Thursday, February 11, 2010

KTAA

I scour the newspapers daily.  Reading the world news is particularly interesting from the Middle East point of view.  So we subscribe to both the Arab Times and the Kuwait News.  It gets delivered to my front door each morning.  So I read about what is happening in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Korea, Australia, US etc….there are many pictures of the White House in DC buried in snow!  I want to know and I suppose am now more interested than ever….what is going on,  literally, in my back yard.  The second reason is to find out What’s Happening!!  That is where I found out about the KTAA…Kuwait Textile Arts Association.   Tuesday evening I attended a meeting held at the Sadu House..to hear a woman speak about textiles in Mali.   (John was my driver to take me to the event. )  I walked into a room filled with women of many nationalities. KTAA Meeting                    Leotta Haynes (in the blue robe) talked of Malian Textiles

Mali fabric mud dyed by hand The fabric is white to begin with and using a dye they make out of leaves of a plant and rich river mud.  They paint the dark leaving a design in white.Mali tie dyed fabric This fabric was tie dyed. Leotta showed pictures of a Mailian woman              stirring dye in a large kettle over an open fire.

Knowing I was going to this talk, I spent over an hour researching the people and country of Mali.  Thanks to the internet I treated myself to learning of another culture, in Western Africa.

My adventure out this evening resulted in meeting a woman from Canada who is the Group Coordinator for the Kuwait Quilt Group, inviting me to attend their meeting the next day.  Oh yes….I am going to meet some ladies!!!

1 comments:

Amy Jo said...

That fabric is beautiful!