Island Challenge - Pippa

My piece is called "Choices". When I first heard what the first challenge theme was, I thought about working with a map of Hornby Island. The latter is my "happy place", and I have been thinking about playing with the altitudinal lines for sometime. But then I thought about my commitment to myself to work with Africa-inspired textiles and themes, and wondered about making a landscape quilt, looking out at the island across the way from Bushara Island in Uganda. But I knew that Joan was going to do that, so I asked myself what I would do if I just let myself be free and do whatever I wanted. Well . . . there is this image of a young woman - troubled, thoughtful - that I have had since I was in my teens. It represents a time that was very difficult for me. I screen-printed it onto a variety of grey fabrics, and chose one of them for the focal point in this quilt. I though about the saying "No man is an island", but the truth is that sometimes you can feel very much alone, very much an island, and that's what I wanted to work with. In the end, it is your own choices and your own life that you are responsible for - no-one else's. So the screen-printed girl became an island. Life is happily carrying on all around her, but she is left to make a choice, a decision, on her own.
I so look forward to seeing all the other challenges. Any chance we'll be able to see them all together at some point, Gladys? Sort of like the Twelve by Twelve group? That would be wonderful.