Egyptian Tent Makers

The Egyptian Tent Makers are from a family that has decorated tents in the middle east for generations.  Around the Mediterranean Sea almost every surface is intensely decorated with intricate designs and many colors.  The tent makers carried this tradition to fabric and they made tents that were exquisite works of art.  Today they use the same techniques to make decorative wall hangings and they are amazing.  See their website for more information about them.

The base fabric they use is heavy and thick, like for tents.  I am sure the book they are selling gives more specific information, but I passed up the opportunity to buy it so I really cannot talk about materials and techniques in detail.  Men are the artists and do all the sewing, and two of them were at the Albuquerque show working on hangings.  There were many completed examples for show and sale.

Each man had a grocery bag full of pieces of fabric.  He cut a shape or a strip with huge, tailors' scissors as he was ready to sew.  No patterns.  The only references I noted were some minimal markings on the background fabric, which somehow told him what to put where.  Using a large needle the cut pieces were appliquéd with functional stitches that were rather large compared to what we are used to seeing in our traditional quilting appliqué.  The designs are amazingly intricate, beautiful, and each one is different.  All are done by hand.

I hope you can see the stitching on this closeup

Some more examples to drool over:

It was a wonderful quilt show with lots of interesting and beautiful things to see.