Creative encounter

Tivaivai, the Cook Islands traditional textile art form, is very different to the quilts that most other countries make. For many years, I have held workshops in my Studio to share tivaivai techniques with quilters from around the world. Tivaivai are not quilted and consist only of two layers of fabric, a patterned top layer and the background fabric or backing.

There are three kinds of tivaivai. Tivaivai manu, the snowflake-style appliqué, consists of a mostly uni-coloured top layer that is folded, cut out and appliquéd on to a background layer of contrasting colour. Tivaivai taorei, the mosaic piecework, consists of tens of thousands of tiny squares (1” or 2.5 cm) that are arranged to form large symmetrically repeating designs. While the Cook Islands share the snowflake-style technique with French Polynesia and Hawaii and the piecework with French Polynesia, tivaivai tataura, the emboidered appliqué is uniquely Cook Islands. Large stylized flowers cut from uni-coloured fabric are arranged in rotational symmetry and heavily embellished with raised embroidery.

There are no traditional patterns, but only traditional motifs which, apart from butterflies, the odd fish and bird as more recent introduction, chandeliers or candles, are mainly floral. The first thing my students therefore learn is to design their own patterns. Since our visitors from overseas are not bound by tradition, I encourage their artistic freedom.

Left to right: Cindy and Sylvie

Cindy from Texas, a travel agent, has waited many years for this workshop and I have looked forward to meet her after a long email correspondence and to put a face to the name. I have already met Sylvie from France on Rarotonga where she has been living for the last several months. Sylvie is an artist and has brought her husband Michel along who is a carver. We are looking ahead towards a creative week together.

Cindy has chosen to learn how to make a tivaivai manu in more than two colours. She begins by learning how to develop a pattern using paper. Soon the entire table is covered with her imaginative designs. 

Sylvie intends to learn the piecework technique, but joins in the paper cuts just for an alternative. Her artistic mind breaks the boundaries.

After lunch, Sylvie is ready to start working with hand-dyed fabric squares, her preferred medium for this workshop. Cindy wants to spend the afternoon sketching flowers and thinking about a composition.

The next day is sunny and the colours on our table brighten it further. Cindy enlarges her paper pattern to life size and soon her small sketch has become a colourful tivaivai ready for basting and sewing. She decides to sew it by hand and it will take some time to finish.

After Sylvie has laid out the patches of her final design, she strings them up in the right sequence. I have brought her “Mami Tepu” my “patron of the tivaivai makers” to keep an eye on her efforts. 

Sewing together those tiny squares by hand is fiddly and time-consuming, but also quite a meditative activity.

As alternative I show Sylvie a more contemporary method of sewing by machine. When she discovers the delicate fibre structures of the lemon hibiscus bark that I am currently working with, she asks me for a piece and incorporates it into her work. Creativity knows no limits. 

On the fourth day, both my students have finished their preliminary tasks and are ready to sew the ‘real thing’. 

We decide that we are more comfortable around the coffee table. 

Michel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the two women are busy cutting patterns from paper and sewing fabric together, Michel chisels away at a large tree stump that “guards” the entrance to the grave area that leads up to our house. He has no pre-conceived idea and lets the wood speak to him. 

On the first day, a friendly face appears next to a hand raised in welcome. 

The following day a heron lands on the man’s shoulder. When I see the heron in the afternoon, I am reminded of the white heron that came to visit when my father lay dying. The elegant bird sat in front of his bedroom window for quite some time, then left and later returned. The thought had crossed my mind that it might me my mother’s spirit calling him to follow her.

When I visit the sculpture at the end of the third day, I am surprised to find a second heron sitting on the man’s other shoulder. After my father’s funeral – he is buried close by in the family cemetery behind our house – a grey heron came. The dogs chased him and he flew up into a tree. When the dogs weren’t looking he flew down again and landed on Dad’s fresh grave. As if he were visiting, making sure that we were OK, as if to tell me that he was OK, too. Now both herons are framing the friendly face, all three released from their hideaway in the tree by Michel’s artful chisel.

On midday of the forth day, Michel has finished and signed his sculpture and we go outside to take a photo of the artist and his wife for memory’s sake. I take Sylvie and Michel down to Dad’s little house to show them his picture and to tell them the story of the two herons. They are tattooed on my ankle. 

When I have a closer look at the photo later, I can see that the face resembles Juergen, my husband. The three most important people in my life together as a unit, what a wonderful present Michel has made me!

In the evening, we gather to share a farewell dinner for our French guests who are returning to Rarotonga the following morning. Fresh pineapple on ice cream concludes a lovely evening in the company of new friends. 

Cindy stays another day of sewing. She promises me to email a photo of the finished tivaivai. I look forward to that.