European Patchwork Meeting · Quilt Shows · Quilts

Quilt National 15: the best of collection “Contemporary Quilts B”

Google France

There!  Now do you feel like you are in France?  (This is what I saw every morning.)

I am recapping, in a series of posts, my experience in visiting the Carrefours European Patchwork Meeting, in the Alsace region of France this past September.  In case you came at this topic sideways (which is usually how the internet works), I have created a master post, with links to the exhibits.

After visiting the vendors, and Gabrielle Paquin, the next quilt exhibit we went to was the best of the Contemporary Quilts B collection from Quilt National.  They have several groupings of quilts that travel, and since their European partner is this show, we were lucky to see some of these quilts.

dairybarn_frontofbarn_headerIf you don’t know about Quilt National, whose headquarters are in a former dairy barn in Athens, Ohio (above), you might want to read more about them.  Suffice it to say that their quilts are more artistic, less traditional and always intensively creative.

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The exhibit was in this site, with its half-timbered walls.  Inside it was very modern.

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36″ high by 40″ wide

Jayne Gaskins’ Memories (USA, 2014) paid homage to a street scene from somewhere in the Andes in South America (I assume), and was heavily thread-painted.  Detail is below, where you can see the dimensionality of this piece.

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Skylight by Elizabeth Busch, USA, 2014.  Those spatters looked like dye discharge, and I wondered how she did it. It may have also been a batik-like process where she dyed it, then blocked it with a wax resist, then over-dyed it.  As this exhibit had no title cards, there was little information to go on.

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This piece was quite large; I assume each panel to be about 20″ wide and 40″ long (couldn’t read the dimensions when I got home). It’s titled Entropy, by Kathleen Loomis (USA 2014).  I loved her use of striped fabric, not only to subdivide the sections of fabric, but she also used them like Gabrielle Paquin did, as a way to get texture and design into a flat area but without using floral or other motifs in the fabric.  Detail, below.

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62″ x 39″

Pam RuBert is a favorite of mine, and this is her quilt London–Wish You Were Hair (USA 2014).  (You can find another one of hers elsewhere on this blog.)

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35″ long 22″ wide

Rough-edged and exquisitely hand-quilted, Kate Gorman’s A Keeper of Secrets and Parakeets was a quiet, subtle masterpiece.

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42″ high 60″ wide

Amaryllis Set, by Jill Ault (USA 2014) appears to be multiples of the same photograph, printed on a fine fabric, then cut as to reveal different colors and shading. Detail, below.

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34″ square

Okay–is this a quilt?  Straps with paint and grommets on a tinker-toy-steel-rod grid?  Diane Nunez’ Cross Section (USA 2014) certainly makes me wonder.

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37″ x 57″

Roofs of Mumbai, by Jean Renli Jurgenson (USA 2014) was interesting because of the materials used: some stiffened, quilted fabric and some was non-woven, almost paper-like. Details, below.

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I’m not usually drawn to the deep, dark, moody quilts, but her construction and the material she used was compelling. (See detail below for the small knots she used for keeping the layers together).  Judy Langille’s Nocturnus IV (USA 2014) is about 35″ high by 47″ wide.

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44″ square

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Maria Shell’s To Agnes Martin with Color (USA 2014).  Now I know what to do with all my scraps of solids.  Again, I put my hand up for scale.  Those crosses are tiny!

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55″ long 25″ wide

This has got to be one of our favorites.  Janet Windsor’s Crumbling (JP 2014) looks like  stream bed with multi-colored stones.  It looked, upon closer inspection, that they were wrapped fabrics around puffiness with a cardboard backing?  Some stones looked like they’d had some color applied, but that could have just been the fabric.  Talk about a quilt that you want to touch–this was it.

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47″ by 33″

Morning Walk, by Joan Sowada (USA 2014).  I left it uncropped so you could glimpse the exhibit’s layout on either side.

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64″ by 61″

Conflict No. 5 Mugging, by Judy Kirpich (USA 2014) made me wonder if she was had been the victim of a violent crime, with its shards of red and ominous, oppressive sky.  The quilting (below) was outstanding, expressive.

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39″ by 40″

Cecile Trentini’s C5–Red Circonvolutions was Picasso-esqe in its design, the quilting providing all the texture and interest.

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Central Park West Winter VII by Linda Levin (USA 2013?)  This was large (can’t read the dimensions) but mostly it looked like a very cold and blustery day, writ in fabric.

