"The best laid plans.....

.....of mice and men often go astray", said Robert Burns.  And the best laid plans of this quilt artist very often go astray. The plan that I spoke of in my last post to make a quilt inspired by the architecture of Hundertwasser just did not work out.  I was trying to simplify it and in doing that it looked like something done by a kindergartener.  Hmmmm, those two Germanic words go well together, but not in a quilt.

Sooooo, off on a new plan I go.  While traveling in South America last year one of the places we visited and were intrigued by was a Favela in Rio de Janeiro.  A favela is a slum (of sorts) for the working poor. The one that we toured had electricity (with wires draped, often precariously, over the streets), plumbing, sanitation systems, stores and schools.  While they had been known for crime and drugs they are now safer and heavily policed.  We saw many groups of police bearing very visible arms. Of course we were on a guided tour, so we never felt unsafe.  We even visited a school, a very poor school that was being funded by an American charity.

This little beauty willingly posed for me. Perhaps a future Samba dancer?


The favelas are built up the side of the mountains surrounding the city.  Many of them are quite colorful.

We went up this stairway and were able to peek in some of the apartments.  Gotta love that lime green and pink!

While there are many one story buildings, there are also two and three story.

Some of the creative wiring.

But from the flats of the city looking up, you don't see the warren of streets and alleys. You just see what appears to be a lot of little buildings almost piled on top of one another and that's what I am going to try to depict in my small quilt.  I am going to use a lot of artistic license as to color and design, so please come back and see what I've done.  I've been working on it these past couple of frigid days (good time to be in the studio) and I hope to work on it over the weekend.  Hopeful it will be better than my Hundertwasser adventure. So my apologies to Fredensreich.  I may visit you again some day and try again. And then there's always the Gaudi architecture I saw in Barcelona. Maybe somewhere down the road.