A small word sketch of the 20th European Meeting Patchwork.

//player.vimeo.com/video/106825369

This video was made almost a week ago… but I couldn't up load this either… so now I'm in the city, I have better internet.

Its just a bit of fun. I made it for my buddies at home and in Alamogordo… Country France is very different to the places where I spend a lot of time.

I wrote this a few days ago, but I couldn't up load it.

I’m sitting in the sun outside the food vendors tent. It's a bit hard to see the computer screen, but I'm squinting. I bet it looks glamorous. The sun is hot and I'm loving it.

As I write, the sounds of conversations in French, German and Dutch float in the air.

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I have been walking around the main venue for the past two hours, occasionally bumping into people I know but there are few English speaking people here. Despite the fact that it is quite close to the UK, it seems I have heard more American voices and indeed one New Zealand accent.

The event is held in Sainte Marie in a long narrow valley surrounded by hills that rise immediately from the string of road through the centre.

Houses fringe the street and are positioned on small streets in fingers off the main road. The first day I was here there I saw maybe one or two people on the street.

Were they preparing for the event of the year?

Suddenly in a few days the town is transformed into a quilting mecca. Bus loads of people descend and the event spreads far and wide. The towns spread through 10 kilometers of surrounding villages. The venues are accessed by free buses

For me… because I really don’t like my manual car, finding a park is nerve racking, but today I had luck, I have the closest park to the event. It means I can leave my cameras and computer in the car and whip back to get then when need them… what luck. Nup, it was a pure fluke. someone was pulling out as I drove by.

In this area there are probably 100 vendors selling everything from wine, cheese, fabric, patterns and paints.

The vendors come from all over Europe and so there is a huge variety of quilting genre’s if I could call it that.

I’m looking for something really French to buy my buddies…

I’ve bought a book and a little fabric from a vendor who draws her own designs and has it printed… Its unique and really captures my fancy.

Yesterday I attended the SAQA reception but prior to that I went to a wonderful lecture on the art of Sonia Deluanay by Dr Marina Blumin from Russia.

Sonia Delaunay became known for her conceptual paintings, graphic art and Textile Art.

n 1911, Sonia Delaunay made a patchwork quilt for Charles's crib, which is now in the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. This quilt was created spontaneously and uses geometry and color.

"About 1911 I had the idea of making for my son, who had just been born, a blanket composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Russian peasants. When it was finished, the arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke cubist conceptions and we then tried to apply the same process to other objects and paintings." Sonia Delaunay

It was fascinating lecture.

The Amish had several pavilions sharing their quilts and the history of the community in Alsace.

In the Evening it was the Japanese reception.

The women wore their Kimonos and the food provided and the quilts were amazing, sadly I didn't get back to that event again, so I only gained a glimpse.