Quilting Around the World – Featuring Alia

Welcome to the second installation of Quilting Around the World.  Today I’m delighted to share with you Alia who blogs over at Coffeebeans Dailies about her very interesting life in the Middle East.  I find her quilting life to be just fascinating.  I hope you all ready what she has to say.  I’m learning so much already and this is just the second interview of the series.

Hi.  My name is Alia Ghulam.  I was born in Bogota’, Colombia in South America and moved to the United States as a baby.  I grew up in St. Louis and started working when the love bug hit me and now I am living    in Muscat, Oman with my Omani husband and two beautiful kids; one tortoise; two Persian kitties; and one wild little man that lives outside.  I recently realized that both my Spanish grandmother’s were seamstresses.  They made clothing mostly and that is how they survived in Colombian and the United States!

Where in the World are You?

I live in Muscat, Oman in the Middle East.

How long have you been sewing/quilting?  How did you become interested in quilting?

When my husband proposed, I told a childhood friend whom was living in Florida with her family at the time and she flew to St. Louis and we met at her Mom’s house.  Her Mom took out all these quilts and I was smitten!  I have had a needle in my hand since the age of 9 and had never looked at Quilts before.  From this weekend with this family; I learned that I could not get past the color in the past.  What I did not like was the deep burgundys, forest green, dark beige, dark blues that is so typical of Middle America.  Mom G. had yellow and white quilts, pink and white and many ohers and then I was interested in the patterns.  I learned that color inspires me.  Then only did I see patterns.  So, I needed a wedding gift for my husband and decided to make a small wall hanging.  It was a nightmare!  I had no idea about an accurate 1/4” seam allowance, let alone a scant one!  I had no idea about bleeding fabrics.  It had 10 fabrics in it and Phillipa Naylor was the President of the Saudi Arabian quilt group that I belonged to a couple of years later and she commented on my color choices.  She said she would NEVER put those together but she really liked them.

Anyway, when we were setting up our first apartment here in Muscat, we were trying to hand it behind the bed on the wall and the quilt rippled so badly that we could see each other in full head shots and I was so upset!  I ended up using the quilt for my daughter to lay on when she was just tiny.  I ended up taking it apart and it is still in pieces all these years later! The quilt did make it into a calendar for the company my husband worked at though!  So, in answer to this question, I have been quilting for the last 17 years!