I thought about this subject long and hard, and what I decided was to try and combine the ‘differences’ that struck me about the theme. When I think about East, I think about warm, rich colours, silk, and shiny embellishments. When I think about West, I think about cool, delicate colours, cotton, straight lines and modest embellishments. Of course English paper piecing springs to my mind, because this is one of my favourite techniques. I used a rich red dyed cotton fabric for the background, and appliqued onto that a section of English pieced hexagons which used printed commercial fabrics and hand-dyed silk and lace. By doing this I was intending to mix the fabrics that remind me of both East and West. I then added Kantha stitching to the piece in the open areas. My intention here was to bring together the quilting techniques of East and West. Finally I added some sparkly ‘eastern’ embellishments and some subdued square ‘western’ embellishments, and I finished the piece edging the quilt with a row beads.

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