Carrefour Quilt Show 2025: Intro and Part I

October 27, 2025October 27, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

I’ve now been to the Carrefour Quilt Show in the Alsace area of France three times, and this is start of my third write-up of that amazing experience. The Carrefour Show is like none other: set in four small towns in France (some with castles, like the above photo), in the Val D’Argent, or Silver Valley, where silver was once mined.

The show draws from all over Europe and the quilts are as varied as the quilters in all these different nations. I am often surprised by what I see. I am never disappointed.

This post covers:

Espace Commercial
Venue 1: Theater with its traditional antique quilts
Venue 2: Carrefour Contest, one of three exhibits in that space

I have a main page where I link all the posts, so you can see the ones from before, as well, and see why I have loved going back over the years. Of course, my husband Dave is hugely enthusiastic, too, and he took many of these photos. This year we were able to spend the better part of two days there, and took a zillion photos. That means that when I post — which I will do sporadically over the next while — there will be lots of beautiful quilts to see.

We lodged this time in Colmar, a lovely town that feels medieval, but has all the comforts (like pumpkins with words).

As always, in many places there are reminders of the Great War (WWII) like a tank in the park which we passed by as we walked to get our rental car. We picked that up early on Thursday morning, September 18th, the day the quilt show started, and drove past the castle in the first photo into the Val D’Argent, stopping for some breakfast croissants on the way (it *is* France, after all!).

After being caught in the traffic, we parked near this very old building (1912), picked up our tickets and walked up into the town, seeing store windows all decorated up with quilts (I know it’s hard to see):

Espace Commercial (Shopping and Vendors)

I knew what I wanted to do first: Shopping Area.

Vendor tents are set up along the pathway to the souvenir stand:

Stickers, pen, exhibit book…they don’t have a bag this year, so in we go to the Espace Commercial.

Click to enlarge any photo.

1-My favorite bag place: ABCDaires. I’ve already made the little orange bag in the far corner (see below).

2- Christine, from Chifonie Studio has really lovely jewelry, made from art clay. She also has lots of buttons, and fun decorative pins.

3- Torneria Germans Castels sells wooden things from Germany. This booth had so many cute wooden buttons and fixings.

4- Le Atelier D’Eoie had so many cute things in their booth (they were so friendly, I took two photos of them). I bought a kit for a stuffed animal and a small quilt.

The other photos are crowd shots; I only took photos where I had permission. Here’s the thing: could I have found some of these things in the US? Possible. But I hadn’t ever seen them before and loved how European everything was (duh) and it — as Marie Kondo would say — sparked joy. (And I just love those orange pouches!)

I also loved the booksellers, and I bought a book in French, because why not? Last year I made a purse from a Japanese book, translated into French and it came out just fine. If you click on that link, you can also see a pouch made from the kits from ABCDaires.

On the side of the Espace Commercial, they had these two wooden cutouts: the one of the left celebrating thirty years of the Carrefour Patchwork Show, and the one on the right, a figure that denotes the Alsace region, and is seen everywhere. Okay. To the quilts!

Venue 1: Theater in Sainte Marie-aux-Mines

In case I didn’t mention it, the main town is Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, and that is where we will start. This year, it was all on the bottom floor and the display was traditional, Amish quilts.

The Carrefour organizers bring in scaffolding and partitions to hang the quilts, as it really is set in an old theater. Below is a series of photographs; click to enlarge. I did try to get title cards for every quilt.

Click to enlarge any photo.

Now a slide show. Click on arrows to advance; unfortunately, you cannot click to enlarge the slideshow photos.

After we finished with the downstairs, we went up…we love this staircase!

Peeking through the glass in the locked doors of the balcony, my husband took this photo of the exhibit below.

Venue 2: Osmont Pavilion

The section of the Pavillion where the quilts are hung is one large space, and the quilts “divide” it up. The contest theme this year was Avant Garde, and here is a slide show, with title cards. (Click on arrows to advance; unfortunately, you cannot click to enlarge the slideshow photos.)

We’ll see more of Tania Tanti’s work in another post, as she was a featured artist, but I wanted to say that nothing on this quilt is pieced. She starts with a white piece of cloth and paints her shapes, then quilts them. Details below; click to enlarge.

