work again

Le petit enfant ainé - Jack et la petite enfant cadet - Eva......
......elle est doué en plus!


Well after 5 weeks of Paris, England, the Pyrenées and a full house of children & grandchildren back to reality and lots of work preparation for a course here next week, my exhibition locally in Goudargues and two big regional days in the Landes and in Pau. About 250 backgrounds to prepare for the afternoon session of embroidery with the adhérents plus extra kits to sell.

Summer has been lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed being in Newcastle, Eng. where the weather was very kind to us and we picnicked on the beach at Whitley Bay. Here are some pics of two of our grandchildren who are simply lovely.

Still in Paris

With Lorette and Mimi in the gardens of the Palais Royale - or is it the Tuileries?! We went to both anyway.


View of the Eiffel Tower from the Pompidou Centre


Shop window selling shoes and ballet items near the Place Vendome.

Still enjoying our Paris sojourn and I don't think I've done so much walking for a long time. Had a lovely walk all round the Louvre area with Lorette and Mimi two stagiaires of mine who live in Paris and who have become good friends. Last night we went for dinner chez Marie-Noel another Parisien stagiaire. Lovely 11th floor flat she lives in with views towards La Defense.
Here are a couple more pictures.

In Paris

The Tuilleries by the Louvre and the Orangerie - having embroidered several aspects of these gardens they are quite special to me.


This is St Chapelle completely built it seems of huge stained glass windows - quite breathtaking.

We're on holiday now and enjoying our 'swap' appartment. We walk a great deal looking at things but having a fairly quiet day today with a concert on the Quay d'Orsay at 5.oopm. Here are some photos of one or two places visited.

Nous sommes en vacance à Paris et pendant beaucoup de promenades j'ai fait des photos bien sûr et voilà deux d'eux

What I've been up to

Just had no time to blog - courses here & away + a trip to England have kept me very busy. I'm happy to say that my piece was accepted for the Pfaff Art Embroidery Challenge so I shan't be seeing it again for at least a year.
As usual my courses here have been much appreciated from the point of view of Peter's cooking! He really pulled the stops out this last week - they wanted to pack him up and take him home!

The Quilt en Sud exhibition has so far yielded two good dates for the Autumn both regional meetings of combined patchwork clubs in the Landes & the Pyrenées so I'll be talking and teaching to over 100 people for each day! Quite a lot of preparation for that between now and the end of September.
We're away for a month in the summer and then Sep starts up again in earnest. As well as a course here I'll be going to Switzerland with our choir for a weekend concert and I have organised a week's exhibition of my work locally which I'm looking forward to.

Aucun temps d'écrire mon blog jusqu'a maintenant - trop de travail. Mon morceau pour le Pffaf challenge a été accepté et je suis contente. Comme d'habitude la cuisine de Peter a été bien apprécié pendant mes cours ici à la maison - presque plus que les cours! En automne je vais animer 2 jours de l'amitié dans le Landes et Les Pyrenées Atlantique. Le début du Sep j'organise un cour (5 jours) à la maison et une seamine plus tard je vais exposer tous mes oeuvres dans un locale pas loin de chez nous.

Quilt en Sud

I've just come back from St Jean de Luz where I was exhibiting this year with QES . I had a beautiful exhibition space all to myself and was able to show off my work to good advantage. It was a very successful show for me where I sold many books, kits and cards and for good measure QES bought a piece of work for their new collection. I was pretty overwhelmed by the public response and have made many contacts for the future. QES also looked after their artists royally and I have nothing but praise for their warm and generous welcome.

I wasn't able to explore the region much (although Peter had a great time) as I had so many people interested in my work that I didn't feel able to leave my exhibition to itself. Ah well perhaps we'll go back just to enjoy the Basque country.

Quilt en Sud à St Jean de Luz été un grand succès pour moi où j'ai beaucoup vendu aussi bien que d'avoir fait des importants contacts pour l'avenir. QES avait la gentillesse de m'en acheter un broderie pour leur nouvelle collection. On etait très bien prix en charge par QES et leur acceuil etait formidable. J'espère bien de refaire cette manifestation dans l'avenir.

Je ne pouvais pas explorer la région malheureusement car l'interêt sur mon expo a été tel que j'etait obligée de rester sur place. Mais c'est très bien passé.

Follow-on machine embroidery

Well since I have withdrawn the photos of the Pfaff embroidery here are a couple of pieces I did a while ago which shows what can be done in free machining.
I traced my design onto a silk background and then with much changing of threads and alterations of tensions during the work I filled it with solid stitching - which is why the 6 or 7 embroideries I did on the machine were only 9 x 7 cms. As I described before I find machining enjoyable but very bad for back & neck muscles!

Voilà 2 morceaux en piqué libre que j'ai fait il y a quelques temps. Je les montre car je sais qu'il y a des brodeuses qui veulent voir un tel travail. Elles mèsurent toutes les deux 9x7 cms - trop grande et mon corps souffre pendant le travail!

Pfaff embroidery challenge

VERY SORRY BUT HAD TO WITHDRAW THE PHOTOS HAVING RE-READ THE RULES OF THE PFAFF.
DÉSOLÉ MAIS JE NE DOIS PAS PUBLIER LES PHOTOS SELON LES RÉGLES DE PFAFF

Well here is the finished embroidery which is difficult to photograph showing sufficient detail. The whole of the top area was machined freely in straight stitch using green overlayed with yellow incorporating the buttercups which had the effect of changing their look . I then used the zigzag freely to create all the golden buttercups on top of this machining spacing them out more as I went down the field.
I hand embroidered the stems and added some lovely gold thread here and there which I'm afraid simply doesn't show here. I'm quite pleased with it.

Hope you all had a good Easter - see you soon!

Voilà la broderie pour le Pfaff challenge. La partie en haut est librement brodée à la machine à coudre, d'abord en vert superposé avec jaune en traversant touts les boutons d'or. Ensuite j'ai utilisé le point zigzag afin d'ajouter beaucoup de petits boutons d'or. Les tiges j'ai brodée à la main et les points finals était la placement de fil d'or (on le voit pas dans la photo) ici et là.

J'espère que vous avez passé une bonne fête de Paques - à bientôt!