mercredi 25 novembre 2009

PAMINA likes the quilt top i showed some days ago and asked if she could start one too :
YES Pamina, because i will never claim an original design.
I consider that all the geometric figures or designs have been invented thousands and thousands of years ago.
I strongly believe that every quilt lives its own life through the choice of fabric.
So go for it Pamina, and have fun like i had , but please show the result on your blog!

I also have a request:
On so many of the blogs i follow i see the fellow bloggers in the side bar, you can see if there is a new posting through a little picture, i would like to install my favorite blogs too, BUT HOW?
Your help will be much appreciated.
This posting is as boring as the wheather in Paris, windy rainy and dark............
Sorry, i'll do better next time!

samedi 21 novembre 2009

I went to the craft show and came home with this:
a small piece of fabric with an angel, and a bigger piece, one meter, of dark brown decorator fabric, some olé olé ladies, kitschy, but how nice for a medallion quilt, and a dark brown back ground is very hard to find!

There was not much available for me:
to much of glittery christmas stuff,
jewellery, more kitsch, scrapbooking, even chocolates, and, oh yes, i baught some paint to pimp up old chairs.
You ask me about prices?
12euros only to get into the show, around 16 euros for a meter of quiltfabric, and you buy in a hectic atmosphere.
So i'm longing for the next craftshow in Paris , in February. It'll be all about sewing, knitting, embroidery and so on.



Some of the things i saw:
delicious BOUTIS from a Japanese lady living in France.






A pic from the SAJOU booth




Another SAJOU item





And the last one.






QUILTMANIA's booth.







QUILTMANIA



















The last two ones are from MARIE CLAIRE IDEES.









Yeah!!!
How hard she worked this summer!
My friend Nicole T made this top after having seen JOES MEESTER's antique quilt in Quiltmania.
The background is a soft vanilla shade.
She works so quick and accurately; hard to believe...........;

Have a lovely weekend, all of you, Will V in Paris









vendredi 13 novembre 2009

Friday night sur la Butte

I needed a quilting template 10 days ago, so i went to 2 Paris' quiltshops, and just didn't find one i really liked.
Came home frustrated if not to say angry, and all of a sudden remembered i baught this book not so long ago:
the choise was easy peasy, i've cut a sheat of paper the right size, folded,designed and in less than 5 minutes i had my template.
I will think twice from now on before running to a shop!
After all, that's what quilters did a hundred years ago, right?
Btw, Paris is becoming a DESERT for quilting, the interresting shops are or in suburbs or in the country side.
So back to oldfashioned quiltmaking, the way i learned in the early seventies.

These blocks deserve better than staying in a plastic bag. I made them with my old quilting friends, all i have to do is choose the background fabric.
Any suggestions?
How about poison green?





This is the one and only antique quilttop i own: a turn-of-the-century logcabin, a barn raising.
There is just one row missing, so the balance is not nice.
As seam allowances are comfortable, i will change the setting in a straight furrow.
That will not take me ages to do.
Handsewn all over, i think that quilting is a better option than tying,any experiences with that?
All the fabrics seem in very goos condition, no browns.



I'm grateful for your kind comments on the hexies, and yes, i will change the center and save the second for a medallion quilt!
Have you been on Betsey Telford's website lately?
She sells antique quilts, and going through her collection is like turning the pages of a beautiful quiltbook.
Go and see and enjoy!
you all have a nice weekend, a mountain of ironing is waiting for me!
Wiil V in Paris




mardi 3 novembre 2009

Should i laugh or should i cry?

Guess who came to see me?
I spend a wonderful afternoon with Bonnie Hunter and her friend Randy, and my new quilting friend Valérie.
We had a lovely meal in a restaurant in the area,delicious food for a very reasonable price.
So if you come to Montmartre, ask me for the adress, it's hard to find this kind of resto's in a touristic quarter, with such a lot of tourist traps!

Afterwards we went to my home for a show and tell, and Valerie and i went shopping with them around the Marché St. Pierre, and they went home with loads and loads of Toile de Jouy.
Hope you had both a pleasant flight home and Randy, your sweater is on the way!


Slow progress on the hexies, only one row, but i magaged to make a few hundred red ones, the most boring job of this quilt.
You may remember that i told about the loss of the center of this quilt and that it took me a long time to decide to start it over.
And then, one day, under a bunch of scraps in the iron basket, what did i see???????????????



THIS!
The first one!
And when i compare, i prefere the first far more!
Repositioning the first will be a heck of a job, but i think it's worth doing it.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?









No doubt, with this kind of organisation it's logic that i can search for this or for that during hours.............





While looking at the quilts and tops with the girls, i digged out this lone star from around 1995.
I love lone stars, but they are hard to display in very small rooms,so it stays always stacked in a pile.














A top made in very little time, with a part of the samples send by Vintage and Vogue years ago.
The prussian blue matches lovely and the overall look likes more English than American.
The border design is an English fabric from 1824, sort of chinoiserie.
Thank you for following my blog and your kind comments.
Even if i do not always answer them i really appreciate your interest.
Will V in Paris, rainy and much colder today.