 

200 Quilts · Chuck Nohara · Quilts · WIP

Chuck Nohara Quilt Top Finished!

We interrupt this tour of France and the European Patchwork Meeting to bring you breaking news: I finished the Chuck Nohara Quilt Top!

My husband held it up for me, but it’s big — about 80″ wide, and similar height.

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Above are the Chuck Nohara blocks that Susan and I chose; we took turns choosing blocks to make–four a month, which sometimes about did me in.  I’ll have you know that she is ALL DONE with her quilt.  (I took this photo inside, the quilt smoothed up on my design wall, so all the blocks were visible.)

Chuck Nohara Signature Block SS

And then we made signature blocks for each other, to commemorate that year-plus of making weensy little fussy blocks. (How did we decide to do this?  Blame the Chuck Nohara QAL Instagram Feed.)  The above signature block is hers, surrounded by my tiny plus-sign blocks and the final star borders.  I have other posts tagged with “Chuck Nohara” so you can either click on the label at the bottom of this one to get more info, or do a search in the box to the right.Chuck Nohara Signature Block ESE

Here’s my signature block.  Do I love love this quilt?  Parts of it, most of it.  If I had another millennium, I might have tried something different besides the two borders, then star borders.  Let me rephrase that… I DID try a lot of different things but nothing clicked to me (now I have a lot of cut fabric for string blocks).  At some point, the old mantra clicked in my head:  “Better done, than perfect”  as well as  “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Sometimes it’s fine to have some good quilts.  I love so much of what I learned with this quilt–so many different techniques.  But I’m also glad it’s at this spot.  I’ll bring it back when I finish quilting it, but for now, I’m putting it up on the 200 Quilts List.

European Patchwork Meeting · Quilts · Textiles & Fabric

Gabrielle Paquin: Design and Graphics

Moseying along the main street, we headed to Site #7, the Eligse St-Louis, where I wanted to see the French quilter Gabrielle Paquin.  Previous to this, in my hotel room in Geneva, I had previewed all the exhibits, looking up the artists and deciding which ones interested me.  Paquin was one of them.

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I had seen photos of previous years’ exhibits, and the fact that many of them were in churches.  But it just doesn’t prepare you for the juxtaposition of the sacred and the quilting, the symbols of religious life coupled with the themes and ideas and colors and patterns of the quilts along the sanctuary walls.  It was wonderful.

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She spoke some English, and agreed to pose with me.  Check out her sweater.

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The Round, 2017

In her biography, she writes:

“For several years, I studied drawing and painting in a school of Fine Arts, my first vocation, and since then, I practice painting as an amateur. Simultaneously, I realized traditional patchworks inspired by American models large format of the 18th and 19th centuries.

“This practice evolved towards the contemporary patchwork and the textile art that I have been practicing assiduously for ten years, thanks to a constant inspiration and stimulated by the numerous exhibitions proposed with selection by a jury of artists and curators of museums.”

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Spring, 2016.

You can start to get a sense of the materials that Paquin works in: striped cloth.  In this one, she uses larger pieces that her usual strips, and has appliquéd them down to the background with a satin stitch on her machine.  I like her small monogram in the lower right corner.

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Twilight and Stripes, 2008 (?)
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Detail.

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I didn’t quite catch the name of this one (top, and detail, bottom), but it shows her use of her striped material.  I kept wondering if she cut up old shirts, or old clothing, or haunted fabric shops to find all these variations.

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In/Out, 2017.
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Detail.

I was impressed with the quilting on this piece, as it gave me great ideas.

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Flight II, 2015.

All the placards were in French, so I’m using Google Translate to write them in English, plus heading over to her website where she has some of these quilts.

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Detail.
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Detail.

She has found so many ways to use this fabric; I didn’t include all her quilts in this series, but many of them.

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Two Black Sisters, 2016.
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Storm II, 2012.

What a huge impact the simple reversal of value (light-dark) can make!

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Looking towards the back of the church.  She is sitting there at the table with the white tablecloth, waiting for people to come and talk with her.

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R-évolution, 2017.

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The Eye of the Cyclone, 2009.

We call cyclones “hurricanes,” and after this year, can definitely relate to the eye of such a storm.

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This title says something about a spider, and it was pinned up to show the creature responsible for this exotic web.

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Please visit the gallery on her website for more quilts and inspiration.

