Thus times do shift, each thing his turn does hold; New succeed, as former things grow old. Robert Herrick, from Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve
I don’t know how many more turns this life does hold, but I’m getting better at recognizing them. That’s what living for a while will do for you: give you practice at the painful, help you recognize delight, and deliver the ability to watch calmly as another year turns.
We get our fall this time of year, here in Southern California. We pretend to have colorful autumn arrive with the Northern and Eastern States, putting out our russet and pumpkin and burgundy decorations all through October and November, but really our trees don’t have their turn until December. I gather up a few to rest on my dashboard as I drive around (for we also do that in Southern California), and celebrate the colors.
I made the top to this quilt in December 2020, so it’s appropriate that I finish it when we have turned away from the pandemic, its memory triggered only when we find our cloth masks in the sock drawer, or the junk drawer, or realize that a box of N95s has taken up permanent residence in our hallway closet, a talisman to ward off the unthinkable.
It’s nice to be able to crunch around my “walking” park, the leaves crisp underfoot, finding places that echo the muted tones of this quilt, Pomegranates.
Many of our leaves go from green to brown, a dimming of our usual colorful landscape. It’s as if they say, we gave it all for the year and now are tired, just needing rest. I can understand this. I have times of dimming, as well as times of bright.
Herrick reminded us that “each thing his turn does hold” and I don’t have to have only one season of quiet and rest. I have had many years to watch the days grow shorter, the nights grow longer and then again, and decades to watch the reversal of it all.
I’m lucky that way. Hopefully, so are you–
Quilt # 298 • 42″ square, with a simple single-binding No label, as I’m sending this off and think they may like the backing of this quilt (a treasured piece from Alexander Henry) as well as the front.
Yes, it is up in my pattern shop and for December, you can choose your own discount if you want to stash it away for New Year’s sewing (another turning for all of us).
Factoid #1: It could be Christmas Trees. It could be Easter Trees. It could be Halloween Trees, even though I posed it in a Christmasy setting in a small town in Arizona.
Factoid #2: Started in a small sewing group swap in 2016, it lingered in a bag somewhere in my closet. I found it again this year, and when my friend Lisa finished hers up and prompted me to Get Going.
Factoid #3: The block pattern has been spruced up into a charming new version of itself. Get it yourself by clicking on the Download button:
Factoid #4: This is a great quilt for using the shirt from your husband/boyfriend/son that has worn out. Or your Dad (see different trees from different shirts, below–somehow blue checks are popular).
Factoid #5: These make up fast. What takes the most time is picking out the fabrics. I decided a slim border with a fun binding would finish it off nicely.
Factoid #6: This is the second “holiday-ish” quilt I finished this year. I never seem to get into the mood until Thanksgiving rolls around. Next on the list: order the Christmas Cards. (eye roll)
Factoid #7: Label
Factoid #8: (last one) This is quilt number 296. Four more to go to reach my goal of 300. Then what? (I don’t know. Probably not much will change.)
Have fun choosing fabrics and breezing through a fast quilt–
Other posts about this quilt:
Christmas Tree Block Swap Original Block freebie pattern is here, but it’s gone now. Do yourself a favor and use the new one (download above). However–> Step-by-step directions are found here, if you need them.
Tiny Tree and Teeny Trees — if you want to make little ones, this post gives you instructions for how to make wee quilts that slide over dime-store plastic frames. Again, free pattern.
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.
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!
(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.
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.
This won the People’s Choice Award, as well as receiving an honor from Babylock.
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.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 