Holiday surprises and some crochet

Our recent holiday to Texas was full of wonderful surprises, two of which I’d like to share with ‘y’all’   ;-)

Upon my arrival this was waiting for me….

It already surprised me it was in a box. You see, before our holiday Kathie had told me she would send me something, so I expected an envelope, but certainly not a box. And my, oh my, when I opened the box…. Look!!!!

Piles and piles of scraps came out! Beautiful, wonderful scraps and not small ones either, just awesome (to use a word that is surely overused these days, but very appropriate here)! Five pounds worth of fabrics, I had to weigh them, because I really did not know if they would fit into our suitcases weight wise, but we divided them over our 3 suitcases and 3 hand luggage cases and they all came back home with me!

 

Kathie, I can’t thank you enough, it is a wonderful gift and some of these fabrics I have seen them in some of your work, that makes it really special. My head is spinning with ideas of what I can do with these, your blog is inspiration enough. Thank you, thank you!!

That was not all, there was another surprise waiting for me. I had ordered Camille’s new book Simply Retro

and when I opened it:

 



What Camille wrote may just be an inspiration of what to do with Kathie’s scraps!

I love autographed books, love the one that Petra and An signed for me recently and now this one.

And now with everything back home going back to normal I have had time to go back to my projects again like crochet. I have 100 granny squares now.

 

 

 

 



 So… now what to do with them?

Phyllis



An evening with An Moonen

Last weekend the QuiltersPalet quiltstore in The Hague celebrated their 5^th year anniversary. They celebrated in style, with lots of reductions etc. and they invited An Moonen, an authority on antique Dutch quilts to hold a talk about the history of Dutch quilts.

An, former curator of the Open Air Museum in Arnhem, wrote three books and  lots of articles about the history of Dutch quilts and brought some antique Dutch quilts with her to show us. I loved listening to her (history was one of my favourite subjects in school anyway), she had so many interesting things to tell (and a great sense of humour!), I found it fascinating, I learned new things, historic facts not just about quilts, but also of other cultural facts and historic events.

Here is An, signing a copy of her latest book, A History of Dutch Quilts, for one of the attendees:

And below some of the antique quilts An brought to show us:

Needless to say, I had a great evening.

We were surprised by Evy and Petra, they gave us a voucher for the amount we paid to attend the talk. Also, when you bought something (at wonderfully reduced prices) you were given this template (with the name of the QuiltersPalet engraved on it) with a pattern.

Thank you very much, ladies, I will use both with much pleasure!

Phyllis