I found this one to be intriguing, and moving, as it is a tribute to her husband.

I showed you the cut-out close-up first, then the total quilt.

(I did mean to put all these in the slideshow: technical difficulties!)

The quilting on this was so close together, and it sculpted the cloth, moving the eye over the surface.

A tumble of houses, a view to the landscape.

Olga Stang’s work, Monet’s Pond, intrigued me, because of the construction of all those little two-sided squares.

Then they look to have been laid on another cloth, and folded to mimic petals, or vegetation on the Monet’s lily pond. Tiny beads are placed at the intersections.

She believes we’ll all be doing more recycling in the future, and if it turns out like this, it will be a good goal.

As always, I owe a lot of these photographs, as well as the ability to take this trip, to my husband Dave; I’m most grateful to him. There are two more exhibits in this venue, but that will be on the next posting about Carrefour. I’m just now starting to process, to revisit the photographs, to think about my visit. Watch for the next one!

Quilt Show 2025 Springville Art Museum

August 3, 2025August 4, 2025 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

I like making these little “postcards” with names from the map. The Mesa is that long dark stripe of rock on the lower right side of the photo, moving away from the road. Yes, we took another roadtrip, as mentioned in the last post, where I talked about making dresses to wear to the wedding.

But this post isn’t about the wedding, although it was lovely. It’s about the Springville Art Museum’s Quilt Show for 2025.

I met my friend Lisa at the show, and at my request, she took me first to her award-winning quilt. She pieced the top and quilted it — a stunning beauty of a New York Beauty quilt. I had been a judge at an earlier show, so I was aware of how hard it was to get a ribbon — and she did get one! I’ll post some of the quilts from the quilt show, but first I want to start with a posthumous display of Carol Ford’s quilts, a special exhibit at the museum.

Summer Sampler, by Carol Ford Quilted by Virginia Gore

The Spirit of Alaska (2013)
Made by Carol Ford

Quilted by Virginia Gore

Carol writes: “I spent a lot of time in Alaska, and I love batik fabrics. Everything about this quilt reminds of the color and beauty that I have seen there. This was one of the most difficult quilts that I have made…I think that the quilting truly brought this quilt to life.”

Ice Bear (2017), by Carol Ford. Quilted by Virginia Gore
She writes that she and her daughter went to “Manitoba, Canada to photograph polar bears. We stayed at Churchill Wild Lodge, which is one of the National Georgraphic’s most remote lodges in the world.”

Carol Ford’s My Garden Patch (2014); quilted by Virginia Gore

We turned a corner from the huge room of quilts, and launched into the main quilt show. I loved the dazzle dazzle below of Danielle Adams’ Land That I Love (she quilted it herself):

Mariam Gunderson both made and quilted her Various Blocks in Shades of Blue. That’s quite the border: all the quilt has beautiful stitching.

Christine Ricks made Tessella or Big Tess (2025), and it was quilted by Tamera Ellis. This one really stood out among the more traditional quilts in its gallery.

It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2023) was made by Tracie Buys, and quilted by Connie Atkisson. She combined two patterns — houses and children holding hands — to make this quilt. She writes “A neighborhood is a group of many different individuals that are from different cultures and backgrounds, and we should celebrate those differences.”

I wondered if I’d find a temperature quilt. Loriann Fish’s My 50th Year (2025) is a celebration of a half-century of living. Began the first of June 2024, she ended it in May of 2025, with a color key in the lower right corner of the quilt.

A map of the museum layout.

So many beautiful quilts to show, but in this gallery, the Hafen-Dallin gallery, I chose this one:

Squircle Square, by Machelle Preston. Quilted by Konda Luckau.

While I just loved the design of these many squircles, it was the movement of color and value that really sang. Machelle Preston writes “My friend Karlene found a cute rainbow quilt on a modern blog. We both decided to make the quilt. I did my “squircle” squares hand-appliquéd, while she did her squares machine-appliequéd.”

Here’s her friend’s quilt:

Squircle (2024), by Karlene Riggs.
Quilted by Konda Luckau.

