Carrefour V: Tania Tanti, Fiona Lindsay, Janet Bear, He Ok Chang, & Quilts from Kazakhstan

February 9, 2026February 9, 2026 Elizabeth E.

Oh, my! This (full-of-photos, long-ish) post covers:

• Venue 10: Chapell St. Blaise, with Tania Tanti
• Venue 11: Église St. Nicolas, with a quick look at embroideries sponsored by Guldusi
• Venue 12: Salle Des Fêtes, with Fiona Lindsay, Jenny Bear, Hae Ok Chang, Patchwork Association of Kazakhstan

I have a main Carrefour Quilt Show page that lists all the posts of all the meetings I’ve gone to, and includes the posts from this year too. If I haven’t mentioned it before, you might enjoy these posts more if seen on a desktop computer or even a tablet. Cell phones re-format the layout and can sometimes do strange things to how it looks on the screen.

If you are interested in going to Carrefour, I wrote two posts for them about our travel, and how we put the trip together. You can find them here and here. Their main website is HERE, where you can subscribe to their newsletter (scroll to the bottom).

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Now that the orientation is complete, the story is that last year my husband and I had a chance to go to the Carrefour European Patchwork Show in the Silver Valley, near Colmar France. That’s called the Val d’Argent, in France in the Alsace region, and yes, there is great food and beautiful countryside. One of the things we like about this show is that is spread out over four small towns in the valley, and they use churches and community centers and municipal buildings, so you really get a feel for being in that area.

Venue 10: Chapell St. Blaise

Venue 10 is a small little chapel, the Chapelle St. Blaise, basically a one-room church. I stood there for a long time but that man wouldn’t move from the doorway…so I erased him. (!) Let’s see if this video will embed:

Click on image to start the movie. The voice you hear is the artist, Tania Tanti, talking to some quilters about her technique. Now to see some of her quilts. Many are not pieced, but instead are painted with textile paints then quilted and embellished.

The one that starts the movie, above.

Click on any photo to enlarge. I tried to do detail shots so you could see the amazing amount of work in each of her pieces.

Please click if you want it larger.

Red, Rock, River by Tania Tanti. She writes: “I dream of flying over the red centre after a torrential rain. An aerial view of where the water wiggles its way around the earth. It feeds the ground and creates growth from the earth.” In her technique section she writes: “Procion dyes, painted, pieced, binding, trapunto, hand-stitched, sit-down free motion quilting.”

She writes: “At then beginning of this year I faced my second battle with breast cancer. As soon as I could I got back into my studio and focused on small achievements each day. This is my Recovery.” And that is the title: Recovery. Technique: Painted, free-motion quilting, hand-quilting.

Tania Tanti is on Instagram, if you’d like to keep up with her.

I looked behind the wall to see this spare room in this church.

Look carefully: a spider! (not our car)

Onward, through the valley.

Venue 11: Église St. Nicolas

Hopefully you can hear the bells. Right after this, we went for a take-out lunch from the local market. The choices were rather cleaned out, but we found something. There were a lot of quilters there — so happy to see this!

I admire and enjoy the art of these churches. The exhibit here was titled Guldisi, which is a hand embroidery program launched in 2004 (quoting from the catalogue), which “now enables 200 women in Afghanistan to support their families….Each piece will include at least one silk embroidery in the shape of a triangle, created by the Afghan Woman.

Ingrid Meier, from Germany. Title: *Aller guten dinge sind drei*, or *All Good Things Come in Threes.*

There were also many embroideries, which I found fascinating, and which included some blackwork/redwork.

These two signs were somewhere on the wall; click to read.

Venue 12: Salle Des Fêtes

We drive to the Salle des Fétes, or the Party Room. And they are having quite the party!

A gathering.

A glimpse of a quilt.

And we meet Jenny Bear! She is a renowned quilter from Australia, known for her scrappy quilts, but exquisitely put together. The catalogue called her “Happily Scrappy” and said that “Jenny’s quilts are a celebration of social history, fabric, color, frugality, and the art of making do. She loves using her stash of antique, vintage and reproduction fabrics as well as rescuing old, unquotable or broken tops, fragments, orphan blocks and tiny scraps to make something beautiful from them. Her favorite quilts are simple, utilitarian and achievable by anyone who loves to sew.”

