Hey Quilters!!

So much for spring cleaning! I did start, its just that I found a whole stack of photo CD’s and thought I’d better label them all before the Mind-Mush takes over. Amongst them were all the shots from the recent Cultural Week at work and I’ve started organizing/editing them in the hope of burning off cd’s for all the girls in the office as a Happy New Year gift.

For those of you new to the world of the “Madcow” Cultural Week was a celebration of all the different cultures that make up our staff. The week started with Maori, then Indian, Tongan, Cook Island & Samoan. There were of course the usual whingers, ie, “Why isn’t there a pakeha (European) day??” Well get off your whiney-arse pakeha butts and organize it!! was the usual response from some short woman with a big mouth.

Of course my gf and I had already decided to find our up until now undiscovered Indian roots to help out our two friends that had been left in the lurch organizing India Day. Can’t imagine there are too many blonde Indians around but nobody seemed to notice!!

Anyway, (she finally gets to the point) amongst the photos were these shots of the Tivaevae Quilts that are one of my favourite bits of Cook Island culture along with my darling work mate Berta of course!

There are three main types of Tivaevae according to the Atiu Fibre Arts Studio website http://www.adc.co.ck/tivaevae.htm

Tivaevae taorei (pronounce tah-oray). A standard double bed cover is pieced together of approximately 15,000 to 32,000 fabric squares no bigger than 1" to 1.5" (2.5 cm to 3.75 cm) forming the most intricate and colourful mosaic patterns.

Tivaevae tataura (pronounce tah-taoo-rah) combines appliqué and hand embroidery. Mainly floral designs are richly decorated with an extraordinary variety of most intricate stitches and then applied on to a plain background.

Tivaevae manu (pronounce mah-nu) consist of 2 layers of differently coloured fabric. The top layer is folded in four or eight, cut out snowflake fashion and hand or machine stitched to the background.

The quilts that the girls brought into share with us were just beautiful – so vibrant. I thought especially our resident quilters, Anne, Patty & Linda, would enjoy them.

PS. Kip! Fountain of all knowledge! I’d really like Linda to be able to see these but she says she’s unable to access blogs from “down under” – mine and Ruth especially. What’s that about? Can she fix it?