Patchworkmesse Erding 2022

I have finally defeated The Cursed Project! But it was a close call. I was at the Hausarzt on the Friday before for something completely different, coughed a bit, and as punishment was given a PCR test and told to isolate until the results came back negative, which of course they did. Waste of 28€. Anyway…Saturday night we went to the Fresinger Volksfest with a clean conscience, and Sunday afternoon to the Patchworkmesse in Erding.

As four of my pieces were on the small side, we found them in the upstairs gallery: the first three together by the light switches and security alarms as you walk in. Couldn’t miss ’em.

Yes, this is the first time you are seeing these hand-stitched pieces in full (detail shot from 2021). I was planning a dramatic Big Reveal for April, before I got derailed and then distracted.

The Blue Okto is painted onto a piece of plain white fabric and stitched and finished with techniques I learned from Susan Shie in 2004, when she was transitioning from intensely hand-stitched and beaded pieces to air-brushed cloth paintings. While we were admiring it, another quiltmaker asked me how I made the little circles on the tentacles. “With a very small paintbrush,” I said, or at least tried to say. The look on her face may have been horror. Heh.

On a different wall in the gallery hung The Cursed Project, which I named “The Yellow One” on the entry form because yellow sounds friendlier. Two ladies asked the white-gloved volunteer to bring it closer, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. It’s enough to know it piqued interest.

It took us awhile to find the Scrapbag Hexagons, which I called “Calico Flowers”. It was in the basement by the bathrooms. [eyebrow emoji] Fair enough; the overall workmanship this year was much higher than in previous Septembers, and my stitching on this one looked below average.

(I am looking a bit cliché these days. Please scroll past.)

We had some time to kill before we were able to pick up the quilts at the end of the show, so we had a late lunch at the Gasthaus zum Erdinger Weißbräu. The brewery Erdinger Weißbräu is famous in European winter sports, where the non-alcoholic version is used as an isotonic recovery drink. We had the wheat beer brewed especially for the Erdinger Volkfest.

As I could not decide between Fleischpflanzerl and Kässpatzen, they brought me both, and it was amazing.

The next show is scheduled for September 2023. I better get busy.