She “has been making quilts for more than 40 years….and after her exhibition here, she hopes that her quilt making will return to hobby level and that there may again be time for housework and gardening” (from catalogue).

Everyone was busy, but I loved that quilt on the table!

And on another table, it looked like she was creating something new:

Such a rich tapestry of fabrics and piecing…it just glows.

This was a favorite, but I do love stars.

Simple, yet is so powerful in its design.

My orphan quilts never look like this.
This is Sweet Georgia Brown, from 2023. She writes: “Using antique fabrics dating from around 1840 to 1910, this hotchpotch of oddment blocks was inspired by an early twentieth century piece featured in “Unconventional and Unexpected” by Roderick Kiracofe, a book that has inspired many a quilt of mine. Many of the blocks were gifts from friends or purchased from Jane Lury and David Hubert. It is indeed happily scrappy.”

A giant block-swap brought Under the Greenwood Trees to life.

Last one of Jenny’s is Scrappier Bennington Baskets. It is made by Jenny Bear, but quilted by Karen Terrens. The title card says: “This is a scrappier version of Linda Collins’ “Bennington Baskets” featured in her book with Quiltmania “Treasures from the Barn.” The basket block is traditional but the setting is quite quirky, especially with the row of oddment blocks at the top in the original, but at the bottom in my version.” Mixing blocks is a great idea, one to try for sure.

She’s on Instagram if you want to see more.

Right next to Jenny’s was the Kazakhstan quilts, a collection brought to Carrefour by the Kazakhstan Patchwork Association. This was founded in 2013, and has over 180 members “dedicated to promoting and developing ethnic-style patchwork (Kurak) and art quilts. The organize workshops, competitions, and the annual Orient Bazaar Festival.” The catalogue goes on to say that “this exhibition merges historical tradition with modern outlook in Kazakh quilting. At its heart is Tuskiiz-traditional wall coverings reflecting Kazakh nomadic culture.”

How may of us have made house-block quilts? Here’s one, using the traditional home from their history. A house quilt, but from a different point of view.

A quilt we are more familiar with, but the motifs are all germaine to their culture and country.

Click to enlarge.

Natalya Mametniquazova Tamara Stroscherer (at least I think that’s her name, or their names?) made a series of four garments, titled “Four Seasons Chapan Series” with Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

A couple more from this country:

If you need to go and take a walk, or a break and come back to this, that might be a good idea. There were several artists in this Party Room. We have two more to go, if you are still with me!

Hae Ok Chang, from South Korea, blends Korean and Western influences in a style that ranges from contemporary to traditional. One of her more well-known quilts has snowflakes on a traditional pieced quilt:

Here is another Snowflakes quilt, Snowflakes_04.

She writes: “Hesitating to start a large piece as my strength waned with age, I began a joint work with my daughter. She created the background, I made the snowflakes. Inspired by the night sky over St. John’s Catholic Church, it evokes angel wings and a chorus of family and friends” (from title card).

It is heavily quilted by machine, with hand-embroidered snowflakes.

She also makes more traditional quilts, such as this one, inspired by pear blossoms.

This was inspired by a trip to the Paducah Quilt Show.

Titled Husband, Chang says she “wanted to weave my retired husband’s neckties into a story. Moments of joy and pride as he walked our daughter down the aisle, welcomed a daughter-in-law, celebrated with friends, and shared hardships. Days of work, success, and failure. I keep his devotion, love, hope, and sorrow close to me. Made in 2007.

This quilt was made in 2012, after her husband passed away. Title: Time and Seasons.

She writes: “After my husband passed away in 2012, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything for a while. I had started this quilt earlier, but left it unfinished. Eventually, I returned to it, intensely embroidering each octagonal block with meadows, flowers, birds, animals, wind, and trees. As I followed the seasons, life slowly returned, and I felt grateful to still have work to do.”
Technique: Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, embroidered and quilted.

