Something Quilty.....

At last!

Its been a very long time since I wrote about something sewing related, in fact, it's been a long time since I did any sewing (!) so its good to be able to show a finish

Disappearing 9 Patch all done and dusted at last and just in time for its first birthday!  This brings my total of finishes for Myra's PhD Challenge to 4 out of 6.  Don't know if I'm going to get all 6 done, as I am so far behind after the last couple of weeks' layoff, but there's still another few weeks left so who knows !

I hope you're all having as glorious an Easter holiday as we are in Brittany - the wall to wall sunshine, high temperatures and cloudless blue skies have been around for almost 2 weeks now and its just so enjoyable!

This kind of weather has meant lots of chances to spend time with friends over the Easter weekend - a picnic by the river on Friday, morning coffee under a lilac tree yesterday, BBQ in the garden today and afternoon tea planned for tomorrow - another reason my quilting is lagging behind :-)

The sunshine is bringing the garden to life at full speed now, azaleas in full bloom and peonies bowing their heads from the sheer weight of the flowers !  The clematis are full of buds and a promise of things to come and any day now we'll have delphiniums! 

Don't you just love the changing of the seasons!

I want to tell you a story.........

..............about good turns, and how they keep going around!


Some time back I joined a fibre postcard group on Yahoo and spent a number of very pleasant months swapping postcards with quilters all over the world including Jovita in Lithuania .(check out her photos, she does some amazing work !)Even though I haven't swapped FPCs for a very long time now, I met up with her again when I joined the Birthday Block Swap on About.com last year.


A couple of weeks ago I got a mail from Jovi asking if I could help her to get hold of a particular copy of the French quilting magazine Magic Patch. After unsuccessfully trawling all the local 'Presse' (newsagents) for the copy, which was a little out of date, I eventually found it( the last one too !), at the LQS and sent it off.


Now Jovi is even more 'fabric starved' than I am, but this didn't stop her offering to send me something in return for the mag, but to me it just wasn't an issue as I' ve received so many acts of kindness myself from other quilters it was good to have a chance to be able help someone in return !


Today a surprise squishy arrived in the post box, and inside was this beautiful little pink angel from......




.......yes, that's right - Jovi!!


Thank you so very much Jovita , she's going to take pride of place in my workroom !! Just one little problem though - I will have to find a safe hiding place for her before any of the DGDs visit or she might up and move to the UK :-)


Isn't it lovely to belong to such a great 'family' !!

Happy New Year !!!

As well as the last day of 2008, today is also the end of my first year in Blog Land, and it has been an amazing journey!

I have learnt so much from all the wonderful people I have 'met', achieved things I wouldn't have imagined, all by joining in some of the incredible online projects available, and also thoroughly enjoyed being able to share a small slice of my life here in Brittany with those interested !! So - a big ' Thank You' to everyone who made this last year possible and so very enjoyable !!!

I wish you Health, Peace and Happiness and everything else that you wish for yourself during 2009 !!!

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda !

Bonne Annee!

Bloavezh Mat !

'Tis The Season....!

I just cannot believe that there are only a few more days left until Christmas - what happened to 2008 ????

It is almost a year since I started blogging (!) and during this time I 've had more visitors than I ever imagined from around the world, made many new friends along the way,been inspired by and learnt from other Bloggers and, as a bonus, had lots of fun as well :-)

So even though it might seem a tad early, I'd like to wish everyone a Very Happy Christmas , and what better way to do it than with this !

I will be back with some quiltie 'stuff' in a day or two (fingers crossed!!) but today I'd like to ensure that as many of my cyber friends as possible enjoy my little surprise !

Making New Friends ....

....or meeting cyber friends and changing them into 'real' friends!

Wednesday saw us off at the crack of dawn to drive to Angers to meet Brigitte and her husband and what a lovely day we had!

It is quite a long time since we were last in Angers and had forgotten what a beautiful city it is with the chateau , cathedral plus numerous other historic buildings and - not forgetting the river Maine majestically flowing through the centre !

It had been planned for us to spend a little time looking at all these wonderful sights, but due to traffic problems on the 2 1/2 hour journey , plus the fact that we managed to get 'lost' in the one way traffic system (!!), we arrived rather late , so this part of the day didn't happen quite as planned ! However, we did manage a whistle stop drive around the main sights (thanks to Brigitte's DH!!) and at least managed to grab a photo of the Adam's House ,built in the 12th century, the oldest surviving house in Angers (again thanks to our host!).

It is called Adam's House because there used to be carved wooden statues of Adam and Eve each side of the front door - that is until someone came along one night and removed them !