 

Note: this series about the European Patchwork Meeting has a main page, with a listing of posts.

European Patchwork Meeting · Quilt Shows · Quilts

A Study in Opposities: Lea Stansal and Mary Koval

I am posting my experiences at the recent European Patchwork Meeting, held in a series of four small towns in the Alsace region of France.  The town of Saint Marie-aux-Mines, the main venue, had many places to find quilts:

Ste MarieauxMines Map

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The poster above links to the numbers in the map.  Once we left the L’Espace Commercial, we walked across the street to the Theater, where two sets of quilts curated by two different women provided a study in contrasts.

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One set of quilts, by collector Mary Koval, was exhibited on the ground floor of a beautifully restored old theater, which you can just see from around the edges of some of my photos.  This set of quilts were all American antique quilts.

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The other woman (from France) is Lea Stansal, who mounted a one-woman exhibit titled La Broderie d’embellissement, which can be roughly translated to The Embroidery of Embellishment.  Her biographical statement from her blog (which I used Google Translate to read) says:

Trained at Met Penningen’s Higher School of Decorative Arts and Interior Architecture. After twenty years in the world of fashion as a textile designer, Léa Stansal decides to explore and deepen more traditional aspects such as patchwork and embroidery.

“Since then, with a thread and a needle, she has created a poetic and original work, which is widely exhibited in the world and has given rise to the publication of half a dozen books of art.”

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Is this the artist? I don’t know, but I did love the quilt behind her head.

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Detail.

None of these are titled, and it flattens them out to put them on this digital medium; I wish you could have seen them in person.  They were wild and embroidered and free and filled with a happiness of creativity.  I think if I could spend 10 minutes in her studio, I’d break all those Rules of Quilting that I carry around inside me.

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Detail from the upper panel, above

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Detail.
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Detail.

I kept thinking about how the Pied Piper had charmed all the little tin soldiers.  Was this a statement about war?  About peace?  I’ll never know, but I’m still thinking about it.

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Detail from above.  The layers!  The collage!  The broderie perse!  I kept sighing.

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I love how the deer and its antlers are in this piece, but not in the static, overused version we see in America.  Shall we turn some quilts on their heads?

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My husband, who loves symmetry in all its forms kept sighing, too, as he admitted that this just wasn’t his type of quilting.  Mine, neither, but I kept admiring that freedom to create, a freedom that was a delicious anarchy of cloth and threads.

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We headed downstairs to Mary Koval’s antique quilts, in an exhibit titled “Piece by piece, our life with quilts.”

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I had carefully included the identifying titles in my photos, but back home, found I couldn’t read them most of them.  The quilts range from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

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Pickle Dish quilt, from the 1920s.EPM Koval_2aEPM Koval_3

I liked the juxtaposition of these two–the orange-clad guard and the riotous early-American quilt.

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I liked the embroidery detail on this little Uncle Sam. a quilt from the 1920s.

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One of my favorites of the antiques because of its exuberance.  The name “Rev. and Mrs. (?) S. Harvey” is on the first line, with “Park Methodist Episcopal Church” on the second.  “Circle No. 5 1937” on the third line.

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Made from silks.

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Detail.

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We weren’t allowed to touch the quilts (of course!) so I held my hand up to show how tiny those triangles are.  This quilt is from Berks County, Pennsylvania, but I don’t have a date.

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I’m sure all these quilts are from their new book.  Info can be found on their website.EPM TheaterMeal_3

Now we were hungry, so we found this little “cafe” in the back of the theater, with fabulously dressed servers.

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Although the flowers were pretty tired, I loved the attempt at patchwork on the vase, with bits of cloth glued to the glass.

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And this, folks, was the traditional Alsace salad with bretzel (with a “b”).  My husband ordered this, but I went mainstream with the ham sandwich (below).  They were doing an active business, so we hurried and ate and went back out hunting quilts.

Note: this series about the European Patchwork Meeting has a main page, with a listing of posts.

eQuilt Universe · European Patchwork Meeting · Quilt Shows · Quilts

Quilt Show Contest • or • Concours International du Carrefour Européen du Patchwork 2017

How’s that for a title?  This post is all about the official competition of the Patchwork Meeting, and I have a sampling of the quilts in the contest.  I purchased the Catalogue from the organizers and it was interesting that it is printed in three languages: French, German and English (yippee!).  The contest theme this year was “Journey to the End of the World” and all the quilts were to be 35″ wide by 47″ inches tall.  This was the first indication that it would be a different type of competition than I had been used to seeing in the States.

