Carrefour 2024: Quilts 1

(I had meant to roll these out quickly, every few days, but I brought home covid and it has stayed too long. My apologies.)

There are over sixteen different venues between the four towns in this corner of Alsace, and often there are there distinctly different groupings of quilts in each venue. So there are lot of different things to see.

All posts in order are on the European Patchwork (Carrefour) page.

After hitting all the vendors and grabbing lunch, we went to the Theater, in Saint-Marie-Aux-Mines.

We knew to look for this banner on the front of the venues. Downstairs in the Theater, is a series of red and white quilts from the International Quilt Museum, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For years and years, two dealers in antique quilts held court on this bottom floor, and now they had retired, so the Quilt Museum lent some quilts.

I’m including the signage, as it has a specific number from the museum at the top (a reference if you want to find them online) as well as the year the quilt was made. A little video is here.

Peeking above the “walls” for the quilts is the proscenium arch of the theater, a rather elegant quilt venue.
(Click to enlarge the image of the quilt below to see it fully.)

We then headed upstairs to see quilts by Brazilian artist Sarah Luise Kaminski. Usually they have the artist by their exhibit, but unfortunately (the sign said), she couldn’t be there. I would have loved to ask her questions about the type of threads she used, and how long each “thread painting” took. See for yourself.

This next painting is based on a classical image by Lucas Cranach from 1527. I think you can see that at Carrefours, so many quilts are indeed works of art, and not just “quilts.”

Usually they have the dimensions on these cards, but to give you a sense of things, Semente (Seed), is about 14-16″ wide and about 24-ish inches tall. Here is a quick video from her Instagram, showing the scale of the quilts next to the visitors.

Missed getting the title card on this one, but you can tell who inspired this work. I have uploaded these photos in twice my normal size/resolution so you can (hopefully) enlarge them.

This was one of my favorites.

Loved the “giant marbles” on this playground.

Last one.

Down the stairs on the other side (note the tiny nine-patch mosaics on the floor), and out to the next venue.

Down the block and over a bit, and we come to this building, where the big contest/exhibit, Ocean, was held. The EPS (European Patchwork Show) chooses a theme every year, and asks for a specific size, and the following were some quilts from 2024. (Small video of the exhibit is here.)

This is to show you the scale.

The quilting! The size is 80 cm x 120 cm, which is about 23″ x 47″ very roughly. So, a small wall-size quilt. Here’s the website page announcing all the winners, and if you want to enter, here’s the entry info for 2025: Avant Garde, just in case you want to enter.

This one won Best of Show.

One of my favorites.

I thought the binding was beautiful: the use of the batik blended right into the quilt, so there isn’t much delineation in most of the quilt.

This one fascinated me: all those pearls, and the teensy pieces.

I tried to take it from the side, as I’m pretty sure all those pearls are sewn on under a fine netting of some kind: thicker than a tulle, I think, but fairly transparent. I just re-read the title card: poly-mesh, whatever that is.

And that’s the last of the Ocean quilts. In the same area (think of a senior center, or something), there were a couple of other exhibits.

They had a grouping of crazy patchwork quilts, and although I waited and waited…

…there were others who were determined to figure it all out. So I moved on to Carmen Netto’s small grouping of minimalist quilts.

Another quilter from Brazil, and she was here. I don’t speak Portuguese and she didn’t speak much English, so I just kind of patted my heart and thanked her in Spanish, hoping it might get across the language barrier. It did. She nicely posed for a photo with her work, Weather.

At first glance I thought it was a fabric example of kintsugi.

But no, it was couched thread. I loved the little bit of red.

Click to enlarge the small quilt to see it better.

Remember this? We’ve done #1 Theater, and #2 Pavilion Osmont, where we saw the Ocean exhibit. We are moving on to #3 Église St. Louis, walking along the small streets of this village.

Tiny Murals