Since we’re about to set off on a 24 hour bus trip from Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama, a town in one of they driest places on earth, I thought I’d schedule a post about one of our ongoing projects.  My mother is a quilter and quilting teacher and author and she is awesome at what she does.  Check it out!

Since Justin and I were married recently she has offered to make us a wedding quilt and so of course we wanted to find a way to make it unique.  We had the bright idea to buy fabrics in each of the countries we visit and send them back to her, so that at the end of the trip she will have fabrics from all different parts of the world to work into a quilt.  Then when we look at it we will be reminded of our travels, our wedding, and my talented mom!  Pretty sweet.

We had an easy time in New Zealand.  There was a specialty quilting fabric shop in Christchurch and all we had to do was pick patterns we liked and that seemed the most “New Zealandish” to us.  We picked ferns, prints that reminded us of Maori designs, and some green and browns.

New Zealand Fabrics

Argentina was a bit more of a challenge.  Turns out that they do not produce fabric, so it is all imported.  And all of the fabric appropriate for quilting was imported from the USA.  We had a little bit of a dillemma about this, but eventually decided that it was worth it to buy one or two fabrics which would make us think of Argentina and which were purchased there, if not manufactured there.  So we went with a blue and yellow theme to go with several tile mosaics we had seen and also to match the Argentinian flag.  Unfortunately I didn’t snap a picture of these before I sent them off, but we were pretty happy with them in the end.

Chile had the same situation with imported fabric, but I think we got lucky because the first fabric shop we went to had some much nicer choices and it was quite easy to pick some fabrics which will evoke memories of Chile.  The colors are just right for the desert and somehow right for the beaches too and the flowers remind me of the awesome street art.

Chile Fabric

I’ll keep posting about this as we go on.  It will be really amazing to see what the end result of this project is and every time we go on a fabric search I have a renewed excitement about this very unique souvenir!