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Car in main parking lot

I realized quickly that this would represent all different nationalities, cultures, countries, skill levels (generally really high) and all types of construction.  I chose to notice not only their interpretation of the theme, but also the how and the why they chose to use the materials and techniques they did, always hoping to learn something new.  These quilts are in no particular order.  You can note the winners by the small rosettes in the lower right corner.

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Tatiana Varshavskaya’s In the Beginning.  She is from Hungary.
Her artist’s statement wrote from the perspective on a three-year old, with “continents to conquer, horizons to overcome.  Free, without anchors or restraints, you venture forever in the infinity of childhood’s imagination.”  She finishes by writing “You are three years old, and sail to the unknown with a paper boat.”

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Small Boat, Small Trip, by Sandra Van Velzen of The Netherlands.  She writes “Not so long ago the length of your trip depended on the size of your means of transport.  Nowadays planes and the internet seem to make the world smaller and the trip longer.”

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Gabriele Yoeller, from Germany, created Finistere evoking “France, Bretange…where the sun goes down and the land ends.  Even the Romans called this land: ‘Finis terrae.’ Before you: only water.  Is there something else?  New worlds…or a monster?”

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A quilter from Spain, Eva Arrelano Martin created Into the Deep, an “homage to the effort of thousands of workers who spent and sometimes lost their lives in the their trip into the [great cavity] of the world.”

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Two Americans, Jim Smith & Andy Brunhammer made “June 19th,” celebrating Andy’s birthday  Their artists’ statement notes that “We are both long-term HIV-survivors, and our end of the world has always been just around the corner.  We chose Kaieteur Falls in Guyana [where Jim’s father grew up] as the background. . . Our arm is reaching out with the cascading red ribbon symbolizing the flow or our blood.  The clusters of pills are our life-force.”

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Esodo, by Angela Minaudo of Italy says that “The work represents the journey of those who run from the land in search of a better life, towards other lands, other worlds, towards the end of their world and often toward the end of their lives.”  Esodo means “exodus.”

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A Japanese quilter, Chiaki Yagishita, made Japon.  Her statement read “I think ‘creation’ and ‘infinity’ equals ‘silence.’  There is ‘silence’ in Japan and it is beautiful. This work expresses ‘Japanese blue’ [or] ‘the silent world.’ ”

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Anneliese Jaros, from Austria made 101 Views of Vesuvius (my translation of her title).  She wrote that she loves the Gulf of Naples, and Mt. Vesuvius.  “The eruptions of the volcano in the course of history have been the end of the world to many…Parts of the letters [by Pliny the Younger] describing the eruptions are printed in Latin on cotton, which are then overlaid by my own photos of contemporary views of the mountain.”  I tried to capture the detail of the overlay, below.

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Au pays des atomes translates to “In the Country of Atoms,” and is a quilt by French quilter Françoise Buzzi-Morel.  She write that atoms “are able to reach the end of the world…beyond any human limits.  And in one precise order, they geometrically follow parallels, cubes, circles and lines.”

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Another French quilter, Eriko Krzyzaniak, made Emmenez-moi au pays des merveilles, or “Take me to Wonderland.”  The colors of blue and gold were inspired by the icon of the Virgen Rynecka in the Church of Our Lady in Prague.  “The drawing,” she writes, “was inspired but the poetry “The Little Flute Player,” by G. Brassens.  It was the starting point of my ‘Wonderland.’ ”
I snapped two more photos showing the detail of her work (below).

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Rita Dijkstra, from The Netherlands, did a rendition of Mount Fitz Roy (her title).  She describes it for us: “The road on the quilt leads to Mount Fitz Roy on the border of Argentina and Chile (Patagonia)….For me Patagonia stands for the end of the world.  The only way you can travel more south from this point, is by taking a boat to the South Pole.”

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No return was made by Anne Lillhom, from The Netherlands.  She writes “From birth to death, we go through different stages.  We have good and less good things happening in life, days with more colors and days with less colors.  We have periods in life where life goes up and days where it goes down…Nobody knows what the life journey will bring us, the only that is for sure is….there is NO RETURN.  We simply have to follow the path.”

Details, below.

