A ROOM IN MENA HOUSE (WAP; Egypt #1)

To celebrate my husband's 50th birthday ( back in 2011), we decided to spend a month in Egypt!
It wasn't the most stable time in the country's history. There had been a considerable amount of civil unrest  & both sides of our family were concerned about our decision.  However, the people we had contact with in Egypt reassured us that we would be fine...so we took the risk....having revamped our wills before setting off on this phenomenal adventure!

Both of us had been brought up in Christian households, where Egypt was the setting for many a Bible story.  It was a place we had both dreamt of going, & consequently... were totally overwhelmed when we finally arrived.

Our first stop was Mena House, where we'd booked a few nights stay because it was close to the Pyramids! This was first a hunting lodge & then a palace before being transformed to a very famous Hotel.

Inside it was GLORIOUS! Beautiful carved & inlaid wood everywhere, gold & lightshades cut through so that the light decorated the walls in pattern. Sigh! It took our breaths away!

We'd only booked a standard room, but because the tourist industry (of which they were so dependant) had suffered a significant slump...and because I'd let them know it was my husband's birthday...we were upgraded to a suite.

Not just any suite.

Down the hall was the Presendential Suite, and another had housed Churchill!
Ours looked directly out onto a PYRAMID (as in....RIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOW!!), was decorated throughout with beautiful inlaid wood work & had been the preferred suite of Om Kolthoom, an Egyptian singer who is to Egypt what Kiri TeKanawa is to NZ & Joan Sutherland to Australia!

Needless to say...it was such a beautiful surprise to start our Egypt experience with.

From my side of the bed, I could look into the sitting area & see a painted mural. It was naive in style & showed the River Nile with trees & plants around it. Time & time again, my eye kept being drawn to it.  In fact....I looked at it more than the giant pyramid out the window!!

It seemed appropriate that I start my Egypt inspired weekly art project with this room as my muse.

I began with the idea that I'd like to create something using the different shapes & patterns in the decoration of the room, so began making visual notes of the shapes & edgings.  Whilst I was doing this though, my mind kept going back to the mural.

So, I decided to focus solely on that.
It soon became clear that even if categorized as 'naive' in style, there was still a lot of detail in the plants I was making sketched notes of!!  It fascinates me how different artists capture the personality of trees & plants in stylised drawings. The more I looked the more I wanted to try capturing some of these motifs using contemporary reverse applique.

Once again, I decided to stick with an A4 size for these projects.  With that small space in mind...was I pushing the limit to have this many colours in my design?
How was I going to manage the physical cutting of 8-9 fabrics in small spaces?
These were risks I was prepared to take.

After cutting to shape, ironing, stacking & then sewing the design through all 10 layers (there was a backing as well as the 9 colour fabrics), this is how it looked.

I chose a lighter, variegated thread to stitch my design  with, partly because I'm out of dark grey thread (next thing on my shopping list!!) and because I thought it would add another element of interest.

The colour of the fabric isn't quite right in the photo above, but you can still see how small & close together the sections & lines of this design are to each other. It was going to be interesting to see whether it still looked recognisable once it was cut back!

Here's how it went;

So far so good!  Now for a little bit of tweeking & a few embellishments!

I am very happy with my final result.
Whilst it looks significantly different to the original mural, this immediately takes me back to that magnificent room where we battled jetlag and started to explore this ancient land.

Technically, this was a very difficult piece of cutting & it took much longer (approximately 6 hours) to cut back than my weekly art projects usually take & has left me with a very painful blister on my cutting thumb!!  It was worth it though.
If I were doing it again, I would try & reduce the colour palette & consequently the number of fabric layers.  I would also keep the variegated thread for the frame, but use a thread closer to the fabric colour for the plant life inside.

What a start!  I'm looking forward to seeing what grabs me for inspiration next week!