Karlene writes:
“I got the idea for this from a QuiltCon quilt I saw online, but which had no pattern. All the “squircle” fabrics were from my dot collection. The backgrounds were mostly solids. I decided to use all the stitches I could from my sewing machines!”

My La Passacaglia (2023) by Jeri Holley. Quilted by Mindy Powell, who did a stunning job on the outside borders.

I knew you’d want to see a close-up of this!

“This quilt was the result of an online class with Brigette Heitland. After putting it all together, I found it looked like a train […with] all the bright colors. This was made by Jeanette Ivie, and titled Modern Train (2024). Quilting by Sharon Rawlings.

Autumn Baskets (2025) by Myrt Gehring; quilted by Carole Liffereth
This has a combination of wool and cotton in the center section (bordered by the blue).

Esther Avila’s My Color Theory (2025). She writes in her title card that “I had lots of solid fabric scraps and sewed them all in strips to make squares, then cut diagonally twice…I love the little stripe of black and white. It gives the right touch.”

Thought you’d like this interplay of modern, traditional (Bee Happy, a Lori Holt design) and my friend Lisa’s masterpiece. That’s combination of quilts is one reason why I like this show. Our show at home tends to group all things alike, as in All the Landscapes, All the Animals, All the Moderns and so on. I prefer the novelty of discovery, which you can only have if there is a change-up.

We went upstairs, where they were having a retrospective of their decades of Spring Salons. All the art was amazing. Click through on this link to read about it. They have a listing of all the art, if you have some time.

The Quilters (2023)
Kathleen Bateman Peterson

This was upstairs, and of course I wanted to bring it home with me.

It reminded me of another painting I’d seen the day before, in the Church History Museum. Titled Sisters, it is by Beth Jepson. In our church we call each other “Sister” and “Brother” (as in Sister Eastmond.) So this painting is about all of us women, working together.

The artist writes: “I love the diversity of sisters, old and young, beginner and expert, working together to create a piece of art that is functional and often gifted in charity.”

I put a few pieces of art up on my Instagram, if you are interested, but you can also head to the website for the Church History Museum to see the rest in this exhibit.

Finally: the Wedding Wrap-up

All these were catered by my daughter, Barbara. Click on the little arrows at the side to advance the show.

1–Desserts table, from the side
2–Crew in the kitchen finishing the last minute prep
2–Macaron tower
3–Cake pops (bride’s colors were sage, tan, black)
4–Key Lime Pie cups
5–Our children and I (I don’t know where my husband was at that point); Father of the Bride is on the right.
6–Father-Daughter dance, which made me weep
7–The happy couple, listening to the speeches

Okay, my dress. Well, about 3 days before the wedding and after I’d sewn three wearable toiles and was about ready to start on a fourth, I got the news that grandparents were supposed to be in solids. Dark solids. Sigh.

So I wore a black skirt and a turquoise jacket, nice and proper and cooperative.

But I changed into the dress below for the reception.

The fabric is Shape Sorter in Blue, by Eloise Renouf of Cloud 9 Fabrics. I purchased the wide back which has a silky feeling to it. This was taken after a couple days of rest, standing in my blue kitchen. A happy backdrop.

May you celebrate your quilting talents, great art, weddings for those you love, dresses that you don’t wear, and arriving home safely after a long ride home–

Sacred Mending, by Paige Crosland Anderson
Dimensions: 48 x 64 x 12 In.
Medium: Acrylic and oil

Title card: Painted quilt patterns with names like “All Hands Around,” “Worlds Without End,” “Straight Furrough,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” and “Winding Ways” fit within this altarpiece. The patterns represent the ways individuals reach—for help, for purpose, and for repair.

Quilt Shows · Quilts

Road to California 2025

January 24, 2025August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

This is in two parts: the top is the bits and pieces.
The bottom are the quilts. Yes, they are all in one post, so get your popcorn and let’s get scrolling.

Road to California, for me, always begins with this hallway lined with hanging quilts. So many different styles and colors, all from one Guild that is chosen at random from those who enter their names. This was at about 8:30 am. on Tuesday morning, January 21st, and I was there to take the Blackwork Embroidery class from Kathie Kerler.

