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Archive for September 17th, 2011

17th September
2011
written by Hazel

I can’t believe I forgot to post this with all of the Turkey posts!  But better late than never, so here is the lowdown on Turkey’s contribution to our wedding quilt.  We knew that we wanted to look for fabric in Istanbul’s famous Grand Bazaar.  You can read about the rest of our shopping trip here.

Even though Istanbul is known to have amazing textiles we had an epic quest trying to search for something that would be appropriate for use in a quilt.  In general the fabric we would like to find would be made of cotton or something similar, be a strong, thin fabric that isn’t stretchy, see through, or too coarse.  In the USA you can buy fabric specifically designed for quilting, but this is not the case in most other countries.

The first thing we found that would maybe have worked was a table runner.  We would have needed to cut it up and only wanted a small bit of it.  It was expensive though and we ultimately decided that we could probably do better.  It wasn’t easy though and even our final choice will be quite a challenge for my mom to put it into the quilt with so many other different types of fabric.

And here is our choice!

Turkey Fabric

Turkey Fabric

It is a pashmina made of cashmere.  We loved the pattern and the colors and it is incredibly soft.  Perhaps it can even be used in one big piece on the back of the quilt or it will just mean that there are little soft patches on the front!

17th September
2011
written by Hazel

We had a great first night camping and slept really well in the nice, sandy campground.

First Safari Campground

First Safari Campground

We had to get up really early, but it meant that we got to see a beautiful sunrise before breakfast!

African Sunrise

African Sunrise

Right after breakfast we got going because we needed to finish driving through Botswana and get into Zambia this day.  The landscape wasn’t that interesting, but we did see a little wildlife before we made it to the Kazungula Ferry that crosses into Zambia.

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