Title: Wildflowers 01, by Hae Ok Chang
Title Card: “We three sisters spent hours together knitting, sewing, and making clothes. My eldest sister did everything well, the second was precise and skilled, and I, the youngest, just tried my best. As I embroidered this work, I often thought of them and our time together.”

I have three older sisters, so this one was especially meaningful to me, although we don’t sew together.

Title: Serene Glory

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good photo of the title card. You can find her on Instagram, too.

Fiona Lindsay, from Australia

Fiona Lindsay is our last quilt artist for this post, but not the least! as they say. Also showing in Venue 12, her quilts were a veritable flower garden, a theme of hers, chosen carefully, as she loves sewing and she loves gardening.

She was so fun to talk to, and agreed to let me record her talking about her ideas about color and stitching and practice and quilting. It runs about a minute.

Now, for her garden of flowers!

As a reminder, all the quilts are very well lit up, but the shadows can be very strong. I tried to crop them out/edit them out as best as I could.

Those teensy seeds on the blossom, and the wonderful shape and proportions of this quilt: loved it!

(Click to enlarge.)

Those border vines have an energy all their own.

By now you can see that she can put together fabric combinations and colors with such skill, that she makes it look easy. I love the balance of the stems and the shapes of the flowers, too.

One reason why I do these posts from Carrefour is not only to introduce you to new quilting artists, and to let you glimpse the passions from around the world (which Carrefour is so good at bringing together), but also as sort of a reference book for our own designs. Who would have thought to put a Baltimore-style urn of flowers together (above) with a wild vine running free from tiny pots in the corners? Yet it all works with that pieced border and the wild orange Kaffe fabric sashing. Here’s a closer look:

It was great to see a close-up of her work:

Okay back to the quilts.

And now for the favorite from the last post of Janet O’Dell’s quilts: the antique quilt, but given a Fiona twist:

In pink! With color!

And now I know the maker of that antique quilt: Ann Marker, from nearly 200 years ago. This truly is free and fabulous appliqué — the joy in these shapes just radiate from the quilt.

Thank you, Fiona, for all your beautiful flower quilts. You can find her on Instagram.
And thank you to all the other quilters and artists.

I know this was a really really long post, but again I hope you’ll treat it like a reference, as well as a delight. I think I have at least one more post in me before finishing; it will come soon. Very soon.

Digital/Virtual World · eQuilt Universe · New York Beauties · Quilts

This and That • August 2025

August 30, 2025August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Since today is the 30th, I slid August’s This and That right under the wire.

For those who are new here (and thank you for subscribing) I often do a “This and That” post that contains a lot of small bits, updates on projects and pieces that don’t warrant their own post.

In other news…this is post number 1300. I started writing this blog in January of 2007. Thank you all for reading. And for your comments. And for being a part of my life for many quilty projects!

First up, on America’s Labor Day Weekend (Happy Labor Day, everyone!): a cool and calm photo my husband took near our home. He has a fascination for the flight of herons, and I loved this one, with all its blues.

I made my July block (churn dash, lower left) and August (star), both in this month. I’m using all my collected Sherri & Chelsi fabrics, some from her first lines. Sherri has started putting her quilt together, but I’m not sure how I’ll want to do mine.

I saw this while scrolling through some reels. As she tells it, when you turn 50, you are assigned a hobby.

I am so glad I was assigned Quilting, although I’m getting more and more interested in Geneology. And that group about travel actually sounds sort of interesting.

I went through my house and packed up four boxes of quilt books to send up to the Utah Valley Quilt Guild. My friend Lisa is the Librarian, and she said they’ll keep some and put others up for sale in their fundraiser.

Happy to for them be put to a good use.

And I’ve been putting these up for far too long. With this last one, I am at the end of the quilting on the center. And this is what I’ve sketched out for the borders of this New York Beauties quilt (yellow thread on the yellow border): We’ll see.

I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world that decides to (1) clean out a drawer or (2) lay on the sofa or (3) start a new project or just (4) doomscroll when there is a task awaits that is larger-than-my-tiny-brain-can-handle. After running out of things to procrastinate with, I finally started quilting the border this week. Big sigh, big relief.

