Meeting a rug hooker in France

Let me say that I am so happy to be back on my blog after quite a long time of not being able to sign in. Finally, after many seemingly futile efforts 😟 I'm back in with so much to say! I spent nearly a month in France, visiting my brother, and kept wanting to share all I was seeing and experiencing. Keep checking in for a few posts regarding my trip. I wish I could have done it in real time, but that was not to be.

I found quilt shops and craft shops with lovely beads, buttons, ribbons, fabrics and yarn but I never came across a rug hooking supply shop.  So imagine my surprise when I was walking around the International Quilt Show,  Pour l'Amour du Fil (translated For the love of Thread) in Nantes, France and saw a group of women hovering around a woman with something on her lap. As I got closer, I could see a punch needle stabbing away. And what to my wondering eyes did appear but a rug hooking frame at her feet! 
 
 
The language barrier made it difficult to talk shop but we could express our love for the craft and excitement of meeting a fellow rug hooker.  I asked if I could take a picture of her pulling loops and she obliged. She was a lovely woman and I so wish that we could have shared more. Nevertheless, I was so happy to see our craft represented at such a large event and hope that the women who stopped by to watch her hook and punch are inspired to try it themselves.

The love of handwork bridges the language gap. Women create beauty in every country. Women love to gather with one another and learn and share no matter the continent or language spoken. Let's keep gathering, keep sharing, keep creating.

Pour l'Amour du Fil is a wonderful international quilt show. Vendors from across the world, including Japan, Australia, Belgium, and the states to name a few, gathered. The funny thing to me was that here I was at an international quilt show, so very far from home, and one of the featured displays was Mennonite and Amish quilts from Pennsylvania and New York. I was so far away from home, and yet, not. Here are photos of a few for you to drool over.








Vendors galore! With the latest in European punch needle designs, embroidery, tools, notions, goodness everywhere and my favorite spot, you ask? The booth by Labors of Love, New York which was full to overflowing with vintage quilts and patchwork pieces. Old fabrics, old stitching, imagining the lives of the women who had created them a century before;  captured my heart and digging instincts. I just can't help it. It was the little patchwork squares that seemed the most practical choice to stuff into an already bulging suticase. I squeezed in six with the hopes of stitching them together to create a little doll quilt as a memory of my trip.



The next day I was standing outside a shop in Nantes waiting to go in and purchase my lunch when I heard a woman speaking English. In a sea of french, those english words rang out and I pounced upon them. That's how I met two Australian women who had come for the quilt show. We had fun talking and sharing our french experiences and effortlessly speaking to one another and understanding every word! We left, each with our lunches in a sack, and I continued on to the public garden where I planned to eat mine. More on that next time.