Block #6 - Bayeux

So, in case you haven't noticed this yet, the posting dates of these blog entries don't exactly line up with the dates I visited each location. I'm currently sitting in a coffee shop in Munich, working feverishly to catch up on everything that's gone on for the past month, so hopefully things will start going up much more quickly over the next week or two. Enjoy!

Conceding to my traveling partner (my brother who's a big WWII history buff), from Paris we headed north to Bayeux, the jumping off point for a majority of day tours of the Normandy beaches. We only had one full day in Bayeux, the morning of which we spent exploring the town, then we took what turned out to be a private tour of Gold Beach (British), Omaha Beach (American) and the American cemetery.

We were surprised to discover that Bayuex actually has a textile attraction for me as well as the attraction of the Normandy invasion beaches. A tapestry, 200 ft long and just 70 years shy of being 1000 years old is housed in its own little museum in the town. The tapestry details the Norman invasion of England in 1066 by William the Conqueror, and was absolutely incredible. The room they had it stored in was curved, so you could only see half the tapestry from the entrance. I was impressed by its sheer size when I walked in, then to find that it was actually twice as long! It was amazing how well the tapestry has been preserved; all of the colors were still there, and still vibrant, if not quite as vibrant as they were 930 years ago when the tapestry was made. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, because of course they don't trust tourists not to use the flash when looking at the tapestry (to be honest, I wouldn't either).

We also made a trip to the cathedral in Bayeux, which was amazing and cool, though not on the same scale as the York Minster or the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. I got a few good pictures out of it, and a few good ideas for different blocks for this part of our trip.





That afternoon, we finally met up with our tour guide to discover that although the staff at the hotel were very skeptical that we would be able to get on a tour on such short notice, we were in fact the only ones signed up for the afternoon tour. Thus, Nicholas, Josephine (the tour guide) and I set off in our minibus built for ten for an afternoon exploring the beaches.

Our first stop was Gold Beach, one of the two British landing beaches. The British invasion apparently went swimmingly, and they made it to Bayeux (the largest town in the area, and about 5-7 miles inland) by the night of the invasion. This photo was taken from the shore of the tiny little town we stopped in, which is also where the Allied forces built the harbor they needed to get supplies in following the initial invasion.



I'm pretty sure that the concrete bits you can see just below the cliff are remnant pieces of the harbor. They built the pieces in top secret labs in Britain, and sunk the pieces in the Thames so that German reconnaissance planes wouldn't be able to figure out what they were up to. Cool, huh? I thought so.

After that we went to see some German gun emplacements, then to the American cemetery, situated on the cliffs above Omaha beach, one of the two American landing beaches. Visiting the cemetery was a really moving experience. It was incredible how well maintained everything was. The entire thing looked brand new.



The picture here is the compass rose on a map of the major battles of WWII following the D-Day invasion., which features prominently in a memorial to the soldiers never found. This will probably end up being my block for Bayeux, simply because I was so impressed by the cemetery, but I'm also contemplating doing something with this




the railing around the memorial.

Our last stop on the tour was to a German gun emplacement on the top of a really big cliff I can't remember the name of. Point something. It was there that one hundred or so US Army Rangers scaled the cliff under heavy enemy fire using their knives to stabilize themselves in the face of the wind coming off the cliffs and, oh, I don't know, enemy bullets. So they scaled the cliff, went immediately into what amounted to a knife fight with the German soldiers at the top of the cliff, and somehow still managed to win. Oh, and did I mention that the additional five hundred men they were supposed to have with them never came, because bad weather pushed them off course? Yeah, that's right, they did it with one sixth of the men they were supposed to have! Needless to say, I was impressed by the history of this place.

Also, I was impressed and touched by the scars that this war left around here. I'm probably dating myself here, but WWII is the latest war that still seems like a historical war. There's no one I really know or knew that fought in WWII, whereas I feel more of a connection to later wars. The fact of the matter is that WWII seems like it happened a really long time ago, but it seems so recent here. The gun emplacements are still here, though they've been dismantled, the cemetery looks like it's only been there long enough for there to be uniform grass and not mounds of dirt on the ground, and the craters in the land from the bombing of the cliff mentioned above in preparation for the assault by the Rangers are still there and are still huge:



Suddenly this war seems so much closer, and so much more real. If anything, going to the cemetery makes me hurt for all of the young lives that were lost. None of the tombstones have birth dates on them, only death dates, because so many of the men killed were between 18 and 22, much too young to die. Even so, you know looking out over the field of graves that disappears over the horizon, and that only represents a third of the soldiers lost in that battle, that there was an infinite amount of promise lost in only a few short years.