The #ScrappyMeetsThriftChallenge soldiers on, with this installment. Or as I call them, my Economy Blocks.

I created a new page dedicated to this quilt so its easier to find the free patterns to make this. You can see “Economy Quilt” in the header, above.

Now here’s a random topic for you. I’ve been reading a lot about AI, and present here some clothing examples of bad photos, with arms that look like they were cut-out paper dolls, weird colors of skin, same model in same pose, clothing that fits oddly around the neckline. This is what they call AI Slop.

“Slop, at least in the fast-moving world of online message boards, is a broad term that [is] in reference to shoddy or unwanted A.I. content in social media, art, books and, increasingly, in search results,” wrote Benjamin Hoffman in a recent article in the New York Times.

While that article focused on searches done on a search engine, I found Kristian Hammond’s comment interesting: “You search for something and you get back what you need in order to think — and it actually encourages you to think. What it’s becoming, in this integration with language models, is something that does not encourage you to think. It encourages you to accept. And that, I think, is dangerous.”

Like we’re supposed to accept that this illustration above is a quilt? Hardly.

When an AI visual-creation platform first landed in 2022, I tried to tell it make a nine-patch block (on the left). That was a joke. I wrote in the email to my friend; “My first one was pretty weird, but I tried to improve my text commands, and the illustrations got a bit better.” My commands are in the text box, above. I tried it again this week, even though I’m sort of basically opposed to the use of AI these days (keep reading). The command was “nine-patch quilt block.” The results:

Nope. Couldn’t find one nine-patch in the mix. This is a serious illustration of AI Slop, which is pretty ubiquitous these days.

Like what is this??? (Also from my “nine-patch” prompt.) Love the “quilting needles.”

According to Natalie Fear, “A Google image search screenshot has ruffled feathers online after it showed more AI-generated results than real-world examples of baby peacocks…[T]he screenshot has sparked mass debate online, with many creatives calling for stricter rules for AI-generated search results to mitigate the spread of misinformation.”

This was published last year, and it’s only gotten worse.

Because of AI slop, I rely less and less on Google search, and type in -ai at the end of my search query quite often. I don’t want to be just “accepting” what is served up to me. And I use DuckDuckGo a lot more now, and even Reddit, as search engines.

Again, use -ai if you want a cleaner search.

Commenters on Reddit had this to say about AI Slop:
1) Slop is just a slur that you say after “AI” to show that you don’t like AI.
2) [Slop] refers specifically to AI generated creations that are clearly low effort engagement-farming spam.
3) Some people call everything that’s AI-generated “AI slop” as an insult, while many other people only use it to describe low effort, low quality content.

And lately, we’ve been hearing more and more and more about the downsides to AI.

Like the energy it consumes (a tongue-in-cheek approach).

Such as what it’s like when a Data Center is built down the road from you.

Like the amount of natural resources it eats up.

Also more on that here.

The problem is that AI, a general term, is integrating itself into our world.

For example:
• I like the clean-up tool on my iPhone photos. Is this AI?
• Doing a search on a search engine. Is this AI? (It is, if you don’t type the three digits -ai after your search terms.)

• Reading on social media and liking that picture of a young woman at a sewing machine. Is this AI? (from here. Be sure to read Weeks and Ringle’s text on this Instagram post.)
I think AI will slide in all around us, whether we are cognizant of it or not, and whether we need it or not. And might make mistakes that could be hard to fix. I love Kyla Scanlon’s recent post about how people feel about AI.

For me, it’s mixed.

Is AI all bad? Perhaps not. Genealogy research is putting it to good use. Here in the quilting world, we already have an “AIQuilter.” I enjoyed reading Sherri’s take on this subject, on her SherriQuiltsALot blog. Julia Wachs, on her website, also does an analysis of a few AI “quilts” and how to avoid purchasing AI-generated quilt patterns, which are sketchy at best in the instructions aspect. But to balance it out, this blogpost goes all in on the AI-design concept.

I just know that when I sit down to design, when I open up my Affinity Designer software, I’m not using 10x energy. Or 10x water.

