My longer term readers will remember that frequently I have posted pictures of offerings I’ve found principally on the beaches of Uruguay, but also encountered on a visit to Cuba.  Collections of fruit and vegetables, fresh flowers, grains, often coins and candles, and usually with some bird or animal sacrifice, commonly chickens, roosters or doves and sometimes goat limbs or heads.  It has been a while since my last offerings post, though, for reasons I’ll skip here.  I’ve occasionally seen them on roadsides and at traffic intersections, for years in my ignorance believing these were dumped rubbish.  Uruguayans do litter their streets terribly, but these are, well, now I realise, offerings, and whatever they are hoping for is better served by placement where many people will pass by, I’m told.

These offerings relate to the makumba belief system that prevails here, Brasil, Argentina and Paraguay in particular, but also across the Caribbean and other parts of latin America where African people were brought across the Atlantic as captive slaves in the C16-C19.  Links to some of those posts are here,  here and here .

Early last year some Aussie visitors were in port for the day on a cruise ship, and Mike and I took them on a whirlwind tour of Montevideo, concluding with lunch at the port just before their departure.  As we often do, we started with The Cerro – a high hill overlooking the port and city of Montevideo, on which was constructed a spanish fortress in the early 1800s.  I was not entirely surprised to find an offering tucked into forked branches of a tree on the side of the hill, overlooking the harbour and city beyond.  I wouldn’t have said it was a high traffic site, but it does have a view of water – which is another very auspicious factor, apparently.

Offerings in (left) forked tree branches and (right) street intersection

A few weeks ago we were taking some departing friends around a couple of parts of the city they’d never managed to visit in the years they lived here.  After The Cerro fortress we made our way to the northern side of the city where in the barrio of Cerrito de la Vittoria stands the huge magnificent church of the Cerrito de la Vittoria   Right in the middle of the intersection where two  of the surrounding streets meet, was an offering in a cardboard box, including dead chicken, fruit, vegetables, flowers, corn and other stuff.  Nothing had driven over it – such a thing is probably a common sight there.  We’ll be going up there again soon, so maybe there’ll be another.

I believe from our use of the word ‘patchwork’, surviving ancient textile remnants and the myths and legends that surround the notions of traditional patchwork, that it all originated in the world of mending.

As a newbie in the world of quiltmaking, I learned how to draft and construct traditional American geometric patchwork patterns to any size.  Like most, I was instantly hooked, and still love a well made traditional quilt.  However, since I met freehand or improvisational piecing, that has been my go-to technique. in which fundamentally line is a seam, think it, do it.

From my family background, and standard for my age, came education in the practical skills of sewing, mending and dressmaking, from a mother who believed every woman needed to know how to use a sewing machine for her home and family.

From my early interest in stitch and its potential as creative embroidery came appreciation of applique techniques in textile art.

I’ve been consciously thinking of holes for some time, but realise now that I’m considering ‘patch’ as the opposite of ‘hole’ and in fact have already unwittingly combined them:

So should works featuring holes be called lace, or ‘holework’?