Carrefour 2024: Quilts IV

This post is about two different places in the 29th Carrefour European Patchwork Show: 

• Espace D’Exposition (Venue 11): Quilt en rêve (remakes of antique quilts), France Aubert (Passion for Samplers), Selma Huisman-Hilderbrand (Walk Down Memory Lane)
• Église St. Blaise (Venue 7): Virginie Peyre

Hope you are all still with me, with seeing quilts from all over quilt land, but mostly from the European guilds.

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

In Venue 11 (Espace Commercial) there was enough room to do several exhibits. This quilt is from Quilt en rêve, “an association of British, Dutch and American antique quilt enthusiasts. Some of them have been quilting for over 30 years, always conscious of working in a traditional way, paying attention to detail, the choice of fabric and hand sewing” (from here). (UPDATE: I heard from one of the members, Gabrielle Paquin, and she wrote that currently “the team is essentially French and we have an Hollander lady with us.”)

Michigan, a quilt by Martine Crabé-Lanux (from France), who was inspired by a quilt from the 1850s. The center is a sailor’s compass, with other details of soldiers carrying flags and Masonic symbols. The quilter designed the floral border and other details.

Kiosque, by Jacqueline Audouin-Dubreuil (France). She made this boutis quilt entirely by hand, 10 stitches per centimeter, 600 meters of thread, taking approximately 2000 hours of work. The base cloth is a teal blue, and the design is by Hubert Valéri. Click any photo in the gallery to enlarge.

Helma Huisman-Hildebrand, from Holland, also had her own exhibit. She “works and lives on a cargo ship which operates on the rivers and channels throughout Europe. Together with her husband, they operate as captains on their ship and run their shipping company. In her spare time, she loves to make antique looking quilts, from the 1830s to the early 1900s. Due to a lack of space, she works in her kitchen on the ship. She constructs the quilts by machine, given her limited amount of time, yet hand-quilts them” (from the catalogue).

The quilt above is titled Forever Touching Stars: “I was ‘star-strucked’ seeing this quilt in Nel Kooiman’s collection, and luckily she gave me permission to remake it. The original quilt was made around 1880 in Kentucky.” (from title card)

Here is a gallery of her quilts, with title cards and some details shots. They are all magnificent! (Click on the arrows in the middle on the sides, to advance the slides.)

France Albert, shown above by one of her quilts, has a passion for samplers, so they put a grouping of her work in the show. That is not all she can do, but see that color of her sweater? She calls it “duck blue” and it’s her favorite. So many of her quilts are hand-pieced and hand-quilted. Here are two galleries (click to enlarge any quilt).

(from top to bottom, left to right):

Row 1: Suzanna, Karen B (an homage to Karen Blixen in combining sampler blocks in the color blue-gray for Denmark)

Row 2: Rose (sixteen traditional square blocks redesigned as rectangular blocks), Welcome (a small sampler created to represent their move to the Ille de France region), Maisons & Jardins (Houses and Gardens)

Row 3: Henrietta (thirteen blocks from the “Antebellum” block of the month from Barbara Brackman, along with twelve additional appliqué blocks.)

(from top to bottom, left to right):

Row 1: Juliette (a tribute to her grandmother, with rectangular blocks, 113 mother-of-pearl buttons, and the use of the color violet, the color of feminism)

Row 2: Moutarde (she had to hunt for fabrics, using 26 of them in the end), Toiles Plumetées Automne (feathered star in autumn colors), and her handwork, resting on the top of her chair at her table.

Row 3: Nora (quilting done by Mom Quilts; this is a reproduction of an antique quilt from Virginia in the 1840s). What I noticed was even though the quilting was done by a long-armer, she went in and hand-stitched around each circle.

She had a card up at the beginning of the exhibit. Thank you, Google Translate, for letting me know what it said.

Note the use of her buttons along the outside binding.

This is known as the King George Reviewing the Volunteers quilt, housed in the V & A Museum in London. It was the inspiration for two of her other quilts (shown below). Yes, all those tiny circles were English Paper-pieced. Click on the link above to see more photos and read more about it.

Improbables (Click to enlarge quilt on the left.)

Ecrit avec des fleurs (Written with Flowers). She writes “my hobbies written with only floral fabrics.” A self-declaration that could apply to so many of us.

By the way, this is where we were, just up from the dismantled Eiffel Tower.

More scenery. The little yellow church was Venue 7, with Virginie Peyre. One of her quilts is below. And the other was a World War I memorial, something we see in a lot of churches in Europe, as it ravaged the towns and villages.

Tapis Volant

She writes: “As a gift, I received an avalanche of ribbons intended for confectionery; this sudden abundance, plus the novelty of the material, put me in a trance! I pleat, bubble, pucker, weave, accumulate, saturate, letting pleasure be my guide.”

It was certainly novel!

We’re catching the late afternoon sun and it’s beautiful.

Yes, it’s late and we’re tired, meaning on that day in the past, it was time to get back to our hotel, check in with our daughter and our granddaughters, find some dinner, and a good night’s sleep. I will slide in more quilts to this blog at a later date (yes, I have more), but for now, we’ll leave me there on the steps saying “Are we done yet?”

Thanks for reading and for writing–I have so enjoyed seeing your reactions to these wonderful quilts!

Carrefours European Patchwork Meeting sitemap (in case you need to look up the artists)