Diamonds for India

www.SewManyPlaces.com/tours/india_1110.html

This is the web site where you can check out my itinerary. Jinny has requested that we each bring along 500 2.5" diamonds for a project entitled Colours of Rajasthan. People who know me, know full well that that is an impossible task for me. And I don't do piecing, or at least until now. However I was laid up having had a disastrous encounter with a very large spike in the foot, so I decided I could at least prepare some of the silk fabrics I've been collecting for the last 3-4 years. I use recycled fabrics in my artwork and have been collecting silk blouses and shirts purchased from my local Salvation Army where I volunteer each Tuesday afternoon. Because the silks are so thin, I thought it best to fuse interfacing to them before attempting to cut out these diamonds. I went through close to 10 bolts of fusible and as a result had a wonderful pile of fabric from which to work. So I started cutting only to discover at the 50 mark that I had cut the diamonds too large. Jinny uses the side of the diamond as a measurement and most references gave me instructions using the height. Not the same. However, since my diamonds were larger than required, I then proceeded to cut them down in size. The first photo is an unintended optical illusion of the many diamonds I cut out of differing colours.
I subsequently removed all the blues and greens which of course meant that I had fewer than the required 500.

These photos of the folded silks show a more realistic look at the real colours.

I then inspected my men's tie collection and choose some I deemed to fit with my silk diamonds. At this point I now have 500 again.

I finally remembered that I had hand dyed some cotton years ago and found more colours to suit - not shown. In the end I will take a minimum of 600 diamonds, some of which are cotton. I'm thinking that the other participants may not want to trade their cotton for silk, so now I have cottons too.