A sunny day in the garden

Saturday,
a quiet day in a garden in a Paris suburb, hard to believe there was just 15 minutes in a train to reach my friends for a meal, a glass and a lot of tschatsch before a longer vacation for most of us.
We were at Dominique, she is an embroiderer as much as a quilter and she allowed me to take pics of her own private little room where her fabrics, threads, boxes and the rest is on display.
Like heaven !
She is a collector of vintage items and , of course, a fleamarket and junksale afficionado.
So enjoy the pics.

Sylvie started a new quilt, big houses of 40cms, in rather unexpected fabrics.

Wall art passage des Abbesses, Montmartre.

Sunday morning at the café,Blanka, a dog from La Butte.

where are my followers?

I'v lost all my followers, does anyone know how to get them back?
I tried to find out with the help of Blogger, but nope........
Thanks for help!
Will in Paris, sorry for the boring post!

where are my followers?

Sit back and relax, it's a long post...........;

A fragment from the waistband that will follow.

Let me start with two woollen tops.

The fabric has been gathered over the years, the dark square in a square came from swatches and the grey flannel came from a workmans shirt.

I bought the red fabric for the sashings.

I love to work with woollens, little mistakes are easy to rectify, and my stash is still important.

Inspired by Fons and Porter's book QUILTS FROM AMERICA'S HEARTLAND i used this pattern first for a cotton quilt.

A box full of woollen remnants resulted in this one.

I don't have the cotton quilt anymore.

It stayed in Skopje after my quiltshow in 1996.

May i show you now some family heirlooms?

I went to the Skopje surroundings for the first time in 1970.

DH and i decided to marry, but he wanted me to meet his family first, so i took a train from Paris to S. on my own, dropped in a totally different world.

Noticing that antique items were important to me, they generously allowed me to take back some treasures.

This is a snake with two heads, made of woven pearls.

While dancing, a young girl wrapped the snake around hear hand , and showed it above hear head.

I'm not sure, but it might also have a religious signification.

The snake is overall in a fragile condition, the thread is very weak.

I brought this little chair back a couple of years ago.

It was made by Stojan's granfather, especcially for him when he was a little boy.

A pic from the Turkish quarter in Skopje, around 1900.

The three guys are Serbian, recognisable at their caps.

A rich french banker, ALBERT KAHN, has send photographers all over the world, including the Balkans,in order to picture daily life with a revolutionary colorfotography called AUTOCHROMES;

The next three pics are women from the SKOPSKA CRNA GORA region, close to the now Serbian Albanian border.

My mother in law dressed this way on sundays, but now it has totally faded away..........

Sadly, the 1963 earthquake, communist megalomany while rebuilding the town, and modernity too, killed most of the original way of life in Macedonia too.

Skopje has a wonderful ethnic museum, where one of our nieces, Gordance Vidinic, is a conservator of the textile department.

So if you pass by the sad and dusty city, take a jump there and enjoy!

A detail of the waistband ornament.

Junkfind of last week:

a nice indonesian batik and a bedsheet from a beige chambray, blending nicely in with the batik.

I'm asking for help from my Swiss fellow quilters:

this is another junkfind: a scarf, a naif block print.

It's old, that's for sure but does anyone know when this was printed?And is it really a scarf?

Your answers will be very much appreciated!

A few weeks ago i learned some basic skills of framing with Monique and she was a wonderful help with framing this sepia coloured photo from the house were i was born.

The kids are my aunt and my father and the man in the doorstep is my grandfather.

My parents "modernised" along the years but the current owners brought it back to the original state in an exquisite way.

It is now a beautiful Bed and Breakfast, situated in the heart of DIEREN, Guelderland.

Hope you are all doing well and enjoy summerquilting, it keeps our minds together!

Scrappy top and heat in Paris

Hello you all quilters,
this morning my friend FrançoiseP,
not a quilter herself, send me a furious e-mail, saying 2 weeks without a post was more than enough LOL
Is it the summer heat that makes me lazy?
Anyway, i grabbed some stuff i wanted to show you for a long time amready.
This dollbed quilt for example, made with the remnants of remnants.
It's been pictured for QUILTMANIA in a lovely way.

Monique is working on a BONNIE HUNTER project for a friend of hers.
She mixes prints and some plaids, good mix Monique!


This top is soooooooooo huge, and the outerborder is not even sewn!
It was explained in 3 issues of QUILTWORKS.
Sadly, the magazine does not exist any longer.
It was very clearly explained, not one of those you can make in a short time,but what a kick while sewing a new row.
Anne Marie made her and had hardly any experience in machine sewing tops at that moment, but she handled it brilliantly.
Her top has a darker background from tan to beige.

Teddy sitting on the bunch of crossstich embroideries i'm collecting in order to make "things"

Not sure what, maybe a big bag and a floor throw to start.

Prices for those things a still reasonable, but some stylists are working with those, so prices may rise quickly.

A piece of silk from my junkshop, two meters long.

Last but not least:

sad news:

The American Bookshop BRENTANO'S closed after a long agony, i used to go there frequently,Galingnani's is an alternative, but has less quiltbooks and no quiltingmagazines.

That's the way life goes, they say Brentano's could no longer afford the rents on Avenue de L'Opéra..

Happy quilting ladies,enjoy the summertime!