one more from Turkey, 2010

The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. I didn't care how touristy it was now, I had to go, and wander through the arched brick walkways, totally lost among the silks, spices and plastic toys. I did find one great piece: a handmade child's dress, with fringed sleeves, embroidery and locks of human hair sewn to it (a form of magical protection).

Artifact: child's dress, Turkey (37" h x 32"w)

Back home, I deconstructed the dress just enough to open it, then merged it with a small old crib quilt. This required some very careful transplanting of red dress lining cloth under shredding blue quilt fabric. The dark red bird came from a mola (more of the mola can be found in some of the red patches) which I traced and copied as a pale blue patchwork bird and another (barely visible) sheer fabric bird. Together, the three birds fly out of the dress collar and become part of the checkered quilt......just as immigrants have long flown their homelands to become part of our red/white/blue pattern.

Some pieces require lots of planning and photoshop maneuvering: not this one. As soon as the dress met the quilt, they were both ready to cooperate.

This last one has nothing to do with Turkey, but is in the same immigrant theme  and made at the same time:

Older, But Stronger (33"h x 58"w)  An international textile collage of our national flag. The red and white falcon in the lower right represents my Polish immigrant ancestors. 

On Monday, I began a whole series of textile maps. Hope you enjoy.