Tuesday 16 March 2010

Round Robin fabric started

I have been doing a fair bit of schoolwork tonight ready for next term, but I have managed to grab an hour to start creating my fabric for the Challenge. As you can see it is very green! I have changed tack from my first initial thoughts due to my printer not working. I have ended up looking at the differences between North and South America.
The USA the richest country in the North, population of New York 19,541,453.
Bolivia is the poorest country in South America,and their population 9,684,093.
The nick name for the dollar is the Greenback
Bolivia is situated on the Andes and has the Rainforest running through it- hence using green as the dominant colour.
Bolivians trying to make money to live are cutting down the Rainforest to grow coca, a sacred plant to the indigenous people. The use of the plant dates back to the Aztecs and has been used for ceremonial and medicinal purposes, it is as much a part of their daily life as coffee is to us. The Bolivians chew or brew it to stave off hunger or exhaustion and to ease the effects of high altitude of living in the Andes. Pope John Paul drank coca tea on his visit to Bolivia in 1988. Now the plant is being used to produce cocaine. The USA is trying to stop the drug being grown BUT they are also the biggest legal importer of coca to make Coco-Cola. It is imported by Stepan Chemicals in Illinois.
So far I have torn up pages of the Wall Street Journal to represent the wealth of USA, it has been stuck to a base fabric with CMC, cotton gauze was then placed on top and all of it has been coloured with Brusho inks. Just got to wait for it to dry now. I wont be doing anything on it tomorrow as my daughter and friends are coming round for a craft evening- I am supposed to be showing them how I use alcohol inks.

2 comments:

Diane Kelsey said...

WOW! Really didn't know all that info about coca. Hope you have a fun night with the girls, expect the word alcohol will get their attention.

Anonymous said...

Looks most interesting - looking forward to seeing where this leads