Playing with African Fabric

I’m lucky enough to have Nigerian fabric from Miriam of Quilt Africa Fabrics. These fabrics are just amazing in design and colour. They are bold, vibrant and so varied. Since I received my first bundle I’ve had so much fun playing with the fabric and using the fabric itself to create secondary designs. See if you can spot some of the fabrics in the blocks below. Miriam has a free conference with lots of exciting speakers starting July 8 - July 11. It’s free and the sign up link is here.

Here are some of the blocks I’ve made just using a really simple nine patch block. Because these are wax fabrics they have quite a stiff hand which makes them very easy to cut on the bias, and in order to get the secondary designs I’m after, I’ve been ignoring grainline where necessary. So the centre square below is cut on grain, but in order to get the corner and side squares to create movement, I’ve cut them so the yellow strip lines up with the white bubble. The white is also not absolutely symmetric which helps create a more dynamic feeling.

The white flowers really stood out against the black and red background, but when I cut them and placed the white towards the centre, suddenly a white wreath is formed.

This next one is really interesting. I cut the stripy fabric so the purple went around, and I’ve teamed it with the all over spots. I fussy cut the white X for the centre, but avoided the X’s for the corner squares. What I was really happy about was the white and black stripes that seam to float across the surface of the block from side to side and up and down, as the purple strips seem to form a ring around the block.

This block is created out of two semicircles cut into quarters and them teamed with a pink print of the same value. The effect is to create a circular shape.

The outside print is very geometric and by fussy cutting it and sewing it carefully other secondary patterns were formed. It was fun.

If you are interested in looking at Miriam’s fabrics, I’m including the link to the fabric store so you can check them out. They add a whole new level of excitement to fabric play. Enjoy!

Click here to join the conference

This link is so you can check out the special bundle of fabrics and patterns from the speakers