Her sample is on the lower left. Mine is on the lower right. The room temperature went from freezing-your-hands-stiff to overheated-hot-flash territory. (They did caution us to dress in layers.) My seat mate, Chris, had open her little bag (upper center). I said to her, “That’s my pattern!” Yep, it was my Mini Double-Pocket bag, and we had a good chat–fun to see one out in the wild. I also admired the hoop stands in our class — it seems it would be much easier with one of those.

Souvenirs! I always buy some jewelry from Merry of the Button Box. Contact me if you want her email address. I picked up a few bits of fabric and that freebie yellow stitch-saying bag, posed here once I got home again.

Bob is back, now with YLI Threads (You’ll Love It says Bob), and I was happy to see him, and meet his new wife and chat with them. Quilt shows are ideal for that, especially if you get in before the tour busses and the vendors are just killing time until customers show up.

I bought just a few (haha) colors of their line Elite to try out. It’s a thread similar to Bob’s old Magnifico, which is my all-time favorite thread for quilting. I also picked up some piecing thread; yes, lately I’ve been using polyester thread (fairly fine, at 50 weight) as it cuts down on the lint build-up in my machine. I’ll report in later, after I test them.

Now on to the quilts. I stayed for Preview Night on Tuesday, then went back Thursday morning, before I wimped out and headed home. If you are on BlueSky social media, I have a video of us all lining up next to the scooter carts before it opened — it was a crush! And if you are on BlueSky, please follow me, so we can build our quilting community (#quiltsky) over there.

One of the quilts I always look for, or have for the past 20+ years, is the alphabet quilt from Janet Stone.

She is a master of details and I had fun figuring out that the flowers and the blocks all began with the same letter, indexed around the outside edges of the quilt. Here are some detail shots:

I’ll miss seeing this series. Wonder what she has going on next?

I found the show this year to be subdued, but still — happy to have it here. It feels like they’ve cut down drastically on the number of single-person entry quilts, and they are all crammed together, perhaps evidence that it is expensive to host a show like this? For each quilt, I’ve generally taken three photos: the quilt, a detail and the title card. Click on any of the photos to enlarge.

Amy Pabst is a genius at teensy quilting. Each of those log cabin “logs” is about like a matchstick.

This one was just beautiful.

One of the challenges for photography is the way the quilt show is lit: spots directly underneath the quilts, and NO LIGHTS ON IN THE HALL!! Call you believe it? There’s a pianist on an electronic piano playing lovely music and the first impression is wow. But then you try to actually look at the quilts, and nearly everyone around me is complaining. Or leaving quickly, which was my experience. I usually like to really study and look at the quilts, but seriously? In the dark? It’s fancy, but not functional. Okay, enough whining but now you understand why this is dark on the top and light on the bottom, and that’s even after several different filters being applied at home in my photo-editing program. (I did my best.)

These colors!!

Loved the trapunto flowers.

Although the title card is in Spanish, it’s a tribute to her town. On the back, she’d created her family tree (not shown).

Tough to see this beautifully created quilt (black on black in darkness…).

You can purchase this quilt…

Amazing detail in both the piecing, appliqué and the quilting.

This quilter was standing nearby, but too shy to pose for a photo.

Especially good to remember on this freighted week of Inauguration. My classmate and I carefully talked around the events, trying to figure out if we were a match in current events thinking. We were (whew!). She lived near the fires and told me that her in-laws’ home had burned to the ground with almost no warning. So much damage and so many lives affected by this disaster. [Note: when I came out Tuesday night at 8 p.m. to head home, the whole area smelled like smoke, and I immediately wondered: another fire somewhere?]

A simply drawn landscape, but it was just lovely.

Giraffes! How fun is that?

So that’s the second quilt of Ben Darby in the show — both were beautiful!

Since I should be quilting on my very own New York Beauties quilt, this one below caught my eye.

Just stunning!

One guild had a series of quilts, 100 Days of Tula Blocks, and Tina Curran made this one, in red, white and blue.

Sometimes it’s interesting to see how the quilts are displayed. I showed you this so you could see how tightly they were hung. But Cassandra Beaver always has an interesting quilt to show.

Click to enlarge title card. Really fun quilt, full of bright color. This was a from a grouping in the hallway outside, another guild showing off their quilts.

