Japanese fabric that I bought in Nantes

When I was at the craft fair in Nantes this year I bought lots of Japanese fabric. I wanted to make a Yoko Saito pattern but could not find the fabric with the trees, searched on the www, phoned to quilt shops but nothing.
And YES i found it in Nantes. I started immediately with the applique work.
There are nine panels with houses and some trees. It suppose to be the peaceful countryside, Yoko used a lot of whites. I changed it it reds and greens. I am already busy quilting the panels.......
On the individual panels you can see the fabric i was looking for.

I also bought some indigo fabric with stamped design, so beautiful. I made a bag for myself....

Nantes, the workshops

I did two workshops in Nantes, one with Tina Jockel from the US and the other with Eeva Piesala from Finland.

Tina Jockel is known for her folk art dolls. This is the doll I made, she is une petite danseuse....

The body was already sawn by Tina.  So we started to fill the body, then painted the top of the dress and with a brush sopped in coffee we made her looking old and vintage.

Tina is helping ........

There was a fan to dry them.

We were supposed to give her this face; too folk art for me.......

The other day i did a wet felting workshop. I was the only participant.....

Eeva had made an example and i made the same because we wanted to concentrate on the technique of wet felting. We incorporated buttons and a piece of fabric.

There was some time left, so I prepared a small pillow and we felted it together, we had a lot of fun!

Nantes was: lots of ideas, lots of inspiration and lots of very nice people.

Nantes, Pour l'amour du fil 2014

The craft fair in Nantes was GREAT this year, the theme was 'vintage', so many dots, petticoats, an old caravan with fireplace and lots of crochet plaids .
An impression....

I don't remember the name of this artist. She makes garments and bags from ld embroideries that she find on fleemarkets. 

Lots of color and sweet mice in the stand of Odile Bailloeul, i bought the kit for the mouse.

Beautiful applique and embroidery work from Martine Apaolaza.

Embroidery from Ise.

The Japanese miss Ike was there with her fascinating work, called Chiku Chiku.

Next post will show you the workshops I did. 

Some small things for the market and i am off to Nantes

The mai market is rather soon, so i made some small things. I saw on her blog these lovely hearbands, i made four of them in different lenght.

I found the picture here, isn't she cute with that hear band and flower?

I made these ones.

Some needle felted mice....

Wet felted brooches.

And some keyholders.

Tomorrow I am off to Nantes to visit the craft fair. I have two workshops, one wet felting and another making a folk art doll. 

I will visit Nantes and of corse will eat crepes Bretonne... Bretagne is famous for their  buckwheat crepes. 

Floral Bouquet quilt, 2 more blocks ready

Weather is so beautiful here in the center of France. It's too hot to work in the attic where I have my sewing machine. So I am doing some applique work in the shadow of the tree. I started this Floral Bouquet quilt last year after I saw the quilt hanging in Nantes.
In this post you can find the 6 blocks that I already finished.

hi

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I bought a Sophie Digard scarf in Nantes;

Do you know Sophie Digard? She is an artist who lives in Paris and creates beautiful  crochet scarves and bags . The patterns are very complicated, so many details, and made of handdyed merino wool and linen. For a scarf she often uses 60 different colors.

The entire collection is handmade by hundreds of local woman in Madagascar, using traditional techniques.
For the first time I saw her scarves in Nantes in the Selvedge booth. (Selvedge is a magazine for interiour and fashion designers)

Her scarves are a bit expensive so I did not buy one the first year and not the second year, but this year I could not resist this amazing crochet work.
So now I can say that I am the proud owner of a Sophie Digard scarf!!! Tadah.......

There are really tiny pompons and so many colors crocheted in a grey 'frame'. Its not easy to capture the colors and the small flowers but believe me the scarf is GORGEOUS.

On this site you could read more about Sophie Digard. The auther also did some research about the question if here work are fair Trade products. She found that sophie is client of a company that supports the  idea of humanitarian craft work.

Months ago i started to make my own Sophie scraf, crocheted with two threads of auriful wool and a 1,50 hook. I love the result and I 've got a lot of compliments in Nantes but the result has nothing to do with a real Sophie piece of art.

But I don't give up. I bought gorgeous, wool/silk thread here  , to crochet with hook 1,50 , so ....to be continued!

Au revoir Nantes 3

Some more quilts to admire!!
This the Kaffe Fassett room, so colorful!

The Boro exposition:

Some Petra Prins quilts.

And now my favorite quilts, those from Di Ford. Some of you asked why i do not want to make a Dear Jane quilt. But I am really not inspired by all those different blocks. But the composition, the fabric use, the beautiful colors in the Di Ford quilts are for me .

And of course I bought her new book with all the patterns. For me the Phebe and Ann's legacy quilt are my favorites.

She signed it here....

Two pictures from the book.

More Di Ford in my next post.....

Au revoir Nantes 2

I already told you about the 150 anniversary of the Dear Jane quilt. If  you want to know more about the quilt  you could go to THE Dear Jane website here.
It was a great pity that the original Dear Jane was not there. Brenda Papadakis  should bring the quilt with here, she became ill and could not come so there were 113 copies .....
I already showed you Marian's quilt, there were about 10 Dutch copies.

Here is another Dutch one, a very small one. It was made bij Els Feteris (Bobbin).

Enjoy all the Dear Janes......

The three pictures above are made by Helen.

This last picture was made by Sue, I met her in Di Fords class, here is her blog.

If you want to see more Dear Jane's take a look here!!!! 

I was really impressed by all these beautiful Dear Jane quilts, but i also know, having seen them hanging in Nantes that I am not going to make one.