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Michèle Samter of Switzerland made Excitement of a big city, her tribute to Singapore.  She writes that “The vibrating performance of all the lights in different colors from high-rise buildings and traffic all night long evokes [a] feeling [of having been to the end of the world]….The contrast between my home in Switzerland and this other city, which never seems to sleep, had a great impact on me.”

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Incredible Voyage to the End of the World is by Dalia Eliraz, who is from Israel.  She writes: “The Arctic tern’s [long] trip from Arctic to Antarctic and back is the furthest animal migration.  Over 30 years, it will travel the equivalent of 3 roundtrips from Earth to Moon.  My quilt is inspired by this super-migration bird, as a metaphor of human behavior [when] motivated by determination to achieve a life goal or purpose….whether it is love, academic ambition, artistic aspirations or nesting…”

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Dreamland, by Elly Van Steebeek (from the Netherlands)
She writes: “There is a place, [far] from home with a beautiful blue sky, singing birds, flowing rivers and dark rocks. And after a spectacular sunset there is total darkness, only a whispering wind and the sound of the busy.  This is the land of my dreams!”

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This is Edith Leidi, from Italy, and I was so excited to meet her, I forgot to take a photo of the complete quilt.  The title is Stargate. What’s next?  and I loved what she wrote: “My idea was born in the swimming pool.  I was watching my husband’s hand diving in the water, so I created my stargate.  The hand passes through it while the body remains on the other side.  There is another hand in the universe, that is going to meet the first one.  But…from where does it come?”
Detail, below.

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Gabrielle Paquin from France (who also had her own exhibit at the Patchwork Meeting) created Voyage en orbite.  She says “The Earth [has] become too little for its population.  It is necessary to find some exits in Space….we must in a future time go away for a journey…tempory of definitively.”

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This quilt was on the front of their brochure for the Meeting, so we saw it everywhere.  Chang Misun, of South Korea, created Pieces of memories.  She says: “I think my way of life is like an endless trip.  Pieces of past life and future life come together…[some] especially clear and some others are dim.  Pieces of all memories were expressed in the works.”

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Maryte Collard, of Lithuania, made Song of the Linen.  Writing about returning to Lithuania, she notes that it “always feels like the trip backwards in time” due to the ancient language and that is was the “last European country to accept Christianity.”  Because of this “traces of ancient customs still remain in daily life….Flax has been a traditional Lithuanian fiber for several thousand years.  It has a special place in my heart and it sings to me the song about the trip to the end of the world.”
Detail, below.

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Catalogue of Patchwork Meeting 2017
taken from *here*

Watch me breeze through the complete catalogue, which I couldn’t figure out how to upload, which shows a few more quilts.  Below is a photo of the giant poster, showing all our venues.  The one above was above the L’Espace Commercial.

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It was raining that day, but none of our wet umbrellas were allowed in the exhibits.  Since I’d lost one already to an umbrella stand, I wasn’t anxious to repeat the experience, so I whipped out my souvenir Patchwork Bag, and we stuffed the umbrellas in there as we walked around.  Everyone was happy.

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More posts coming. The original post, with links, is found *here.*

Creating · European Patchwork Meeting · Quilts · stitchery

Shopping at the European Quilt Meeting

EuroPatchwork Meeting Program

The brains of the meeting.  I’d done some prepwork (looking at the website) so I knew what I wanted to see.  The very first thing: see the vendors.  I told my husband it would be like going to Disneyland for quilters.  Everything was new and different to me, but since I only have a small suitcase, I had to choose fun and interesting things.

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Since fat quarters were running about $5 a piece (with the conversion rates) and fabric was 22 Euro (about $25 dollars) per meter, I knew right off the bat I wouldn’t be buying any “American” fabric, and gained instant sympathy for European quilters at these prices!

The vendors were in a combination of inside “Espace Commercial” and outside tents, with one side of the tent opening to the passersby (and the weather).  I saw many of the drapes drawn to close in the booths when it was raining.

The Commercial Space was weather-proof, but hot and stuffy.  I took these photographs early in the morning.  When we doubled back before leaving, it was very crowded.

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Who wouldn’t want to shop at this booth, with its array of Kaffe fabrics and a vendor with bright pinky-red hair?

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This isn’t exactly a vendor, but the distributor (Rhinetex) who’d rented out the ground floor of this old house, displaying some Moda fabrics (don’t they always do it spectacularly?).