Well, I've waxed philosophical about WWII for quite long enough. That just about covers the visit to Bayeux, so next we're headed back to Paris. Ciao!

Block #5 - Paris

I have mixed feelings about Paris, after having spent a couple of days there, and I feel there are a couple of reasons for it. First, I was hoping for better weather, which I got, sort of. It was a little warmer, and we more frequently had patches of sunshine to break up the clouds, but there wasn't enough extra warmth nor enough sunshine to satisfy me. Also, I think Paris is so hyped up by so many people. It's the city of love, the city of lights, its the most beautiful city in the world, it's the most magical, wonderful place I've ever been, blah, blah, blah. I have to say, I was somewhat disappointed, though again, that may have been due to things outside of my control. That said, I still had fun, and still saw some pretty awesome things.

Literally the first thing I saw when I got to Paris was the cathedral of Notre Dame. Now, I know I've said this for every single other cathedral I've seen, but it was incredible. Cathedrals are all built to be awe-inspiring, and this one did not disappoint. I've put my favorite picture of the cathedral here, which is not the typical view from the front. The front is obviously huge and amazing, but it's also kind of boring (stone church, stone plaza, lots of people) and is also a picture most people have seen before. This photo was taken from the back of the cathedral.



The most incredible thing about this particular cathedral was easily the stained glass, especially after seeing the stained glass in the York Minister.



The glass in the minister was amazing, but oft broken and repaired, which made the whole setup terribly dark, since the way to repair stained glass up until about 40 years ago was to put extra leading along where the cracks showed up, and restoring the windows using the new techniques cost exorbitant amounts of money (20,000 pounds for a panel about the size of 3-4 sheets of paper). The glass at Notre Dame, however, was practically perfect, like new, and with so many amazing colors.

I think I can do something with the patterns in the secondary circles. I've been finding out the more I work on this that taking pictures from the outside of cathedrals/churches is a lot harder, but a lot easier to deal with once you have the pictures, because stained glass is often painted on, and sometimes it's really hard to see the underlying patterns behind the paint, which you can see from the back. The issue is, you can't see the colors terribly well. As with anything, it's a trade off.

One thing I never knew about the cathedral is that it's situated on an island, one of two right next to each other in the middle of the Seine. They are adorable, and I would highly recommend wandering the streets on those islands. I rather enjoy wandering in confined spaces like that, because with such prime real estate, you're almost guaranteed not to wander into any bad areas of town, quite a concern when you're traveling alone.

I had plans to meet a group for dinner that evening, so after getting my fill of the islands, I started off through the Quarter Latin, taking all afternoon for a long ramble through the streets and gardens between me and my destination. My favorite part of the trip was the Jardin Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, a large public park. The gardens themselves were gorgeous, and I spent a good two hours wandering around, admiring the landscaping and people watching. Parks in France have a lot more for people to do than parks in the US. There were basketball, tennis and bochee ball courts, a playground, chess and checker boards, ping pong tables, pony rides for little kids and a couple of cafes, in addition to the green spaces and walking trails one might expect from an American park.

The best fun I had, however, was along the outer edge of the park. There was an exhibit of photos of nomadic peoples from around the world, generally just engaged in everyday life.



This was one of my favorites, and not only because it applies to my project. Also along the outside edge of the park was an honest to goodness brass band.



These were no average street performers. I'd say that at a guess there were 12-15 members total, with baritones, trombones, trumpets, a saxophone and a couple drummers. They played all kinds of popular and used to be popular music, one of which that I recognized being the Brittany Spears song Toxic. Fun times.

I finally headed out to the restaurant at which I was meeting people, Flam's, for which I had an address, but no directions as I failed to use any kind of internet program to map it. I could find the desired road on my map, so I found that road, at about street number 185. I was aiming for street number 39. I walked, and I walked, and walked and walked and walked, until finally I made it to about street number 45 when the entire road, up to this point a nice wide, well defined boulevard, devolved into a mess of construction, a train station, a bus depot and a street fair, all in one. In near-despair, I look upwards, only to see a huge neon sign on the top of a several story building opposite the mess with the words "Restaurant Flam's" and a big arrow pointing downwards. Quite useful.

After dinner, we took a nighttime boat tour of Paris, yielding my first real view of the Eiffel Tower. Since nothing about Paris is complete without a picture of the Eiffel Tower, here's the requisite shot.



Apparently at night every hour, on the hour for five minutes, the tower sparkles, which was also really cool, but didn't photograph too well.

