If in doubt, turn to Carrie Nelson! Somehow I ALWAYS find inspiration in Carrie’s books. In this case it’s Simple City from A Touch of Rosie. Although now that I’m cutting and piecing, it isn’t all that simple and there are an awful lot of pieces (600+ for a single bed), so I think the quilt for my god-daughter isn’t going to be one of those quilts that I can run up in next to no time.

It’s ‘pale and interesting’ as my mother would say – soft fabrics from the Beach House range, but I think it’ll be delicate and pretty when I’m through. I can already see that it’s going to have a really faded and old-fashioned look to it. I just hope I have enough fabric, otherwise I’ll have to get very creative with the borders. It only needs to be single bed sized though, so I’m playing things by ear!

It’s a grey wet day here in Switzerland, just perfect for a little gentle piecing and at the same time I’m finally making red onion marmalade with my onions from the garden. That was on my to-do list a month ago, but luckily the onions are still Ok and haven’t rotted or anything.

We’ve lit the first log fire of the season this afternoon – one of the things I love best about cooler autumn days.

Lovely!

Helen

Ok, OK ….that may be over-egging it…particularly as I almost never go to quilt shows (although I will certainly be back at Ste Marie aux Mines next year and would go to more shows if there were more nearer!), but several of you did write to ask me to confess to what I actually bought on my little jaunt to France.

So here it is…and now that I see everything laid out it doesn’t really look as much as it felt at the time!

• Books by Katie Pasquini Masopust (signed by the delightful author 🙂 ) and Willyne Hammerstein
• Lynette Anderson‘s ‘Scandinavian Christmas’ block of the month pattern and the fabric to match. Funnily I had found the two rolls of her fabrics, fallen in love with them and bought them before I chanced upon Lynette’s stall and saw her gorgeous Christmas quilt. Lynette was lovely – and rather relieved to be able to chat in English! – but only had small bundles of her fabrics, so she sent me off to the nearest stall selling it – once I got there I suddenly thought it all looked very familiar and yes, lo and behold, I had actually already purchased enough! Wierd!
• 2 bag kits – one is a little Japanese handbag, which I found because Charla is very into things Japanese and so we spent a lot of time at one of the Japanese stalls and the other is for a cute denim bag (where again Charla twisted my arm) – which I think will make a great knitting bag.
• 3 other rolls of fabrics which are French and in lovely red/pink and brown/beige tones with a little pale turquoise thrown in for good measure. They are gorgeous and just say cosy winter evenings by the fire to me very loudly – and again are not the usual things that I either find on the internet or can get hold of here in Switzerland.

As you can imagine, I’m just sitting her in my sewing room, very happily stroking the fabrics and dreaming of what I’m going to use them for…..

Happy thoughts…enjoy your weekend,

Helen

For the past 17 years I’ve been trying to make it to Ste. Marie aux Mines in the Alsace region of France in September. I’d heard about the quilt show that takes over the little rural village for 4 days and thought it would make a nice trip out. Something always stopped me in the past – babies, children, work, no-one to go with….

But not this year. Yesterday my friend Charla and I set off at the crack of dawn to drive there.

We thought it would be a cute little show. Boy, did we get that wrong! What we found was a little town totally taken over by a quilt show – filling the churches, the theatre, the school and all sorts of old industrial buildings! It even spreads out into surrounding villages, served by a shuttle bus service. Unfortunately we never made it out that far, but next year we might!

It seems that this is probably the biggest show in continental Europe! Wow!

I won’t try to show you the zillion photos that I took, but here is a flavour of my highlights:

1) Meeting Katie Pasquini Masopust – who had a wonderful exhibition and took the time to chat to us and answer oodles of questions about her work.

2) A fabulous exhibition of antique and modern Dutch quilts – mainly made with antique and reproduction chinz. I really loved the works exhibited by law professor Willyne Hammerstein – tiny, tiny pieces all pieced by hand. Unbelievable. There’s no other word for it.

3) An exhibition of 5 metres of wallhangings – made by 5 Austrian quilters. Here is a snippet of Barbara Blattl’s piece.

4) The juried competition submissions – exhibited in a beautiful modern chapel

Best of show – which I think is La réserve by Solange Lasbleis  of France

My own favourite …but I forgot to note who it was made by….sorry….it’s a very, very clever 3D quilt and the use of fabric was breathtaking.

5) And last but not least the halls holding 150 vendors. Coming from a country where is is difficult to find a huge variety of quilting supplies I really thought I’d died and gone to heaven. There were so many things that I hadn’t seen before – and some incredible stalls with Japanese fabrics, probably every book on patchwork ever published, and every thread and notion a girl could ever need. I did begin to think that Kaffe Fassett might be taking over the quilting world though – his fabrics were everywhere to be seem – and very pretty they are too!

Charla and I were exhausted by the time we got home last night – but we had an amazing day out. I won’t forget it in a hurry (and I will be going back!)

Helen

As so many of you asked….

The next project is a quilt for one of my god-daughters. Rachel is going to turn 8 in December. She lives in very, very, very rural France (fairly near Poitiers), but is English. I asked for the colour scheme of her soon to be decorated bedroom – cream, green, a little pink, a little lavender – and then asked her mum ‘soft colours or bright colours’, secretly crossing my fingers and toes that she would say bright (because they are so much more fun and my stash is full of them!), but no…so we’re going for soft colours….

I pulled everything out of my fabric cupboard and had to search pretty hard, but I finally found this…

Beach House by Robyn Pandolph for RJR in 2010.

I think it will fit the bill, but I’m a little concerned that I may end up with bland mush. What do you think? I’m going to use a lot of cream too to try to at least pull out what contrast I can. I’m thinking stars and flying geese. Now there’s a surprise.

I can’t help thinking that a little girl might just prefer wham bam hit you full in the face colours. But what do I know?

Now digging among the patterns starts in earnest.

Helen

P.S.  On the dodgy hip front, my doctor doesn’t know what is wrong – probably a torn muscle, could be a bone bruise (I’m sure it isn’t, I know what that feels like) – so it looks like I’ll be off for another MRI next week. If there was a prize for having the most MRIs this year then I would win it. So, unhappily this weekend’s half-marathon is a no-no and the marathon is looking distinctly unlikely. I am not a happy girl, as I’m sure you can imagine….

Here it is…Bliss…for the last time. I feel like I’ve been showing you this again and again for months. Finally finished, bound in turquoise and backed in pink. The pattern is Thimble Blossoms Picnic Roll-up, but I added my own touch of squares between the main blocks. The free motion quilting – curlicues and flowers – went like a dream and was way faster than I expected, thanks to the brilliant Bernina stitch regulator.

Love it. Now on to the next project!

Helen