Jambo!

Jambo is "Hello!" in Swahili. What a terrific time we had in Kenya and its national parks of the Great Rift Valley and Amboseli. Fabulous people, wonderful animals, and the best weather ever. My brain is just agog with all the possibilities for the Quilting Studio.  Look at this scene from Amboseli with Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background.  There's a landscape quilt which will eventually emerge - I still have 800 other photos to consider.

These two t-shirts along with the Kenya flag will make a great wall hanging. Originally I bought 4 t-shirts thinking that I would do a square wall hanging. Then I decided to break up the 4 t-shirts into 2 separate wall hangings. The remaining two will be a wall hanging for my sister Paula and her husband Dennis, who went to Kenya with us. Great fun to travel with them!

Use your imagination.  Surround these shirts with red, black, green, or yellow. 

If you're a faithful reader of this blog, then you know I have a thing for purses and bags.  This zippered bag is great.  I love the zebra print mixed with the cheetah print.  And the animals?  These were the animals we saw - constantly.  I'm not sure whether I will use this bag in the studio, imitate it for its size and pattern, or use its palette as a design source.



This whole cloth is 40" by 60", and the Maasai use it as a wrap - it's a kanga. If you look closely (click on the picture), you'll see words in Swahili.  A loose translation is "God controls the rhythms of our lives."  I am going to quilt this and use it as an opportunity to work on my free-motion skills.  I was a bit disappointed to learn that this kanga is a product of Tanzania since we officially didn't visit Tanzania.  Unofficially?  We actually did.  Our balloon ride came to a swift end when we began to sail into Tanzanian territory, and we did a quick crash landing!

One of the nice surprises when we returned home was the arrival of my 2010 blog in book form, ordered from blog2print.com.  Although my blog is securely on line, it's great to see all the entries from 2010 and be able to page through them.  This volume will sit on the bookshelves along side the 2007, 2008, and 2009 volumes.


Be it ever oh so humble, there's no place like home!