African Quilt - pt. 2

I have had time to keep looking at my ideas for this quilt. The more I looked, the less happy I became with the ideas I had generated thus far. For a long while I just didn't "get" what it was was that I was unhappy with.

Here's a reminder of where I had got to.

What I realised was that the fabric is organic, random and free, but my designs were rigid and regular and owed little to the culture that had created the fabric. So..... I turned to the large collection of images that I have brought back from trips to Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa hoping that among them something would trigger the "yes!" Response.

I found the images that evoked the right response.

The Rufigi River in Tanzania. I had very strong images in my memory as well as these two photos of the light on the water at sundown, the patterns in the water and the array of colours if one looked hard enough. Now I could work on a design.