France

Well, we've been here a week and this is the first campsite that we have stayed on that has WiFi. Staying on Aires is cheap and they are usually in interesting places but we are enjoying the calm space and the hot showers. After arriving in France we stayed overnight in Le Crotoy before moving on to Chartres. As a medieval town it has lots of timbered houses.

There were also an amazing number of churches. Although the cathedral was impressive I preferred St. Pierre.

There were some wonderful carvings in the cathedral.

After Chartres we moved to Oradour-sur-Glane. In 1944 the entire population was massacred and mostly burnt beyond recognition. Only about 10% of the 642 men, women and children could be identified. The village has been left as a memorial. If you've been there you know how we felt, if you haven't been I can't explain it.

We then went to Sarlat, a very beautiful medieval town. The buildings were amazing and often had towers and little bits added to them. We had a lovely evening sitting in a cafe watching the street entertainment and the next day we walked around more of the town and had a great lunch full of local produce.

Of course I had to take pictures of some of the interesting doors.

We are now at Les Eyzies de Tayac where we are hoping to see lots of cave paintings. Seeing houses actually built into the cliffs is quite amazing.

Using up fabric - part three

Back in April and January I showed you some quilt tops that I had put together. I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the finished quilts.

Actually this one isn't finished but it is an ongoing one that travels with me. The hexagons are sewn into rows of ten and then ten rows make a block. Four of these are joined together and then quilted by hand with perle no 12 thread. I am using a 'quilt-as-you-go' method to join these up to make a full size quilt.

The following two quilts are hand pieced and hand quilted.

(Note the 70's fabric)

These next four quilts are using small printed panels to which I have added borders and sashing. All are machine pieced and hand quilted.

This was one of the quilts made from the nine fat quarters ...

... and here is one made up from the left over fabrics from another set of fat quarters

I once bought several metres of 'clown' fabric from Laura Ashley - it's still going

Here are two more made from recycled fabrics

As I'm shortly about to start my travels again it may be some time before you see any more completed quilts.

Dyeing, printing and quilting - what fun!

Following on from the last blog I thought I would show you some of my experiments with the fabrics I had printed.

First I tried quilting in circles by hand ...

... then I tried a mixture of machine and hand quilting

Here is a detail ...

I then thought I would use some of the fabrics I had dyed earlier in the year (here's a reminder)

Using a mixture of techniques from the workshop and some stencils that I had cut from acetate I created a range of fabrics

I then experimented with free machine quilting on a small piece of fabric

The following piece of fabric is the one I used to clean the rollers and printing plates with before printing. Again I have tried free machine quilting

This is pieced using a variety of dyed and printed fabrics. I just have to decide how to quilt it now.