The Medina Mosaic tiles – day 1 – the first tile….

And here is the start of something new ! A new project that will be created by my own hand this time and is full of color ! We are traveling to the Mid-East to explore the bright and dazzling figures and color work of the mosaic walls you can find all over the countries that lies in that range.

But here’s the thing how this started. After working on the Terrazzo tiles from Tinna i was overwhelmed with response and people seems to really like the idea of what i did to it. But as the pattern is really amazing, i had the feeling it wasn’t mine. Although i altered some modifications to it which i wanted to do to mark an own watermark into it, the design stays with Tinna – which is great and all credits to her cause she is so wonderful. However…i wanted something out of my own hands and mind that really can competed with the Terrazzo tablerunner.

So here’s how the idea came up. I was talking about the Terrazzo tile and we came up with the idea that it looked so much like Portuguese tiles. Of course, Portugal contains so much lovely tile designs and it is famous for it, but it also did remind me of the persian mosaic walls you see in many Eastern countries like Turkey, Morocco, Jordan etc. I visited some of them and so i have a live view in my mind of what i meant. To give a simple example :

Of course a crochet pattern can’t get that detailed but i thought it would be fun to play with this concept and use that typical corners you see in it. But as important the design is, the colors play an even bigger thing in this i guess. So i made up a palette of exotic colors that reflects a good view on the vibrant colors you’ll find in these mosaic tiles.

And so it was born. After lots and lots of testing, making examples and putting stitches on different places to see how it would look, i came up with the design i think suits perfect for this one. And to start with the first tile, i thought the Medina tile would be a great name for it as it is the main theme of this pattern. The Medina of Marrakesh is the most famous market/place people will know i think. This place contains so much different kinds of art, colors, places, buildings and crafts that i think it was the perfect main theme for the tiles. And this first tile has a main color yellow. I think yellow is a color that can’t be ignored when working on a middle-eastern thing as you recall this color in so many ways. You can find them on tajine-decorations but also whole buildings can be painted yellow. And that can variate from a light yellow to deep saffron yellow. It turned out perfect i think !

But the real magic in this tile is when you combine them together. I did it with a digital photogrid to make an example of what magic it does when four of them are put together. You will see how the corners combine together to a really marvelous design itself. So there is a lot of diversity in this tile, even when it is combined ! Keep following this posts to see the other squares over the next days. There are five colorways in total so five days of introducing including this one.