Another reason for our visit was to see the exhibition of the tapestries of Jean Lurcat . Angers is fortunate enough to be hosting a temporary exhibition of items from all over France in addition to their own permanent display of his works in Hopital St Jean ! I don't have enough superlatives in my vocabulary to begin to describe what I saw - the sizes of the individual tapestries are overwhelming and the colours , well, they just explode out of them and fill your whole mind !

No photos were allowed in the museum, which is probably just as well as there is no way you could capture the colours or feelings that these works of art invoke !! I did manage a few outside Hopital St Jean (built in 1175) though, just to give you a feel of the age of the building

Yes - that's my shadow I'm afraid !!








A truly memorable day spent in delighful company ! Merci beaucoup, Brigitte, pour votre hospitalité ! J'espère que nous allons passer plusieurs jours comme ça - tous ensemble!

Saturday Markets

One thing we've grown to enjoy, living so close to Rennes, is the Saturday market, but because of the miserable weather we've been having, it has been some weeks since we managed to get there! Yesterday the sun came out again for a few hours and we jumped at the opportunity to go and join in with all the other shoppers!

The market takes over a section of streets around the Market Halls of Les Lices, right in the centre of the city, and it is divided roughly into these sections :

Flowers & plants of all sorts of shapes and colours !

Vegetables and Fruit , both the basic & exotic!

and of course garlic - how could you live and cook in France without it!!

Then there is fish

and shellfish, a lot of it still wriggling about!

onto the Market Halls for fresh meat & poultry ( I didn't bother with photos, thought I'd leave it to your imagination!!)

Bread

with jam

or cheese

or even pate, whichever takes your fancy!

These are just a few samples of all the items on sale of course, but with so many people rushing about it was just about impossible to get photos of it all ! What you can't see are the olives and herbs, the wines & ciders, all the 'fast food' stalls selling crepes , ready roasted chickens & pork, French sausages wrapped in galettes and Chinese spring rolls & 'nems' and all sorts of other delights , as DH remarked - it's a great shame I couldn't get a photo of the noise and the smells!!

Back home for a late lunch and then the afternoon saw us at one of the local Marche de Noel but unfortunately it took place in an old 'manoir' which was a maze of small rooms with very bad lighting, so no photos I'm afraid!! One pleasant thing to report though was that I met up with Elizabeth in 'real life' after all these weeks of meeting in Blogland, and gave her my 'Pay It Forward' offering ! Next Wednesday (hopefully) I am off to Angers to meet another cyber friend of even longer standing for the first time , Brigitte has kindly invited me to go with her to see an exhibition of the tapestries of Jean Lurcat and I am so looking forward to this trip and another chance to ' put a face to the name' !!

Sorry about the long last paragraph, Blogger has decided not lo let me 'space out ' !!!!

Coincidences ?

Have you ever wondered about the way things happen sometimes ? I was really dreading Saturday morning and was winding myself up into a terrible tizz about things when DH appeared in the doorway clutching several packages from the Postie - now I knew that a couple of items were en route but what were the chances of three arriving on the same day ?

In no particular order (!)

From Linda in Canada, probably my 'oldest' cyber friend , a really fine tote bag from her Quilt Guild's last show plus a couple of pins. A lovely gift and the pins are my very first !! Thank You Linda !

From Annette in the UK a set of Patsy Thompson free motion quilting DVDs she'd picked up for me - no more excuses for not trying something other than stippling now! Thank You Annette!

Finally, from Brigitte here in Angers , a wonderful little quilt! Merci beaucoup, Brigitte !

So thanks to these three lovely ladies from various parts of the world , and whom I have never met , my day turned around completely ! Isn't life is full of nice ,as well as nasty, surprises !!

There is a story behind my quilt from Brigitte, which I must tell you as it demonstrates to me , yet again, the limitless generousity of all the quilters who have touched my life !

If you haven't visited Brigitte's Flickr site, then you are in for a treat when you do, as she really is a talented seamstress .Well, I was having a peep to see what she'd been up to when I spied the little quilt, which captured my fancy straight away as it represents the 4 national emblems of the British Isles !

I wrote and asked Brigitte if she could tell me where she'd got the pattern from, but unfortunately it turned out that the pattern was no more, but she would send it along to me for me to see close up, and maybe I could work from there. That offer in itself was generous, but you can imagine my surprise and utter delight when it arrived and I found a note from Brigitte saying that there was no need to return it as she would like me to accept it as a gift from her ! I wish you could see the real thing - it is a little gem and the hand quilting is amazing , I really don't know how she could bear to part with it, but I will certainly treasure it!!