Finally, Lastly, CanWePleaseStopTalkingAboutThis, my favorite definition of AI’s LLM (Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT) is that it’s “just a bag of words,” so no need to make it your friend, or take it seriously. I’m sure it does have its benefits, which we will discover as time goes on, because whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay.

When my brain is futzed out from all of this, I return to earth, to retreat to the fascinating brilliance of this real world. I return to the human level of making. Like quilts.

Or like a dress, or something. My sister’s been hot on this clothes-making for some time (inspiring me) and you know I’ve been sewing, too. But now I have a couple more pieces of fabric and want to make something else. Oh, what to choose? Hart’s Fabric has an extensive pattern collection, as does Oak Fabrics in Chicago (plus they both have fabric). Another place for both fabrics and patterns is Harmony, a fun shop in Provo, Utah.

Or a piece of writing for the Carrefour Quilt Show? It is being held next month in the Alsace region of France. This year is their 30th Anniversary, and since I’d written about it here in this space, they contacted me to see if I’d like to write something for them. I would! and I did. You can find the first post on their blog.

It’s in English, as well as French and German.

Maybe I’ll see you there?

In the meantime, I’ve got a border to sew, squircles to prep, and everything in between. And I’m not using AI for any of it.

Happy sewing!

NOTE: None of the illustrations or photographs you’ll find on this blog are AI, UNLESS I LABEL THEM AS SUCH (like the silly raccoon, above). None of my quilt designs or patterns are AI, either. It’s all home-grown, here!

Totes and Purses · Travels

Sewing in Translation

March 29, 2025April 3, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

You know when I stood in the shopping area of Carrefour Quilt Show last September (2024), I wanted to buy up all the fabrics and patterns and everything, but alas my suitcase was small, so I had to limit myself. One of the choices was a series of small pouches from ABCDaires, with a soft velvety fabric with absolutely charming printed designs. I tend to buy something that I won’t see in the States, and this fit the ticket. I bought three: two kits and one that just had the printed fabric.

(taken with permission)

There is a front and a back to each pouch with different designs. One kit was pink with a girl in flowers on the front, and then just the flowers on the back. The colors were rich and saturated, so I was hooked.

However…Note to future self: Just.Buy.The.Kit. For the un-kit purchase, I luckily had a zipper that was a perfect match. However, the zippers in the kit were just a bit heavier duty, plus she included the lining, a waxed lightweight canvas.

But how can I sew it if it is in another language? you ask. Google Translate to the rescue. Let’s start with their website, ABCDaires:

I have the Google Translate in my browser, so I just click on the little icon in the upper right of the search bar; in some reading I did it suggested that now you have to use Chrome as your browser to get that. (I don’t know–do some searching online.) Or you can head to Google Translate and paste in the URL of the page you want to see in English:

This is Google Translate (above). Click on the Websites box, paste in your URL and it should translate most of the language for you.

Now the website is all in English, and you can click around to purchase the little kit you want. Yes, you will still have to convert the metric measurements while sewing. I have a small ruler that I use for just this.

She was very helpful and just lovely and spoke English! They also have a downloadable PDF of instructions on their website. I’ll talk about that in a minute.

This is the smallest of the three I purchased. You can see the little ruler I use that has cm and mm marked on it. The first thing you do it mark off small squares in the corners, but she has two different measurement options. This was the first wrinkle in the translation business. Which one? I tried using my Google Translate on my iPhone. You open up the app, choose PHOTO and hold it over the paragraph:

After a second or two, all the French is in English (I chose the language, but you could choose any). I learned a “coupon” is a “pouch” or maybe “fabric” or not (it’s not always perfect). So I went to the section about the corners, but alas, still couldn’t figure it out. I then went to math, something we quilters are good at. If the fabric measured X by X then I used the larger dimension, and if it was a different X by X, I would use the smaller. I measured the printed fabric, which gave me my answer. (I’m using “X” so I don’t give away her pattern.) I’m just saying, don’t be frustrated, but try another angle to solve your translation difficulty. Onward.

Ends go on the zipper, zipper gets sewn to the fabric…a usual sequence of steps for a pouch.