EuroPatchwork 2017_VendorsVenue6 Moda3EuroPatchwork 2017_VendorsVenue6 Moda2And inside, the famous Tula quilt for her new line, and a sweet scene at the fireplace, with their logo on the felt backdrop.  Lots of quilts in here, and it was fairly mobbed.

EuroPatchwork 2017_VendorsVenue5 creativesThe last venue I want to mention was titled “Les Createurs” and was filled with beautiful handiwork from “designers and craftsmen.”  I definitely coveted a few pieces of jewelry, as well as that blue coat in front. Now to show you what I bought and what their booths looked like.  I asked permission for all photos, but was told more than once they’d only like me to take a “general” photograph (imagine this word with a French accent); I totally understood their request and why they made it.

EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors1These folks are from the west side of France; she has a book out (I saw it at the book booth, but since it’s all in French, well…)  I’m always thinking small, so I picked up these two fat quarters.
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Across from them was the Costuretas de Moly booth, with the most charming kits and small handmades.  I saw a lot of sweet little bags and pouches with detailed scenes appliquéd and embroidered on the fronts and backs.  They are from Catalan, Spain.EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors2a

A small bracelet, a quick blurry shot of the bins of bracelets (they didn’t want their booth photographed) and random German Christmas Tree, the only thing I regret buying.  The vendor had tacked green rosettes of fabric around all the outside edges, and I thought maybe I could tie on some green primitive rags instead.  Oh well, we’ll see.

The handmade, laser-cut embellishments were purchased next, from a booth that made it hard to decide, given their categories of sewing, animals, children, family, house, etc.

EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors5aEuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors5Even though I said to myself “no fabric” the Filarte booth drew me in with their linens.EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors6My husband and I both liked the scarf on the outer upper edge of the houses, but when I tried on the leafy print next to it, well, that one came home.  It is wool and cotton so I will be very warm in sunny old Riverside. (I’m wearing it now, as I type this next to the chilly window in our hotel in Geneva.)

EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors7cI had a total fangirl moment when I realized whose booth I was standing in front of: Un Chat dans l’aiguille.  The lady on the right is the artist who makes up all these beautiful pieces (and whose name I think is Christel–hard to figure it out when you don’t speak the language).  I fell in love with her Matryoshka needle case, that I saw in a shop when I was here in Geneva last year, but they didn’t have any more (it’s out of print).  So when I got home, I looked up who made it and read all about her and her designs.

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But what to chose?  None of them are cheap, so I had to choose carefully.EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors7aEuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors7bI went with this little pouch with all its flowers and scalloped edge detail.EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors7aabWhen I looked inside, I can see why her kits are so popular: everything is well-labeled, ordered and she even included a needle.

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Sometimes what draws you in to fabric is that it is the exact opposite of what you’d normally buy.  Like the dusky shades of printed and dyed linen on the left.  Then you spend the next two hours mentioning to your husband that it won’t be enough fabric to do anything with, so you circle back around (my husband is a saint) and then pick up two more fat quarters to round it out.  I’m assuming it was the wife of the man (below) sort of strongly suggested that it was not good to put the heavier weight linen next to the quilt-fabric-weight linen on the right.  But I loved the look of the thicker threads in the first pack and couldn’t be persuaded to change.  If only they’d had the colors on the right in the heavier.  The vendors are from Germany.EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors9a

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Here’s the back of the package, in case you ever run into them.  Like I said, nearly everything I saw was unique, unusual, and not seen in the American markets.

Like these doll heads:EuroPatchwork 2017_VendorsRandom HeadsEuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors10EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors10a
We saw this sign while walking between exhibit locations, and entered into the little lane where several booths were set up with bolts of fabric.  At the back was a burned out house (?) with buttons for sale in what looks like the garage.  Or maybe the whole house was under renovation?EuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors10bEuroPatchwork 2017_Vendors10cThe quilts are pretty backdrops for what I purchased: the two buttons, above, and a necklace.

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The penultimate purchase was this dishtowel from the Beauville exhibit in Sainte Croix-aux-Mines, one town away from where we started.  I have one more purchase, but I’ll mention it when I get to the various exhibits.

Alsatian Dress Lady

Here’s the woman in the Alsatian dress again.  It is so beautiful, and of course, I wondered where I could get that apron fabric.  We saw her again later in the Old Theater venue, so stay tuned.

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