Posts Tagged ‘Art’

We had another lucky fabric find in Amsterdam. The person we stayed with, Joel, happened to live just across the canal from a very big market. As we were waiting for our laundry to finish we thought we’d take a little walk, sit by the canal and write some postcards, and wander through the market. This proved to be an awesome idea. We got our postcards written and then set off through the market.

There were all types of stalls in the market. Clothing, food, and fabric! Justin was able to get some things he needed for our upcoming dance camp and then we took a look in the fabric shop. There weren’t too many choices of fabric suitable for quilt-making, but we were really happy with the one we selected. It’s a little whimsical, just like Amsterdam.

We also had success finding a post office and mailing our recent fabric purchases (and the postcards)!

Fabric from the Netherlands

See previous editions starting here!

In our post on Strasbourg I mentioned that we had bought some fancy cheese to have for dinner one night.  This turned out to be a giant stroke of luck since on our way to find some bread for the cheese we happened to walk right past a shop with little bits of fabric in the window!  We took a look and the designs in this shop were really awesome.  There were many of the fabrics which I would have liked to take and include!  However, we wanted one that was at least plausibly French and there was a clear winner:

France Fabric

This may be one of my favorite bits collected so far.  I absolutely love the colors, the daisy pattern reminds me of a different Daisy, and every time I look at it I will get to think about delicious cheese!

It really seems as though we’re honing our fabric gathering skills because, in my opinion, we just keep getting better and better fabric!

There wasn’t much question about what kind of fabric we should try to get from Scotland.  It had to be a tartan.  I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to find, but we were lucky.  As we walked down the street in Edinburgh we noticed a little kilt shop, and right outside there was a large basket of odd bits of tartan which were left over from making the kilts!  This was perfect since we just wanted a little piece and we could pick colors we liked.  This isn’t a pattern related to our family or anything, but we thought it was pretty sweet.

Scotland Fabric

And the England fabric is even better!!!  My aunt, who I will speak about in the post about Oxford, allowed us to pick through her fabric and take a piece that we like.  I’m so pleased about this because when I see it in the quilt I will think of her.  The design seems to fit what I think of when I think about English designs as well, so this is one of my favorite bits collected so far!

England Fabric

So I know it’s been an incredibly long time since our last post, and a LOT has happened since then, but since we’re in a very, very pretty place right now and I need to get out and do some sightseeing those summaries will just have to wait a little longer.  We’ve had a rotten time figuring out where to go and especially where to stay recently, to the point that we’ve wasted hours putting together plans only to have them go bad, internet not working in multiple locations, and on and on and on.

So today we’re going exploring!

But I do have a long overdue set of pictures of the fabric we bought in Spain for the wedding quilt.  This is some of my favorite fabric yet!!!  It really reminds me of Spain and although I’m not sure where it was manufactured it wasn’t in the USA.  The colors are pretty amazing too.

Spain Fabric

After a getting briefly lost on our way out of Barcelona (thanks everyone else for fixing that one!) we had a long but uneventful drive to Madrid and got rid of the car on our way into town.  Madrid has a really great metro system (the best one we’ve seen so far) and so it was much easier to get around that way than with the car in the city.

We were hungry after our long drive, so after getting our friends checked into their hotel we set out in search of something to eat.  We found a type of restaurant I hadn’t seen before.  It was a place where they had a bunch of sandwiches, pastas and salads all ready to buy and take home, but you could have them put it on a nice plate and eat it there if you wanted.  Genius!  After dinner, Justin and I headed over to the same hostel that we had stayed in on our first trip to Madrid and got settled in.

The next day was a sight-seeing marathon!  We saw parks, museums, buildings, the big bullfighting arena, and somehow still had enough energy to go out in the evening!

Really cool statue

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We arrived in Barcelona and went right to the hotel to meet up with our good friends from home.  This was so exciting!  We got 4 whole days traveling with them and it was glorious!  The hotel we stayed at in Barcelona was quite a bit more pricey than we’ve been used to, but we were excited to have our own bathroom and a really comfy bed for a couple of nights.

We went out and tasted some of the food and nightlife in the neighborhood we were staying in.

Amazing seafood paella!

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We’re having such a wonderful time here in New Jersey!  It’s pretty amazing to be living in a house for a little while again, speaking a language we know well, and getting to spend a lot of time with family.  We’ve even managed to have some adventures, a haircut, and a bit of new clothing!

A few days ago we went down to Cape May, a nice town in the far south of New Jersey.  It is one of the best birdwatching places in the US and since my dad was with us we got to see a lot of different birds – 80 species in the same day!  We had a guest photographer, my mom, since she is looking at cameras for when she meets up with us in Africa, so all of the photos in this post were taken by her.

Hundreds of birds at Cape May

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We had an easy bus trip back from Trindade to Rio and got to spend a couple of days in the city before heading on.  We stayed at a hostel in Le Blon, a nice neighborhood in the far south of the city.  The only problem with this was that it is a little far from the areas with stuff to do, so when we arrived at the bus station we immediately had to deal with a long trip through town and then out the other side.  We made it eventually with the help of a friendly local and got settled into an 8 person dorm.  Everyone at the hostel was really friendly, but it was a pretty noisy place, so not so much with the sleeping there.

Our first day in the city we walked up the incredible beaches and just took a good look around.  Rio is a beautiful city and the beaches were worth spending some time on.  We saw Le Blon beach, Ipanema beach, and Copacabana beach.  It was sunny in the morning, but then we had a pretty strong rain in the afternoon.  They said the weather was going to improve though, so we signed up for a city tour the next day so that we could see some of the big city landmarks.

We had an amazing sunny day and were picked up at the hostel in a big 16 person van.  Our first stop was the famous statue of Christ that looks down over Rio.  It is up on a mountain behind the city and was pretty crowded with tourists.  We had fun looking out at the views and taking a ton of pictures.

Christ the Redeemer

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While Justin puts together posts about our recent jungle trip and we try to get some photos from Machu Picchu uploaded I thought I’d give an update on our wedding quilt fabric search.  Unlike Chile and Argentina, Peru produces TONS of beautiful textiles.  The only unfortunate thing is that they are not really materials designed for quilting, but we picked the closest things we could get.  We ended up with an incredible tablecloth and two placemats which we will cut up for the quilt.

This fabric with the white background is the tablecloth.  We took a really quick picture before sending it off, and didn’t get the best part – it has animal designs woven in some of the strips.  It is beautiful and will be hard to cut up, but we loved the colors and the designs.

Peru Fabric Number 1

These two are the placemats.  They are much more characteristic of the colors in Peru.  Very bright and cheerful.  The background fabric of one is green and the other is red.  Should make for an amazing quilt block!!!

Peru Fabric Numbers 2 and 3

Since we’re about to set off on a 24 hour bus trip from Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama, a town in one of they driest places on earth, I thought I’d schedule a post about one of our ongoing projects.  My mother is a quilter and quilting teacher and author and she is awesome at what she does.  Check it out!

Since Justin and I were married recently she has offered to make us a wedding quilt and so of course we wanted to find a way to make it unique.  We had the bright idea to buy fabrics in each of the countries we visit and send them back to her, so that at the end of the trip she will have fabrics from all different parts of the world to work into a quilt.  Then when we look at it we will be reminded of our travels, our wedding, and my talented mom!  Pretty sweet.

We had an easy time in New Zealand.  There was a specialty quilting fabric shop in Christchurch and all we had to do was pick patterns we liked and that seemed the most “New Zealandish” to us.  We picked ferns, prints that reminded us of Maori designs, and some green and browns.

New Zealand Fabrics

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