Since this is a velvet minky, I didn’t want to put a hot iron on it and scorch it, so I found my roller came in handy for flattening the seams. On the pink pouch, I opted to topstitch down the fabric with the zipper (she gives two options). I won’t do that again — in a minute I’ll show you why. [Of course it could be that I’m a dweeb at sewing pouches, and the results have everything to do with that.]

In the first photo, the designer fabric is shown smoothed away to the left, away from the stitching going on on the lining/zipper tape. As usual, when your presser foot approaches the zipper pull, leave the needle in the fabric, raise the presser foot slightly, and move it to the back where you’ve already stitched. This will eliminate bumps in the stitching line.

First one done! She has a clever way to put in the velvet ribbon so it becomes a nice zipper pull on a traditional zipper.

Here we go again. I used a bit of fabric from the stash for the zipper ends. I chose a spotty lining fabric (in upper right corner).

Done! The second one went so much faster, and I only top-stitched on the zipper, not the top designer fabric.

Back designs on both.

Notice how wonky the zipper ending is on the pink? I mean, it’s functional, but not as lovely as the blue zipper. I chalk it up to how the top-stitching impeded the inner seam. (I need to find a cute ribbon for the blue bag.)

UPDATE: I’ve since sewn the last blue pouch, and now I think it was the coated lining fabric “zipper ends” that gave me so much trouble. The fabric “end,” shown above, was much easier to manipulate. So maybe, if you make these, find a coordinating fabric, rather than use the coated fabrics.

I love how the bag color blends into a second color for the base.

Baby Molly and St. Patrick Day Girl posing with the pink bag. (You know I have to put Molly in here somewhere.)

Now, a caveat. This was an easy translation task, relatively. The company had an English download for the instructions, and I already had the Google Translate installed in my browser. I was also familiar with how the iPhone’s Google Translate worked too, having tried it out on an earlier trip to Japan, where I found out that my breakfast roll was made with the “breath of heaven.” (Okay, so it doesn’t always work so well with idioms, but I took that to mean it had flour in it.) The app has improved greatly since then, I assume because of a a positive use of AI in our lives.

I struggled more on this project, made from a book I’d purchased at Carrefours and also published in French. The trip-up came because it was a JAPANESE bag, translated into French:

I did use a lot of “how to sew Japanese bags” searches on the internet, with questions like “Do I trace the pattern off the pattern sheet in the back of the book?” (yes) and “Are seam allowances included?” (no). This required a huge MIND shift, and aside from sewing the bottom to the top edge of the bag, I made it. (That’s why it looks upside down, ahem.) I did a lot of improvising, but I also love it, too.

I guess what I want to say is that it is a big world of quilting out there and we can always stand to have our horizons enlarged and widened, helping us to bridge all the acrimony and bitterness that can sometimes be found around us. I am in minor grief just about every day with the parts of what I once held dear being taken apart and sold for dross. So I’ve stepped up and purchased another subscription to a news organization, donated to three different local public broadcast stations, apologized to my Canadian friend Kaylie for who I’ve made two baby quilts, apologized to some scientists I know who won’t get funding for their research saving crops from pests (I do like to eat). I guess I’ll soon be apologizing soon to Greenland, too. And Mexico. And Europe, where I’ll be this year — I hope they let me in. I hope America lets me back in, and lets me have my phone after going through customs. I remember traveling in Italy when Hilary Clinton was running for President and the taxi driver went on and on about how her opponent was like Berlusconi, a real rat, he said. I assured him that she would win. Haha, spoke too soon.

I guess I just want to say that make friends with our international neighbors, sew their projects, buy American products (so they can survive the boycotts from other nations), but mostly just sew. I could go on and on, but I have many friends who are very happy right now, and I love them too. Mostly I just try to translate my complicated feelings and make the results come out with a bit of peace, a bit of kindness and a lot of forbearance.

Sort of like sewing with beautiful fabrics from a lovely French shopkeeper–

Update: I had some questions about what kind of fabric this was. After reading this post, I’d say it hews closer to a product similar to Celosia Velvet, as the back is very sturdy and is not stretchy, nor drapable.

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!