Hmong Carrying Strap

When I was first quilting, I went with a group of friends to Siripan Kidd's house in Colchester for a day workshop. Siripan sold beautiful Thai silk, and this piece that I made shows some of her techniques - hand drafted patterns, put together with hand piecing. You can see that some of the silk is "shot silk" and another of her techniques was to place the grain of the shot silk in varying directions so that the colour changed. You can see this clearly in the border and also some of the leaves.

Detail - the small quilt was hand quilted in a random pattern. That was fun to do. Siripan and her husband now live in Thailand and until recently, arranged textile themed holidays for quilters.

Recently, I was having a rummage amongst my stored patterns and found these small items. They were purchased many years ago from Siripan.

These are small sections of antique Hmong embroidery. I believe that they are parts of a "carrying strap". In any case, they are functional pieces which have been well used.

The stitching is very fine and it is interesting to see the reverse. The bobbin case has been placed to show the scale.

The second section - here with colourful bands.

The labels show that I bought them for £4.oo each. The stitching is much finer on these older pieces than the more modern made for tourist pieces.