilting designs….
….but finally decided on wavy parallel lines in a metallic thread….
I love the final product…..
…particularly the way that the fabrics worked together.
And, as a plus, it is another fun “Travel Log Quilt” that reminds me of a trip to Kunming!!
On one of our trips to Kunming China, we spotted this small vignette of typical life in China…..
On one of our trips to China, we were in the city of Kunming for my birthday and I decided that I wanted to go to a Chinese Cultural Event. Our friend Jialin suggested that we go to see “Dynamic Yunnan”…..a fusion of traditional ethnic folk music and modern dance.
The program was made up of 6 chapters, each with a theme and a wonderfully choreographed dance. Each of the dances had a particular element of sound or visual interest that managed to capture our imaginations. The performers were from the Yunnan ethnic minorities and the costumes were authentic for the area.
Officially, there was no photography allowed, but throughout the show, we could see flashes from cameras and hear the whirring of video cameras. So, sometime around the 2nd chapter, I pulled out my I-phone and started taking photos as well.
This is my favorite photo of the evening…..
Before the dance started, a fair amount of “snow” had already fallen on the stage and when they started whipping the scarves around, it picked up the snow and made it swirl!!!
I know that this photo is out focus and fuzzy, but when I see it, I immediately think of a Blizzard!!!
If you would like to read more about the program, please use this LINK to get to that blog post.