As you might have noticed, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot that I found that was particularly useful, design-wise. Specifically, nothing useful that really lends itself to a block. I'm starting to think that I need to reevaluate my focus on designing just blocks, and branch out a little. There are some things that I saw that seems more like wall hanging or table runner material than blocks in a large bed quilt. I think I may shift to designing more of a piece for each place I go, which will result in 10-12 or so pieces by the end of the trip, which I can then work on for the rest of the summer once I get back home, and then through the semester. Hopefully by the end of the summer I can have sufficiently many pieces done to be able to fill out book proposals for different publishing companies before I head back to classes and such.

Block #4 - York

My arrival into York was somewhat less auspicious than my arrival in Glasgow, though the whole adventure turned out very well. In a very real sense, this stop on my journey was the sole reason I ended up braving the cold and winds in Scotland and northern England. The museum of the National Quilt Guild of Great Britain is located in York, and after having missed out on making the trip the last time I was in England I was determined to visit. But back to my arrival. Up until this point, things had been cold – 40s and 50s most days, when I packed for summer – but for the most part I had been dry. The wind cut me to the bone, but I had been dry, despite the ominous overcast skies nearly every day. That luck ran out when I got to York. It was cold, windy, overcast and raining.



Real rain, too, not that misty sort of shenanigans that happens so often in the British Isles, but is fairly easy to shrug off. Nope, it was raining.

Luckily, the rain only lasted that night, and by the next morning it was still freezing cold, still windy, but at least it was fairly dry. My first stop was to the quilt museum, which was great fun, especially having been to the US National Quilt Museum in Paducah a couple weekends ago for comparison. I'd say that the British museum had fewer quilts and less exhibit space, but their focus was somewhat different from the American museum. The latter showcased AQS show winners from the past in the main gallery of the museum, a special exhibit by a contemporary quilter in a second gallery, and an exhibit of quilts on the sunflower theme, both new and antique. The former focused more on the historical tradition of quilting in the UK, and had representative examples of different quilting traditions.

A lot of their quilts weren't necessarily confined to the cottons that we see so often in American quilting. They quite often included silks and velvets in and among cotton fabrics, like crazy quilting, except that they used them as we would any other cotton for patchwork and appliqué. Many of the older quilts were constructed using a technique that I had never seen before (and I'm not entirely convinced I like) called mosaic patchwork. The reason I'm not sure I like it yet is that it just looks sloppy (to me), because you can see the stitching putting the pieces together. The quilt tops are constructed by cutting the shapes you want out of paper, and basting your fabric to the paper with a seam allowance turned under the edges. You then use an overhand stitch to attach the pieces together, which in most of the examples I saw left the stitches on the top of the fabric where they could be seen. It does look like a handy technique to use for putting together a bunch of irregular shapes, so I'll have to try it out and see how it goes.

After the quilt museum, I headed (where else?) to the local craft shop, the only place locally that carried quilting supplies. I picked up a couple fat quarters to commemorate the trip, and headed off to find a nice hot cup of tea for lunch. After a wonderful (hot!) lunch, I visited the York Minister, or cathedral.



Yet another awe-inspiring building, with a ton of history and beautiful stained glass, some of the oldest and largest windows in Europe, if the tour guide is to be believed. Then again, every other think about the York Minister was the oldest/largest/best of something in Europe, so I'm thinking he may have been biased, and may have carefully selected his categories.

One of the coolest things about York is that the medieval wall running around the city is still mostly intact, and is open every day for people to just walk along.



I had great fun circumnavigating the city rather than mundanely walking through the streets. The most exciting part of the wall, especially in the drippy dreary weather we had been having, is that apparently no one ever worried about the defenders falling backwards off the wall, that is, back into the city. Thus, although there were ramparts on the side of the wall that may be attacked, your ledge dropped off into the city without any kind of barrier. Needless to say, I was quite careful navigating the wall.

York was also a fun town to just get lost in, something I rarely enjoy doing. The street map looked like a newly begun game of pick-up sticks, and navigating the warren of tiny little pedestrian streets and alleyways in the old town was about as logical as you might expect. I got well and truly lost a couple times, but it wasn't as distressing as it might be in any other town, because you were never more than about half a kilometer away from the wall, the river, the minister or the main road bisecting the town, so no matter how lost you got, you were only about five minutes walking distance in any given direction from figuring out where you were again. During my ramblings, I ran across this storefront of the Yorkshire Terrier Pub, that was interesting to me, design wise.



With an eye towards design, I also took this picture of some apartment balconies overlooking the river running through the city center.



With that, I finished my adventures in England, and next head off to Paris to try my luck at design there.