Leora Rankin, South African embroidery

The speaker at our Guild meeting was Leora Rankin from Capetown, South Africa who brought two delights -- her lovely accent and lively speaking style as well as a bunch of very colorful, fun -- she says easily made -- embroideries. Here are two. To me they seem to have something in common with the work of Central and South American women. Nothing was said about mutual influences, and it's a little hard to imagine there is -- perhaps the bright colors are a matter of being a tropical climate, which seems to inspire bright colors, plus there might be similar plants from which dyes were made. I'm always curious about such cross cultural matters and wish I had been told more -- if anything is known. Perhaps no one asked those questions before --which seems unlikely since I can't be the only curious person looking at them. Anyway, the talk was engaging and concise and just long enough.

And here is another of Karen Griska's quilts [see previous post below], before her selvage work -- this she called a "Beaded Log Cabin." And beaded it is! It's rather large, heavily embroidered and beaded -- what a lot of hours! Very beautiful work!!