Le Patchwork d'Emma

Last week I spent a few wonderful days visiting my friend Emma in France.

Emma and I met when she contacted me via my blog after moving from France to The Netherlands a few years ago. She is a quilter and was looking for Dutch quilters to share her passion with. And to the surprise of both of us it turned out we lived only a five minutes walk from each other… so…. many a blissful morning or afternoon was spent quilting and chatting together and later on, when Emma and her family got their dog Bailey, many a play date for my Whopper and her Bailey was planned.

Needless to say that since Emma moved back to France I have been missing those visits. And missing seeing her children grow up, playing with Bailey, planning quilts, sharing jokes, trips to quilt shops, etc. etc.

Therefore it was high time I made the trip to France to visit Emma and her family. She has not been idle since moving over there, quite the opposite, since moving back she has started her own quilting business, called Le Patchwork d’Emma  and as you can imagine  I could also not wait to see that!

So below some pictures of a few wonderful days:-

The town where I arrived by train

Of course early next morning a trip to the local boulanger

My favorite, giant almond croissants!

Life in the country…

Collecting (still warm) eggs from the chickens, to eat for lunch

Can you imagine having this view from your garden?

Or this view from the front of your house?

Lots of inspiration and peace and quiet to concentrate on projects for Le Patchwork d’Emma!

Join me on my visit!

I was amazed by the space and light of the atelier, such a wonderful place and great atmosphere to work on our quilts and be taught new techniques!

The sewing machine/ironing/fat quarter corner, how is this for ironing with a view 😊 ?

Fabrics and books…

Liberty fabrics!

As a ‘notions-junkie’ I fell in love with Emma’s notions wall ❤

Quilts on the walls like Emma’s finished Di Ford’s QM Mystery quilt

When I was there was a class for quilters working on the Dear Jane quilt scheduled , so I was lucky to be able to join in for a lesson and trying to converse with the ladies in the bit of French I still remember from school…

I was not the only guest at the class that afternoon…

Bailey made himself very comfortable during the afternoon 😉

Needless to say I was impressed by what Emma had accomplished with her atelier which has only be open for less than a year. Also the ladies present were very sweet and patient (my French, you see…) and both the afternoon at the atelier and my visit to Emma and her family ended much too soon.

Time to pack my bags (with some lovely goodies I bought at the atelier) and take the train 

To spend a few hours in sunny Lille

Before taking the bus back to The Hague with my delicious French ‘lupa’…..  

…..  with wonderful memories and plans to return soon!

Phyllis

The forever student

In our country there is the term ‘forever student’(eeuwige student), by this we used to mean young people who took forever to finish a university degree. They were probably having too much of a good time to actually study a lot … 😉

Although not in the way this expression was originally meant, I am something of a ‘forever student’,  always curious to learn new things or find out more about things that interest me.

Over the years I followed a training to be a beautician (next to my day job at the time) , a gold smith course (but after hurting myself in a nasty way a few times I concluded that it was safer for me to work with fabrics and pins rather than with steel, tools and machines…), all kinds of cookery courses, an Italian language course and just out of interest and because I did not have the opportunity at the time, about ten years ago I went to (Leiden) Law School for a few years.

Too many interests, so many things to learn…

So patchwork and quilting…

Except for a period of 12 years where I did not have time for it due to family and work commitments this passion has been with me since the late 80’s of the previous century (…) and I of course I followed a lot of courses and workshops since. As a ‘forever student ‘I just like the process of learning new things, of satisfying my curiosity.

The past few months I have been following a course that really triggered the forever student in me…. I love it! For a long time I have admired Marcha’s (click) work, it is so neat, so clean, so precise. Once a year at her shop the Quiltster (click) she offers a course (click)  on techniques based on the Dear Jane quilt. And even though I have been a quilter for quite some time now I am learning so many new things about various techniques and find my work is improving. We only have two more dates left on our course, sad to see the end of this.

I don’t want to reveal anything about the actual work, but let me show you a few pictures of those course days(the picture above shows that we are well cared for by Marcha’s mum with coffee, tea and yummy cakes):-

Marcha’s shop at the new location is great, lots of light, filled with quilts, projects, beautiful fabrics, delicious tea and Bunzlau pottery

The course takes place on the open second floor: my busy fellow students and our teacher Marcha… see you again in a few weeks, ladies  :-) 

So far these are the blocks I finished:

And the blocking board that Judith (click) gave me last December comes in handy now, so thank you again, Juud. 

So will I make a Dear Jane quilt… never say never!

And speaking of students, Anja, one of the participants of the Happy Scrappy Workshop (click) that I taught with Hubertine (click) as the Feathergirls two weeks ago, is really on a roll, she made so many blocks already, have a look at her blog (click), really nice to see this as a result!

Phyllis