Chasing Lightning Bugs Studio Blog

this is the third day of a quilty christmas.  and although i love every quilt, i have a special connection to this one.  this quilt is an elegant, tone on tone patchwork of solid white and cream, cotton and linen.  it's the perfect backdrop for gray, shadowy colored thread to sew words into.  and the back is a linen colored cotton printed with an illustrated map of paris.
20 years ago i lived in paris.  i'm not alone in my love for this city.  i love the smell of diesel that seeps through it's streets.  i love it's serpentine underground metro tunnels.  i love the language.  the parcs.  i love the architecture and the churches.  i love the books and the narrow streets.  the gray and rainy days.  the climb out of a metro station to a square patch of sky. i love the people. the markets.  the street food.  i love the smells.....so many many smells. i love the fabric stores in narrow hilly streets leading up to sacre coeur.  and let me say again, i love the metro.  it connects the city, making it so much less massive.  and when i would head home at the end of a day of wandering with my heavy bag of cameras and film, books and all the treasures i'd collect along the way, i would ultimately be on line 1.  this line cuts a swath east to west through the city.  it was the first metro line to open.  and it's stations are historic and memorable.  i would embark at the chatelet station and the second last station on the line would drop me a 5 minute walk from my apartment in saint mande.  other stations on this line are bastille, le louvre, tuileries, champs elysees and hotel de ville to name a few.  
so this quilt has the names of these historic stations, quilting the layers of cotton together, written in a smooth flowy script.  you can feel the energy.  it's like a little journey across the city, with your eye settling on many of the high points.  oh i love this quilt.  and now you know why.  you can find more info on this beauty if you visit the listing on etsy.