Cherrywood had a huge display, all along the final back row in this exhibit hall. I think you can tell how dim the lighting was in this photo.

Lots of Flanders Fields themes, and since we’d just been to Normandy, they resonated.

Verushka Zarate’s masterpieces were in a special gallery at the front of the vendor’s hall, where they put all the fancy ones. If you’ve never seen one in person, I hope you get a chance sometime. I took her class at QuiltCon Phoenix, the first year after we came back from covid, and I credit her for teaching me once and for once and for all how to do paper piecing.

Here she is with her boys. Again, if you are on BlueSky, here’s a wee video of the entire series of quilts.

Obviously there are many more quilts and lots of vendors, so come on out to California next January and see us.

The show closes tomorrow, and it will be all over for another year….but we’ll be back!

European Patchwork Meeting · Quilt Shows · Quilts

Carrefour 2024: Quilts V

October 26, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Carrefour Quilt Show was a lively, interesting and fascinating experience. This final post is about two different places in the 29th Carrefour European Patchwork Show (2024):

Espace D’Exposition (Venue 15): EQA’s Imagine a Bird, France Patchwork guild quilts, Threaded Together, Justine & Cow, Marina Landi, Artextures
Église St. Rosalie (Venue 17): Ana Helena Abreu

A full listing of all the artists is found on the European Patchwork (Carrefours) website, here. Click on 2024.

If you want to read these posts in order, head to the European Patchwork (Carrefour) page, where I have both years listed.

Both times I’ve been to this show, it has rained, so when the skies started drizzling, it wasn’t unexpected. (We love rain, as we live in an area that doesn’t get much.) Last time, I was in the vendor tents, so I was happy this time I was in the car, driving to our last set of exhibits: Venues 15, 16, and 17. By this time in the day, we are getting tired, but don’t want to quit (sign of a good show!).

Just inside, everything is light and bright. The first quilts we saw on the left were the quilts from Krista Hennebury of Canada, and Lorena Uriarte, from Australia.

They were part of an exhibit “In Conversation/Threaded Together.”

Click to enlarge any of the gallery images.

We moved quickly to the next grouping, and I thought this quilt was fascinating, but I forgot to photograph her partner’s quilt.

A series of minis, all in conversation. Please click to enlarge; unfortunately the expired address above for the tinyurl doesn’t take you anywhere.

An Old Woman with Joyous Face, by Marina Landi was a fascinating layering of texture and color and quilting. Her skills with this were fascinating, and amazing. Close-ups, below:

It looks like she layered snippets of a silk fabric onto a darker background in a tight mosaic, then quilted it in directional lines. In her title card (below), she noted that the silk is all hand-dyed.

Old Man with His Dog, by Marina Landi.

This one has the same look, but instead is digitally printed; because of this, it has a softer definition. I was cropping all the quilts to give a clean edge, but below I show it uncropped so you can see the faced binding.

Summer Wind, by Marina Landi.

Here are a couple of quilts from France Patchwork.

The one just above is from the Milan series by the fiber-art work artists Daniela Arnoldi and Marco Sarzi Sartori, (DAMSS). They work in tandem; here’s an article I found about them, and their website is here. I loved how the threadwork depicted the Milan cathedral.

Gabrielle Pacquin, one of my favorite European quilters, had a quilt here in the France Patchwork exhibit Artextures.

Arc en Ciel de Lit [Rainbow Bed] is a quilt published in Issue 158 of the magazine for France Patchwork, Les Nouvelles. They publish this magazine quarterly, and if I could read French, I’d be subscribing. Their website can give you more information (and it can be translated by Google Translate, if your French-language skills need an assist).

Hiver Douillet [Cozy Winter], published in Issues 157-159. I will sometimes hold my hand floating above the quilt so you can get an idea of scaled. Look at those tiny pieces!

Les Pas Japonais d’Antonin [Anton’s Japanese Steps], published in Issue 160.

Now we’re heading into the Let’s Have Some Fun section. I loved this family tree, of sorts. It’s named, simply, Embroidered Portraits, and is by Justine & COW. I found her on Instagram, and a post from the time of this show said:

“Obviously, my Amish friends are my Amish.”
SMAM, the cradle of the Amish movement.

