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.

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!