Olympic Inspiration

Have you been watching the Sochi Winter Olympic Games?  DH isn't really interested in them so I haven't watched as much as I would like on the big TV but I have seen some of the slopestyle, luge and skating competitions.  More intriguing to me is the 'look' of these games. 

Patchwork - real honest to goodness patchwork. Love these banners!

Sochi games’ press release: "The Olympic patchwork quilt, developed by Bosco’s creative department and given to the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee, will be the official Look of Russia’s first Winter Games.

Our goal was to represent a diverse range of emotions and feelings, connecting concepts like Motherland, Family, Culture, Time, Olympism, Peace, Nobility, Friends, Memory, Honour, Dreams, Beauty, Freedom, Pride, Warmth, Happiness, Greatness, Reliability, Victory, Creativity, Hospitality, Creation, Future, Russia, Planet Earth.

Every region in the world is proud of its unique origins, and it is no different in Russia. That is why there are so many different local traditions, songs and crafts that highlight the individuality of their creators, each valuable in its own right. Bosco had a wealth of choices to represent Russia’s rich diversity, but in the end we settled on something familiar, warm and welcoming: the patchwork quilt.

In the concept design, every patch was infused with the history and personality of traditional crafts from each of Russia’s 89 regions: in a single tapestry we combined Uftyuzhskaya painting and Vologda lace, Gzhel and Zhostovo painting, Kubachi patterns and the flowers of Pavlo Posad shawls, Mezenskaya painting and Khokhloma, Yakutsk patterns, fabrics of Ivanovo and other distinctive Russian patterns. That is how we arrived at a modern, distinctive and unmistakably Russian Look of the Games.”

While hunkered down inside yesterday avoid the cold outside, I spent some time hop skipping around the web collecting images for my quilt research file.   I like the way the diamonds in the pattern are not all equal size and then it breaks apart into the white background.  You can see the effect on the number bibs - shown here on a member of the USA snowboarding team, who is wearing the cool muted patchwork parka designed by Burton - more patchwork!

About the Parka design from the Burton Snowboard website: "To design the uniform for the 2014 Sochi Games, Burton once again turned to America’s heritage for inspiration. And nothing represents Americana more than handcrafted patchwork quilts and the American flag, which are both at the heart of the 2014 uniform. After a long hunt, Burton designers found the perfect vintage quilt at an antique fair. Then, they brought it home to Vermont where it was deconstructed and re-constructed by a veteran Vermont quilt maker in order to get it ready to replicate onto the outerwear fabrics. Following this, Burton developed a method to print exact replicas of both the quilt and a vintage American flag onto the fabric of the jackets. The end result is that the quilt pattern on the jackets looks like it was hand-stitched with patchwork squares – just like the original. And an exact duplicate of the vintage American flag is proudly featured on the jacket’s sleeve."

While I don't have the rich printed texture fabrics in the stash, I do have the color range in my batiks.  Will this be a future quilt? Not sure but it is inspiring...