Greetings from the rainbow nation
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'Greetings from the Rainbow Nation'. © 2013 Claire Passmore

Greetings from the rainbow nation
Incredibly, South Africa has eleven official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. As you might expect, most South Africans can speak more than one language and many speak several, often at the same time.

South Africa is also known as the 'Rainbow Nation', a phrase coined by the wonderful Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe South Africa after the first fully democratic election of 1994. Nelson Mandela added his weight to the phrase after his first month in office when he proclaimed "Each of us is intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."


I wanted to make an art quilt that brought together these ideas, and show how the lives of the people of South Africa are closely entwined.  It is made of strips of brightly colored fabric, free motion quilted with greetings in all eleven languages. These strips are woven together and laid onto another whole cloth quilt to form a single wall hanging.