Last year I went to the European Patchwork Meeting in the Val D’Argent in Alsace, France, to buy my longarm. I wanted to take at least one more longarm class before agreeing to plop down all my savings on one and this was the nearest show to me (about a five-hour drive). I knew nothing about the quilt show so I travelled with very few expectations. My only experiences of major quilt shows to date had been the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. You guys, I know that Festival is supposed to be a big deal, but it looks like a show at the local rec centre compared to what goes on in Val D’Argent.

In addition to the vendor area, which is large but not massive (I’d say equivalent to Festival), there are close to twenty exhibitions spread out across four villages in the valley. There are about a dozen exhibitions in the main village, Ste. Marie-aux-Mines, and two or three in each of the other three villages, and these exhibitions are nothing less than spectacular. I was already blown away last year, but this year was even better.

I spent a week in the valley and saw nearly all of the exhibitions (there’s a free shuttle bus between the villages), some two or three times. One of my favourite exhibitions was one put on by Handiquilter (shocker!)(I swear I don’t work for them.)(Yet.). Handiquilter’s Director of Marketing collects old quilt tops and as a special project had some of the top longarm educators quilt them with contemporary quilting. The results are incredible. The exhibition had about ten quilts on display, but the full collection has closer to fifty. This was the first time any of the quilts have been exhibited and I’m really intrigued about what I haven’t seen yet.

Every year the show puts on a themed competition and this year’s theme was “Colour.” Y’all, these quilts were amazing. I was (and continue to be) blown away by this quilt by Linda Kemshall. There’s so much going on here and it’s all so good.

The organizers liked this next quilt from the colour competition enough to put it on the poster for next year’s show. It’s by Gabrielle Paquin of France. It’s lovely.

There’s a full gallery of this competition here.

The SAQA exhibition also had some absolute winners. This one kept me coming back for more and was conveniently located right next to the Handiquilter classroom. It’s done using a quilt-as-you-go method.

This next one is by Erica Waaser, who is Munich-based quilter (I think I read somewhere that she’s an architecht by training). Last year she had a stunning solo exhibition at the show and I was delighted to chat with her this year. She’ll be holding an exhibition in my LQS in Munich next summer and I asked her if she’d come to our guild meeting that month (conveniently held in the LQS gallery) and walk us through her quilts and her process, which she said she would! Yay!

But the true star of the show? Angela Walters. Every year Handiquilter brings one of its educators to give classes at the show and a little bird accidentally spilled the beans last year that Angela Walters would be this year’s teacher. I’d kept my mouth shut about it since it wasn’t meant to be common knowledge, but spent the past year bouncing up and down in anticipation. When the schedule was released she was scheduled to teach three classes, twice each, and I signed up for each and every one of them. The class prices were laughable. I paid 240 euro for what was scheduled to be 18 hours of tuition but ended up being more like 20. I don’t remember what I’m paying for a single, six-hour class at QuiltCon, but it’s easily half that. And you know what? I would have paid twice and three times that had I known what I would be getting. The entire experience was so incredible that I’ve been walking on air since. It’s made me completely zen about some ongoing life irritants and completely optimistic about the future.

I’ll get into more detail about the classes I took and the lessons I learned in the next few posts, but let me leave you with this “Angelism”:

I’ll talk about the classes in detail in the next few posts. Consider signing up for my newsletter if you don’t want to miss out on these posts. To sign up, refresh the post and fill in your email address when the Hello Bar pops up.