Asante – A finish it up Friday #quilt

My love of quilting starts with my love of textiles. As a child in the upper Midwest, the bright colors and strong patterns in my mother’s sewing closet were a balm against long, dark, grey winters. As I grew, and left the prairie, I sought out the textile section of every art, history, and anthropology museum I could find. One of my favorites was always The Textile Museum in Washington, DC.

African fabrics have always appealed to me. After a run of playing with Japanese textiles, I decided to look for something different. I stumbled on this site. I liked the fact that the company appears to exist as a way of bringing forward the work of artisans in the villages, that they seem to be adhering to fair trade principles, and, since most textile artisans are still women, that I could help to support the economic independence of women around the world. I bought a bunch of fabric!

Of course, like any good quilter, I bought the fabric on faith. I had to idea where any of it was going to be used, but I was pretty sure something would suggest itself. I decided to start with a pretty piece of fabric from Ghana. The fabric was pretty enough to be used as a whole cloth panel, in the center of a lap quilt.  The oranges and yellows and reds put me in mind of the rising sun, so I chose to add panels around the outside with a “rays of the sun” pattern, and decided to echo that in the quilting.

For the back, I found a rich orange and gold fabric which I thought nicely complemented the colors of the front. I added the stripes to bring forward the yellows in the front. Also, I ran out of fabric. 😉

Here are some pictures of the completed project. 

My husband ordered some pretty little quilt labels for me. I’ve started sewing them on to all of my projects.

This quilt is going to a dear friend, who doesn’t yet know she is getting it! I hope she likes it.

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday!