Carrefour VI: RachelDaisy Dodd, Ruth De Voss, Lorena Uriarte, Diane First, France Patchwork & Ulla Hoppe

February 12, 2026February 12, 2026 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

This is the sixth, and final post about the Carrefour European Patchwork show 2025. The post covers:

• Venue 13: Villa Burrus, with RachaelDaisy Dodd
• Venue 14: Église de l’Assomption, with Ruth De Vos
• Venue 15: Salle Polyvalente, with Lorena Uriarte, Dianne Firth, ASL Liépvre, EQA, France Patchwork
• Venue 16: Ulla Hoppe

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).

Thank you so much for reading and traveling along with me by way of these posts. Enjoy!

This venue, Villa Burrus, was just a few short steps from the Party Room (Salle Des Fêtes, from the previous post) and although we’ve been to Carrefour twice before, it was new to us.

Sited on Le Parc de las Villa Burrus, this mansion was built in 1900, at least as I can figure out for the literature we picked up was all in French, printed for their Patrimonie — or Heritage — Days, when many buildings are open to the public. Whatever its origins, it was a great place to see quilts, and RachaelDaisy Dodd had her solo exhibit here.

She was always thronged by, and visiting with, quilters, so I’m afraid I didn’t get the best photos of her. But her we go with some of her quilts.

In the front hallway, just across from where her table was, and I apologize, but I have no title card for this.

Her signature is a variation of the pine cone (or pine burr) block.

Followed by another motif she commonly uses: the yo-yo, a gathered circle with the gathers on the top.

Title: Yo-Yo Bloom
Title Card: “Yo-Yo Blooms is a quilt designed to make you smile and to celebrate just how fun Suffolkd Puff Yo-Yos can be! The quilt brings together all my favorite elements: happy colors, cheerful fabrics, playful Ric-Rac, my signature pieced Yo-Yos and big flowers. Which is your favorite Yo-Yo bloom?”
Technique: Yo-Yo Suffolk Puffs, Appliqué, Machine Piecing.

Several rooms held her quilts, with large moveable frameworks. In the next room, the frame was set up in the center, and the large mirrors and windows and her quilts all echoed with pattern and color.

Click to enlarge.

Where does she get all her ric-rac? I think a lot of it is vintage, as she alludes to in her title card.

This one was always hard to get a photograph of. I also kind of liked that the man is carrying his wife’s (his??) purse.

Yo-yos galore, along with doilies and appliqué; she is not a minimalist, and I love it all.

Apologies: no title card. But what do you think? Did she quilt the background, and then add the giant circular pine burr blocks afterwards? My brain is always whirling with questions at these shows.

Another scrap quilt, another inspiration.

A couple of random tourists, haha.

I just saw a smaller version of this on my friend’s IG feed. Link. Makes me want to put it in the queue for a handwork project while traveling to Pour l’Amour du Fills in Nantes in 2016.

We only noticed two of the triptych of quilts. Click to enlarge the title cards and banner quilts. These were hanging by the entry/exit hall, and we were on our way out.

Loved her dress. I need to get a patchwork-appropriate dress for quilt shows.

The small towns of Val d’Argent; we are currently in Sainte Croix-aux-Mines, heading to Lièpvre. The church above is Église St. Nicolas, venue 11, written about in the previous Carrefour post.

This reminds us that this portion of France went back and forth between Germany and France several times. If you’ve traveled in this area, it gives you an appreciation for the diverse, yet subtle differences between these neighboring countries (and add in Switzerland, too).

Venue 14: Église de l’Assomption, with Ruth De Vos

A small church in the town of Lièpvre, one of two sites in this village. Inside were new works from Ruth De Voss, she of flower fame. You can find her on Instagram @ruthdevosart.

Now she has turned her piecing and printing and surface decoration skills from flowers to children. Her children, which I loved. Many women seem to avoid this side of their lives, and often in the art world they are expected to, but De Voss celebrates it.

(click to enlarge) The church had many of her art pieces; I’m only showing a selection. They were colorful, drawn with strong lines.

Click on small arrows to advance this slideshow to see more of her pieces.

Venue 15: Salle Polyvalente, with Lorena Uriarte, Dianne Firth, ASL Liépvre, EQA, France Patchwork

Lorena Uriarte is a well-known Australian quilter, who has been active in teaching, making patterns, and championing good design in quilts for years. You can follow her on Instagram @lorena_in_syd, as well as enjoy her quilts, below.

Title: Wingdings: A Variety of Symbols
Title Card: This quilt “is my red and white interpretation of Chuck Nohara’s Symbol Quilt Using self-drafter blocks from her book 2001 New Patchwork patterns, I explored every piecing technique to create a playful and personal visual language.”
Techniques: Hand and Machine; Quilted by Michele Mason

She had a range of her quilts hanging in this venue; they had a bold and colorful impact.

France Patchwork, and others

As always, France Patchwork, the national quilting guild, had a few quilts on display.

“France Patchwork is the French quilting guild, with over 6,000 members. Founded in 1984 and still thriving thanks to its volunteers, its mission is to promote quilting and its various forms through competitions, Friendship Days, and a quarterly magazine: Les Nouvelles de France Patchwork (from website).

They can be found on Instagram @france_patchwork_news. Happily this year I was there early enough to snag one of their tote bags. (One can never have too many tote bags!)

The quilting is done by hand, with heavier thread, and is more spare. I believe these quilts are the cover quilts for their magazine, Les Nouvelles, but I can’t find any working links to their magazine or their organization, beyond the Instagram account.

I wonder if Françoise Rigaud is with the group quilt_en_reve on Instagram? If so, they always do such beautiful work in making reproductions of antique quilts. They had a display in 2024 at Carrefours, and I wrote about them here.

I loved the use of that ombre fabric in the one block. Gabrielle Paquin is a favorite of mine; I saw her the first time I went to Carrefour (link) and began to see I had a lot to discover and learn about our beloved patchwork.

I recognized the France Patchwork logo in the center of the quilt.

And I loved the combination of appliqué and these interesting little butterflies.

A tribute to Japan, from France Patchwork.

Title: Koïnobori
Artist: Tom Mace, France
This is from the category of “Les Jeunes Poussent” in the grouping In the Land of the Rising Sun, and was in the age group of 10-13 years old. (Literally it translates to “The Youth Are Growing.”)

The Challenge 5-25 was to encourage the interest of the youth. The website says:

“For the 30th anniversary of the European Patchwork Meeting event, we’re inviting budding artists and young prodigies to take part in the “HEROES” competition, inspired by those people and characters they admire, on screen or in real life.

The challenge is to create a patchwork quilt: a work made up of different pieces of fabric, illustrating the theme of heroes. Think of everyday heroes and heroines, cartoon characters, bright colors and comic books for inspiration!”

Diane Firth

And now, for a complete change of pace in quilting, here are some transparent quilts made by Diane Firth, of Australia. This is titled Scatter, which was inspired by the dispersal of seeds.” The title card also notes, under techique, “Assembled and Machine stitched on Bernina 770.”

Title: Bogong
Description: The moths emerge from the black soils
Technique: Machine and hand-stitched

Bogong is a type of moth.

Title: Floriade #4
Description: Floral Abundance
This black mesh netting was in several of her pieces, holding the circles (which looked like felt) in place. The Carrefour website says this about Diane: “Dianne Firth, a quilter for almost 50 years, is a landscape architect and academic. She exhibits regularly in juried exhibitions and her works are held in public and private collections around the world.” The OZquilt Network has a page about her where you can read more.

Title: Black Mountain
Description: An exploration of changing landform
This is one of the larger pieces, but the entire display was intriguing and again made me ask the question about what is a quilt? Clearly, hers has three layers, but it is so inventive and structural.

EQA: European Quilters Association: Contrasts (2025 Exhibit)

The EQA is a cooperation between the European quilt guilds, and has a yearly challenge of small quilts (35 cm square, which is about 14 inches). As always, I spent a lot of time looking at the artworks. Here’s the Challenge:

(If you right-click to open this in another tab, it may enlarge for you.) What intrigued me was the line in the last paragraph: “Contrasts are a constant given in our daily lives and make up some of the differences between European countries. And yet, when looking at the collection overall we can clearly see that there are not really that many contrast between us after all.”

Here are a few of the many, many wonderful quilts.

After this, we leave the venue and try to decide if we hungry, as this year…they have a full lunch service just outside. Tempting, but we went to the market at the edge of town, grabbed something and drove to Rombach-Le-Franc, the last town. We parked outside the Espace Raymond Hestin, and ate our shared lunch in the car, in the shade as the day had grown hotter.

We were on the last two venues of the show. We’d started the day before, and went through the vendors and other spaces in Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, then headed to Saint Croix-aux-Mines and got to Venue 12, before calling it day and driving back to Colmar.

We got up early the second day, picked up again with the Australian quilters in Venue 12, and progressing through the show. Now, eating lunch there in the parking lot, we talked about if we’d be back next year (no), and what we liked and didn’t like. My husband is a great partner in this adventure and I regularly talk quilting with him. Many of the photos you’ve seen have been taken by him.

Along the road to Romach-le-Franc. We tried for this three times, pulling U-turns to double back to get the wind just right in the banner.

Venue 16: Ulla Hoppe

Here we go! This venue is quite small, and while there were a couple of exhibits there, I’ll mention only one.

Ulla Hoppe, from Germany, was exhibiting her stitching, embroidery. Not quilting, but I thought it was amazing.

The range of blackwork stitches really brings the complexity of the young woman into focus: aren’t we all full of discreet “countless blocks?”

I loved the title of this piece.

“That one” lives across the street from me!

What is notable in this one is the inversion of the stitches, although done in different colors: what is foreground in the black rooster’s image is background in the white rooster’s image. (If you open it in a “new tab” it will be enlarged.)

You can find her on Instagram @ulla_stickt

She even stitched in Dürer’s insignia. Last one:

Title: Der Nobelpreisträger
Artist: Ulla Hoppe, Germany
Description: Nobel Prize winners: often “grey eminences,” yet crowned with gold.
Technique: Gold embroidery, collage, partially gilded

Alas! We could come back in two hours, but alas! alas! we wanted to see another small town on the way home, so we missed seeing Fabia Diniz. We missed a LOT! I went onto the Carrefour website and downloaded this:

I hesitate to put a link because I know they change their website a lot. But head to her Instagram, and click on her Story, Carrefour, and you’ll see her story about coming to France, along with some of her creations.

We drove over the hill, and back down into the next valley on our way to Equisheim.

And this is where we’ll leave our adventure, where the light was just right at the end of the day.

Carrefour Quilt Show · Quilt Shows

Carrefour Quilt Show 2025: Intro and Part I

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

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

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

This post covers:

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

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

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

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

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

Espace Commercial (Shopping and Vendors)

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

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

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

Click to enlarge any photo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Venue 1: Theater in Sainte Marie-aux-Mines

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

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

Click to enlarge any photo.

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

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

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

Venue 2: Osmont Pavilion

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

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

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

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

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

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

A tumble of houses, a view to the landscape.

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

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

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

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

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!

European Patchwork Meeting · Quilt Shows · Travels

Carrefour 2024: Quilts IV

October 25, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

This post is about two different places in the 29th Carrefour European Patchwork Show:

Espace D’Exposition (Venue 11): Quilt en rêve (remakes of antique quilts), France Aubert (Passion for Samplers), Selma Huisman-Hilderbrand (Walk Down Memory Lane)
Église St. Blaise (Venue 7): Virginie Peyre

Hope you are all still with me, with seeing quilts from all over quilt land, but mostly from the European guilds.

All posts in order are on the European Patchwork (Carrefour) page.

In Venue 11 (Espace Commercial) there was enough room to do several exhibits. This quilt is from Quilt en rêve, “an association of British, Dutch and American antique quilt enthusiasts. Some of them have been quilting for over 30 years, always conscious of working in a traditional way, paying attention to detail, the choice of fabric and hand sewing” (from here). (UPDATE: I heard from one of the members, Gabrielle Paquin, and she wrote that currently “the team is essentially French and we have an Hollander lady with us.”)

Michigan, a quilt by Martine Crabé-Lanux (from France), who was inspired by a quilt from the 1850s. The center is a sailor’s compass, with other details of soldiers carrying flags and Masonic symbols. The quilter designed the floral border and other details.

Aline Joulin, from France, was inspired by an 1880’s log cabin from Connecticut and named it Noyank. These more than 500 small blocks are made on muslin, and the placement of the red “lends a balance to the whole. The quilt is knotted.”

While the maker and the Instagram of Quilt en rêve calls this “Wedding Rings in Blue,” in America we typically call this Pickle Dish (Brackman numbers 304 and 305).
Made by Gabrielle Paquin (France), this is entirely made by hand.

