Amie of Arabia

I met Amie a couple years ago when I was teaching on a quilt cruise to Alaska, we hit it off and kept in touch by email and hope to meet up again when she visits Victoria in October. She and her husband plan to live here once their time in Arabia is done. Hurrah! I asked Amie to write a profile about her life in Arabia (it sounds quite exotic and exciting to me!) and send some pictures. So here she is:

I am a textile artist who is living and working in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi as you would expect, the sand is everywhere! The palms trees look dull because the palm leaves are covered in sand. Sand storms create an orange hue, the sand is so heavy in the air you can't see down the street. The most beautiful part of the Saudi landscape has to be the setting sun. It is an orange ball in the sky and seems to fall rather quickly as opposed to setting like sunsets in Canada.

The camel, of course!


A hunting falcon


To market, to market!


Amie in a gold souk or market:


More gold:


Digging for a Sand Rose:


A Desert Sand Rose:

I Googled the Desert Rose and found this information:
Desert Rose is a beautiful variety of gypsum that forms in the spaces between sand particles. It traps the loose sand in a unique flower-like crystal structure.
Desert rose usually forms spherical and disc-shaped crystals with a range of graceful curving lines. Very large desert roses are rare but have been discovered as large as a metre in diameter. This is only possible in the coarsest sand found below the water table.

I began quilting many years ago and worked in a quilt shop before coming to Saudi. My work was mainly tradtional quilting. My favorite part of a traditional quilt is the actual quilting. I love playing with threads and free motion stitching. I have spent the last few years just playing with different fabrics and techniques. I am a texture girl. I love texture. I love to run my hands across any textured surface. I am actually inspired by texture and try to recreate texture in my work.
Amie's latest work is titled Purple Breeze: