When I went to France last year, September 2023, my friend Julie and I went on a textile tour with Rebecca Devaney. You can find more info about her here and if you are familiar with the Haptic and Hues podcast, she is often referenced. Anyway, one of the shops we visited was Annie Bouquet’s shop in Montmarte. She paints canvases for needlepoint and embroidery.

Anyway, she doesn’t speak English and I do not speak French but we speak embroidery and boy we hit it off. I wish I spoke French as her warmth and love for her work and for those of us who enjoy it and our crafts really shines through.

I bought this big piece (probably about 15” x 15”).

We went to her shop several times. The first time was on Rebecca’s textile tour of Paris and we were introduced to her for the first time. During the tour we didn’t have time to shop so Rebecca talked about Annie’s history and her shop. Julie and I went back the same day after the tour. I bought the big piece above. The next few days we went back a couple of more times before our World of Quilts Tour began. Julie had gone online and found a piece she wanted and messaged Annie about it. We went back and Julie made arrangements for it to be shipped to her home while we were on tour. On one of our visits we both bought a small piece mainly because I couldn’t leave the shop without buying more. I’m relieved to have restrained myself to the one big piece and the one little piece. But we are using the little piece to practice on before we start the big piece.

I’m so glad Julie is doing this project with me. She is the one who pulled out her small project and got started on it. She needed a little help because she hadn’t done this kind of embroidery in a long time so she asked me and I used it as an excuse to start mine even though I have a a bunch of WIPs going already. The instructions were in French so we used the help of Google Translate and Mr. Google to get us going. It used the term ‘The Point of St. Cyr’ which we thought was where we start but after googling, it looks like this is also called petit point and in my work of cross stitch is also the tent stitch. Hopefully we are doing it right and I didn’t lead Julie astray.

Always

Melanie