Kiosque, by Jacqueline Audouin-Dubreuil (France). She made this boutis quilt entirely by hand, 10 stitches per centimeter, 600 meters of thread, taking approximately 2000 hours of work. The base cloth is a teal blue, and the design is by Hubert Valéri. Click any photo in the gallery to enlarge.

Helma Huisman-Hildebrand, from Holland, also had her own exhibit. She “works and lives on a cargo ship which operates on the rivers and channels throughout Europe. Together with her husband, they operate as captains on their ship and run their shipping company. In her spare time, she loves to make antique looking quilts, from the 1830s to the early 1900s. Due to a lack of space, she works in her kitchen on the ship. She constructs the quilts by machine, given her limited amount of time, yet hand-quilts them” (from the catalogue).

The quilt above is titled Forever Touching Stars: “I was ‘star-strucked’ seeing this quilt in Nel Kooiman’s collection, and luckily she gave me permission to remake it. The original quilt was made around 1880 in Kentucky.” (from title card)

Here is a gallery of her quilts, with title cards and some details shots. They are all magnificent! (Click on the arrows in the middle on the sides, to advance the slides.)

France Albert, shown above by one of her quilts, has a passion for samplers, so they put a grouping of her work in the show. That is not all she can do, but see that color of her sweater? She calls it “duck blue” and it’s her favorite. So many of her quilts are hand-pieced and hand-quilted. Here are two galleries (click to enlarge any quilt).

(from top to bottom, left to right):

Row 1: Suzanna, Karen B (an homage to Karen Blixen in combining sampler blocks in the color blue-gray for Denmark)

Row 2: Rose (sixteen traditional square blocks redesigned as rectangular blocks), Welcome (a small sampler created to represent their move to the Ille de France region), Maisons & Jardins (Houses and Gardens)

Row 3: Henrietta (thirteen blocks from the “Antebellum” block of the month from Barbara Brackman, along with twelve additional appliqué blocks.)

(from top to bottom, left to right):

Row 1: Juliette (a tribute to her grandmother, with rectangular blocks, 113 mother-of-pearl buttons, and the use of the color violet, the color of feminism)

Row 2: Moutarde (she had to hunt for fabrics, using 26 of them in the end), Toiles Plumetées Automne (feathered star in autumn colors), and her handwork, resting on the top of her chair at her table.

Row 3: Nora (quilting done by Mom Quilts; this is a reproduction of an antique quilt from Virginia in the 1840s). What I noticed was even though the quilting was done by a long-armer, she went in and hand-stitched around each circle.

She had a card up at the beginning of the exhibit. Thank you, Google Translate, for letting me know what it said.

Note the use of her buttons along the outside binding.

This is known as the King George Reviewing the Volunteers quilt, housed in the V & A Museum in London. It was the inspiration for two of her other quilts (shown below). Yes, all those tiny circles were English Paper-pieced. Click on the link above to see more photos and read more about it.

Improbables (Click to enlarge quilt on the left.)

Title: Sarah

She writes on her title card that this is “a passion for round blocks in the gypsy spirit.” I love that border!

Ecrit avec des fleurs (Written with Flowers). She writes “my hobbies written with only floral fabrics.” A self-declaration that could apply to so many of us.

By the way, this is where we were, just up from the dismantled Eiffel Tower.

More scenery. The little yellow church was Venue 7, with Virginie Peyre. One of her quilts is below. And the other was a World War I memorial, something we see in a lot of churches in Europe, as it ravaged the towns and villages.

Tapis Volant

She writes: “As a gift, I received an avalanche of ribbons intended for confectionery; this sudden abundance, plus the novelty of the material, put me in a trance! I pleat, bubble, pucker, weave, accumulate, saturate, letting pleasure be my guide.”

It was certainly novel!

We’re catching the late afternoon sun and it’s beautiful.

Yes, it’s late and we’re tired, meaning on that day in the past, it was time to get back to our hotel, check in with our daughter and our granddaughters, find some dinner, and a good night’s sleep. I will slide in more quilts to this blog at a later date (yes, I have more), but for now, we’ll leave me there on the steps saying “Are we done yet?”

Thanks for reading and for writing–I have so enjoyed seeing your reactions to these wonderful quilts!