Tapa Cloth | Factotum of Arts

I have been playing around in threadbias again today. Growing up in New Zealand gave me an amazing chance to be exposed to a lot of Pacific arts. One of my favorite arts are Tapa Cloths. Here is an example of what a Tapa Cloth is. Can’t you see a quilt design in there 🙂

Tapa Cloths use a lot of basic shapes such as triangles, circles and squares. Here is my new design inspired by this art form. This view is using some Lotta Jansdotter print to highlight the simple shapes.

What about how it would look as a monochromatic block (1 color)….

Tapa Cloths art form fills “in between” shapes with stripes and other fillers. For example, see above, the flying geese have all those stripes in the “in between” spaces. So, I took the same monochrome view of the star block and added some stripes to get this……

I am thinking of making these into paper piecing patterns. What do you think…paper piecing pattern or just a block pattern?

Linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced for WiP Wednesday.

First off – this is a picture heavy post. Today, I am turning 40 and decided to embrace it!! I am celebrating it with a trip to New York to attend Lotta Jansdotter Surface Printing Workshop. We (I took the family along) started the trip out with delays from Tropical Storm Andrea, but thankfully we got to the hotel, even though it was midnight (4 hours late).

This morning, I couldn’t wait to get in that yellow cab and be driven to Brooklyn to Lotta’s workshop. One of those cab’s below will be mine!!

The workshop was held in an amazing space that included the shop, workspace and office. And yes, in the photo below those are shelves of fabric bolts. I made a purchase while I was there, of course – a strawberry journal, a table runner and the 1 yard of the dandelion fabric from her Echo line.

The course, itself, was run by Lotta. I shared the experience with 11 other great people who helped me celebrate. The course took you through working with potatoes, rubber blocks and stencils on both paper and fabric.

I loved Lotta’s teaching style. She made sure that the main goal of the course was just to experiment and go with the creative flow, which was very liberating and stress-free. The four hours flew by….I so wished the course was a weekend course (2 days) – I enjoyed it that much. I would highly recommend anyone coming to New York, to check out her shop at the very least, and if possible sign-up for a class. You will love it.

Potato printing