Inspiration for this piece were two flags, one of the country and the other of the north-western region, I have taken the elements from both flags and combined them to make my own design.

The choice for the country for this series is as a result of three adventurous holidays in the north of the country and the fact that my mother was born there pre-partition. I am of course talking about Pakistan and what used to be the North West frontier provinces and is now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is an area that I adore and the people were lovely but I am talking about the 90s when it was possible to travel relatively freely so long as one was wearing the traditional shalwar kameez and had one’s head covered in public.

The four corner squares represent the crops that were dominant at the time of partition (1947) cotton, tea, jute and wheat and I have drawn them as they appear on the central shield of the Pakistan flag, in the same way the right hand-side is interwove gardenias. The words faith, unity and discipline are also on the flag, I have stitched them in chain stitch which is a stitch often used in Pakistani embroidery. The remainder of the symbols/emblems come from the Khyber flag, both flags are the same colour, green on a white background. The colour has come out slightly darker in the photo.

Stitched by machine on to Egyptian cotton using three different weights of dark green thread, the painting was added after the stitching.

Detail view: