It's Done!! My Scrapbook of Europe (Europe 10)

     I completely finished the Europe quilt on the weekend. I have even managed to clip all loose threads (I think) but, it turns out my camera does not want to cooperate.  My daughter came by to take photos.
     Although the maps lay flat on the fabric in the beginning, the extra stitching / quilting of the background fabric caused the maps to pucker loosely in the middle. I ended up having to go over every orange thread highway I had created, as well as some of the outlines of the pictures

Haarlem, Netherlands

centre of town, Rothenberg, Germany

     I thread-sketched the tulips on the background instead of making a separate picture: two reasons ... didn't want the wall-hanging to look cluttered and I really liked the background fabric & didn't want to cover it up.

Rothenberg, Germany --- one of the gates in the town wall

Florence, Italy

     It was so hard to create the awesomeness of this cathedral. There was so much detail --- I gave up on trying to make all the statues in all the little alcoves; the picture was too tiny to add them.

Colosseum, Rome, Italy

     I have seen pictures of the Colosseum everywhere but did not expect it to be so HUGE!  It amazes me how some of the buildings were created all around this site without the cranes and backhoes and equipment that we have today.

Cinque Terre, Italy

     Here is a place that I need to return to ... and perhaps walk the mountain path that connects the village along the coast. My tour friends and I took a boat to visit 4 of the villages.

Beaune, France

     The Burgundy region .... even though many of the places we visited were not that far apart (compared to traveling in Canada), I was amazed at the differences in architecture between one country and the next.

Paris, France

     And last, but not least, Paris .... a few too many people in all the 'touristy' spots, but I enjoyed walking the several kilometres from the cathedral to our hotel on my own, stopping into little shops and taking many photographs of buildings.
 
 The additional thread-sketching that I did on the background fabric: 1. the tulips (top, mid-right), 2. Amsterdam (top left), 3. the gondola in the Alps, Switzerland (middle right), 4. the gondola in Venice (bottom right) and 5. a cathedral top Rome (bottom mid-left).

     13 pictures in raw-edge applique or thread-sketched and six maps to represent 3+ weeks of travel.  Not sure what I will do with the rest of my photographs (close to 400!) ... there are a couple that I would like to do as stand-alone larger pictures. We shall see....
    

King Sized

     Years ago my daughter picked out various green fabrics and asked me to make her a quilt. She wanted a stripy quilt ... I showed her a variety of designs that would look good with her greens, but still she wanted a stripy quilt. That's what she got.
     She has since married and I made them a beautiful queen-sized quilt, thick and warm for the winter months.
     However, this summer, she and her husband (who is 6'5") decided to buy a king-sized bed, which, of course, meant they needed a larger quilt.
     Out came the stripy quilt ... I added 35 cm (14") panels to the sides and the bottom. There wasn't any of the original fabric left but with strips in the same tones, it was easy to find enough fabric to match (most of the fabric came from my stash and I only bought a few fat quarters to compliment the original).

     Working each panel was easy to machine quilt and I practiced swirls, circles  and random stipple ... the difficulty came with attaching the panels to the main quilt .... king-sized quilts are HEAVY!!
I checked out a few Youtube videos ... this one made the most sense for what I was doing although 
 the presenter was working with 9" blocks and I was attempting to add panels that were the full length of the quilt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji8BLS2rNHA
"How to Join Up Quilt as you Go Blocks" by Gourmet Quilter

Europe top (Europe 9)

The top is now done ... I had originally planned on doing more pictures but two things changed that plan.
     One ... I found some really pretty background fabric and I didn't want to cover it all and
     Two ... the blue-grey fabric that I had for doing the frames of the pictures was only a fat quarter and I was unable to find more of the same fabric.  Several other fabric colours were auditioned but I liked my original choice the best; without more fabric, there was no need to do more pictures!
     I used a brown fabric to frame the maps.

     This was hung on the clothesline on a slightly windy day (well, where I live, everyday is at least slightly windy with most days being very windy) ... hard to keep the fabric to stop moving long enough to take a picture.
     Since I didn't want to cover all of the background fabric, I chose to outline several more Europe scenes. Top centre has red tulips; top left has buildings in Amsterdam along a canal -- hard to see in the shadow; centre right has a mountain gondola from Switzerland; bottom right has a Venice gondola going along a canal and to the left of Italy is a church dome.
     Once I finish quilting the top, I will do some close-ups so the outline pictures can be seen better.  
     The piece currently measures 38" X 43" and has taken 88 hours to get this far. :-)

On to Beaune (Europe 8)

     Beaune France, a beautiful town, the capital of Burgundy wines. We walked through the hospital Hotel Dieu listening to the history on our headphones. I opted for the francais set and understood perhaps 1/3 of what was said .. I had to stop and 'rewind' several times since my hearing seemed to be slower than their speaking!
     A couple blocks from our hotel, several friends and I stopped for supper, sitting in an outdoor cafe and enjoying some people-watching.
     This particular piece took just under 7 hours to complete. I am getting the hang of doing the work and my efficiency and accuracy are improving. 

     Again I have left out some little details ... like the tiny windows on the roof, an extra chimney & the people and umbrellas.  I notice odd things when working on these pieces ... in this picture, the shutters on the lower windows are not full size ... and I realized that it is because of the tiny Juliette balconies. I may go back and add the gold coloured diamonds between the windows on the mansard roof.

Background (Europe 7)

     Found some beautiful Robert Kaufman fabric for the background. It wasn't what I was first looking for ... I had seen fabric with maps and stamps and travel pictures on them, but realized they would look too busy or overpower the work that I was doing.

     The photo doesn't do it justice; it is soft and feels luxurious (& probably a little too expensive for the background, but I'm blaming the price on the lousy exchange rate we have with the US) ; the colours are a multi soft blues, beiges and greys with a little bit of darker blue. Kind of resembles the mix of sky colours we had while traveling. I've added a medium-weight fusible interfacing to the back.

     After pinning the completed pictures and maps I have so far (Switzerland will be done by tonight), I think I may have to revise my plan a wee bit or I will end up covering most of the background fabric. Perhaps in some areas I will outline sites in navy or shades of grey-blues directly on the background. My plan was to complete another picture for Holland (perhaps the canals), another picture for France and possibly one of Venice.  Maybe a gondola would look better as an outline ... Hmmmm.

Florence (Europe 6)

     I thought if I could master the Eiffel Tower, then I could try a similar approach for one of basilicas  that we saw ... create more of an outline rather than a lot of little fabric pieces. Originally I was going to use a cream-coloured fabric, the original colour of the church, but our guide talked to us about buses now being rerouted away from the building since the vehicle pollution had caused much of the building to be covered in grime ... and they were in the early stages of cleaning the building. The background fabric is a pale grey with darker grey smudges.
     I traced the outline & some main architectural lines of the building from my photo and using that as a template, began to sew in a light beige thread. Once the outline was done, then I drew in extra lines, and went over everything in darker greys, blacks and beige threads and a touch of red on the tower to the right. The final part was much slower ... using a gold metallic thread to outline and cover many the arches and doorways. (discovered if you want to pick up speed, the metallic thread stretches and breaks!)

     Drawing with pencil is sooooo much easier. Sewing machine needles are not meant for curves. Trying to get all the little arches done on the windows was difficult to get them all the same.  And I figured it was totally impossible to add the little statues inside the arches, so left them out. I ended up using black fabric marker for the doors.

     Lots of people hanging around; there were even a number of army personnel and trucks nearby standing guard (one just to the left of my photo and a group behind me ... you never knew if you should be worried because they were there and expecting something to happen or if you should be happy they are keeping the place safe!)

Switzerland and Italy (Europe 5)

     This is going to be one very large wall-hanging. 7 buildings are completed. Originally I pulled out 26 photos for consideration, narrowed it down to 20, decreased it again to 15 .... and will probably need to drop the number again ... I don't have enough wall space to hang something this big when it is done!!

     This building in the Swiss Alps, we saw on our walk down from Schilthorn Mountain in the Lauterbrunnen Valley ... we took the gondola down 2/3 of the mountain then walked along a hiking trail, stopped for lunch and took another gondola down the last 1/3. Since the mountain is close to 3000 m, I am glad we didn't need to walk up or down it!!

     The quilt will need some small pieces for overlapping so this house is a stand-alone.  It still needs some trimming ... 4 hours to complete.

     On to the Cinque Terre in Italy ... the village of Manarola

     Auditioning fabrics; there are more white houses in this section of Manarola but I wanted to be able to show the separation of the buildings.  The turquoise on the right is actually green screens covering a renovation site. Not sure what I will do for the railings on the balconies ... either find some fabric with close stripes or sew individual posts.
     [Found a piece of fabric at Atlantic Fabrics that had overlapping sections of 'lined paper' that worked great for railings!]

     The photo was enlarged and I traced many of the houses onto Vellum or Tracing paper to use as templates. The coloured bits are cut from fabric with fusible web, ironed on to a background fabric. This time, because of the number of windows, I decided to outline them in black thread and colour them in with fabric markers. I had a little sample of one of the fabrics and tried all my marking choices to see which worked best in this case (Fineliner, pencil crayons, Inktense - dry and wet, Ultrafine Sharpie, Fabric Markers and Papermate Flair pens).  There are a lot more balconies in the photo, ... yeah, wasn't going there!! Artist's choice to quit or modify when necessary!
     Also decided to add a bit of colour on the railing sections to reflect the buildings behind them instead of the white of the fabric. Completion time: 8 1/2 hours.

     All the Cinque Terre villages were adorable and picturesque.  The people must have very strong legs as everything you do requires going up and down hills and stairs! I think this is the village we walked quite a ways up to get to the church.

PS ... the collection of hours. Non-quilters always ask, 'how long did it take to do that?' ... this time I will have a close approximation of the time although sometimes I begin to work and forget to note the start time. 

PPS ... in the end, the house in Lauterbrunnen Valley didn't make it to the quilt top ... it will have a special place on the back side with the title & date.