The first birthday without the usual phone in the morning from my mum, but ...  with a lot of friends who took over ...  many thanks for all the wishes ! It's giving a warm feeling.

Spoiled myself with a new door mat ... to welcome visitors with bright and vivid colours.

Here another view of Asian-Laken....

Quand on ne regarde que le mur autour du pavillon chinois on se croirait au Moyen-Age avec les remparts autour des châteaux....on attend que les samourais. Mais ceux-ci sont pour l'instant cachés dans la tour Japonaise ;-)

Et en plus vous trouverez partout des roches entre les haies avec des inscriptions (mystérieuses?...). Il y a de quoi passer un bon moment avec des enfants (petits et grands) à leur faire chercher tel ou autre dessin / motif.

Et avouez que marcher sur un escalier usé vers une entrée comme celle-ci,  vous allez vous sentir princesse pour une minute .... ou deux ...
avec dans votre tête la musique de Turandot de Giacomo Puccini, mais on rêve à une fin "ils vécurent heureux"...

Mais il n y pas que cela :  non loin de là se trouvent d'autres petits bijoux à découvrir. 
Vous pouvez d'abord passer par ici :

Et puis vous verrez ce beau dieu Neptune,
dont je ne vous montre que les muscles de dos
(à vous d'aller voir ce qu'il y a devant....).

C'est une des fontaines de Bruxelles (ça se trouve au rond point au Gros-Tilleul ~ Dikke-Linde) qui, tout comme le reste de l'endroit, fut commandée par le roi Léopold II.
Elle est la copie de la fontaine de Jean de Bologne (16*siècle)
de la Piazza del Nettuno à Bologne.

Donc à vous d'aller voir l'autre côté .....à moins que ce ne soit que le poisson sous son pied  qui vous intéresse

Et puis vous n'êtes pas loin de cette construction que vous verrez, maintenant au travers des arbres, mais au printemps il faut partir plus en avant pour la découvrir.
Je vous parlerai des grandes Serres Royales une autre fois.

 J'attends l'hiver maintenant avec ces brûmes, brouillards, givre et peut-être de la neige  pour faire d'autres photos de cet endroit sublime  ...

In 2004 I signed in for an international quilt project. The meaning was to make a little quilt  about  'to be remembered'. All the little quilts would be sewed together for a big quilt, and this would be sold for Unicef - Finally it became a quilt of 3.5m on 2.2m !
There was the size of the square to respect, but further you could do whatever you wanted.
On this website   you'll see them all.  
Here's the picture of my participation : already with little pieces of laces and crochetwork of my grandmother, in a heart shape in crazy patchwork and with a background fabric that was before a skirt : all stuff that had his own little history.

Afterwards we all received a bookmark with the picture of our little quilt on it, which I found very nice.
On the back of the bookmark is featuring a part of the big quilt; I can see several other little quilts sewed together. More pictures are on the link. We were five from Belgium having joined this project, and as you can notice: the participants came from all over the world.

Such projects shows very good that patchwork & quilting is universal.

I still have my bookmark in my pocket-agenda ;-)

Who's looking for inspiration from asian culture for her quilts or embroidery  ?  Then you'll have  to go to our "Asian" musea in Laken.

Just open your eyes, walk around the different constructions and you'll get lots of designs you can use for fine needlework or patchwork/quilting/appliqué.

 Every balcony is worked out in a gordious pattern with always a different centerpiece, just a frame in a frame.
The images carved in wood and stone are just waiting for an appliqué or embroidery....

You go up or down, there's always someone keeping an eye on you, watching and protecting you like a guardian angel ...

... most of the times they're giving you a big,  big  smile ...

Beautiful faces, worked out in a circle and squared .... the architects made it easy to you for you patterns ;-)

All the doors are also different, with lots of details.
Maybe kitschy in total view on your homes, but some of this particular craftmanship could be incorporated.

Do you have a fence ? What about this one (I love the red colour !)

.........

Some other pictures will follow in next postings
&  who knows ....
we'll meet over there some day ?

As promised : here the posting with the little quilt in which I already used a tiny little part of my mum's button collection.

But first you have to know that my lessons and workshops for this season are reduced to a minimum, as I didn't had much time this year to make a full program  -- it seems a little like I take a sabbatical quilting-year ...
I've just the 'unshakable four', very faithful : they come to learn a few things =  Liliane, Nadine, Belinda & Sonja. At home I don't take more than 4 persons, because I want them to have some 'space' to cut, sew, lay out the little snaps,...   But if someone is interested in me for coming to their group to teach one or other machine-quilting-technique, be welcome to contact me !

So I'm trying to push these four ladies a little bit, so that they think and stitch more creative then they already are, and thus I said in september that we'll do this season (besides a few other projects) some little quilts with a theme. It is homework, so no-one is influenced by the others.   It must be  35 cm square (this is not to small so it's still easy to stitch, not to big so it does not take much time) and it must have three layers (or more); the used technique is free, as well as the fabrics. Because my quilt-lessons are 'machine-work' it must be done with the sewing machine. The first deadline was this week, .... and only two of them made it !
I think I'll have to be more firm, resolute and drastic with them.... maybe a system of penalty ?? Liliane already brought a box of chocolates because she became for the first time a grand-ma (of a little Chloë), so maybe it'll be a good idea to say that the one who doesn't do her homework, has to bring a box of chocolates. Risky for our waist, because what if they all four bring chocolates....instead of making their quilts ?

Nevertheless, this first one little quilt had "closed" as instruction.

Nadine made this one :

A gentle beige-ecru background in cotton, with a fine 'wave' quilting. She loves felting, so she made little 'flaps' in blue felt and fixed it with buttons, so it is like little shutters, right now closed.

Belinda's one :

She rarely uses patchwork-cottons, challenging herself to try slippery fabrics, and here again she took organza, synthetics, mixed with other semi-cotton fabrics. She thought on a stop sign (the center in red and white) and used her 'alphabet' embroidery to tell you that it's closed. In the right lowest corner she fixed a little money purse (the one for little cents : you push at both ends and it opens, made of three ellipses).

And mine : I made it last week when I was cleaning my mum's boxes : you already saw the button collection, well, here is my little quilt with all kind of 'fasteners'.

I sewed them in heart-shape, took two zippers ( the left one is really special with all the little rhine-stones fixed on it), put safety-, badge- and brooch-pins, zipper-pullers, pressfasteners in different sizes, buttons in all kind of material, clips and snaps, hook&eyes, ... a big mingling of all kind of closure-items. The background is made of different pieces of jeans.

Lett's hope that next month, I'll have more than three quilts to show to you !