(SMAM = Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines)

Take some time to visit her IG and be prepared for some lovely embroidery from the Alsace region of France (where this quilt show is held). Detail from her IG post is below.

Now do you understand why I think it is so lovely to go to France and to be introduced to all these new ideas?

Something to do with all your bags. Corinne Prévotel from France Patchwork wove this, again in the Artextures section. She had two there of this style, and called it Suite.

Lever le Voile [Lifting the Veil] by Ghislaine Berlier Garcia, from France Patchwork.

The title means “Moving.”

Around another corner and we find the EQA (European Quilt Association) exhibit of “Imagine a bird.” All these little mini quilts were wonderful and it was hard to choose just some to photograph.

Of course I loved this little one, with quilts on a quilt.

On the left is the representative from Italy, and on the right is the EQA person from Sweden (hope I got that right). I had a wonderful chat with them, talking quilt stuff around the world, as I was especially interested in how their guild quilt shows were faring after COVID (I was last here in 2017, before Covid-19 slammed the planet). The lady from Sweden told me that their last show before 2020 they had about 80 vendors. And now? they had only one in 2022. We talked about the factors of attrition, as well as vendors aging out of the business. I told them that our local shows were equally diminished, and wondered if they would ever recover. It’s good to get an understanding of how we quilters are faring all over the planet, yet also really lovely to find quilters all over the planet, too.

We climbed back in the car, the sun shining brightly, and head to our last stop: Église Ste. Rosalie, a small church in Rombach-Le-Franc. Yes, I am not posting every space or exhibit, so you’ll have to go there to see it all.

I’m standing just in front of the church, this little lane of this little town all bright and sunny.

I just want you to get a feel for how this quilt show is laid out. We are here to see Ana Helena Abreau, a woman who excels at geometric art in quilts.

As you can see, all the quilts are well lighted.

Even though I don’t speak Portuguese, and she didn’t seem to speak English, we used the time-honored communications of patting our hearts, and me, gesturing to her amazing quilts, while nodding and bowing. You can find her on Instagram.

I loved seeing her quilting, too.

Sorry about all the shadows — the lights were bright and helpful, otherwise!

Star Quilt, by Anna Helena Abreau. Machine pieced and quilted.

Dresden Flowers, by Ana Helena Abreau. Machine pieced and quilted.

Magic Cubes, machine pieced and quilted. Details of quilts, below:

And that’s it!

(Yes, I was the ham in my family.) It’s almost closing time, and we still have to meet up with our daughter and granddaughters and find some dinner. I’ve already put a wish out there to come back for their 30th anniversary of the show in 2025, and to enjoy this beautiful valley one more time. Happily, we’ve made our plans and our reservations and we’re set. See you in September!

Happy Quilting in a Different Land–

To get to the Alsace region:

We fly Delta from our nearest city direct to Paris. Land. Clear customs, and walk towards the train out along the long hallway following the signs, and take the escalator downstairs. Stop at Paul for refreshments, if you want it. Their food is consistently delicious. We use our Apple watches to pay for things in Europe; they are pretty seamless and common and it’s nice not to have to change big sums of cash.

Wait for the train to Strasbourg to flash up on the overhead screen, and then with ticket in hand, check-in and head downstairs.

We took the train to Strasbourg, about a 2-1/2 hour ride. Yes, we were just exhausted but a nap on the train helped get us through. We arrived to an old station completely encased in plexiglass gift-wrapping, or so it felt. We picked up rental cars there for the drive to our hotel in Mittelwihr, about another 35 minutes.

It was lovely. Our trip tag on Instagram. This post shows the whole arrival steps. I think once you get over the whole “it’s so far away” business, the journey becomes an adventure.

This past trip, after our time in Alsace we headed back to Paris, because why not Paris? and then flew home from there. There are a lot of hotels in the Colmar and SMAM-region. We find Booking.com to be a helpful site. But if you want to go — get your airfare now, your hotels now, and then get the rental car and the train tickets. While I can’t plan your trip for you, I’m happy to answer general questions. And if you can’t make it this year, plan for next!