The approach to Chateau d'Angers

For today’s post we’re heading back to Angers, briefly. We visited the city for the first time this summer, and as with any city exploration we went on foot without too much of a route planned. We’d started the day in the Jardin des Plantes on the other side of town and meandered our way towards the river, and the castle which frankly is too big a landmark to miss!

I like the meandering as your wish takes you approach to seeing a city, as much like exploring a garden, sometimes there’s things that just pull you that way and sometimes you don’t know why, but often you end up seeing things you never knew existed, and wouldn’t perhaps have known about if you’d stayed on the more usual routes.

But anyway, we found ourselves down by the river and ahead of us we were intrigued by what we could see, it looked like a tunnel of plants which looked intriguing.

When we got closer that’s exactly what it was - we were too late to see the wisteria in flower (sadly).

But the scent of jasmine and roses filled the space, which also did a great job of screening the traffic from the busy road running alongside the river - beauty and function working well together!

The only thing is that we knew we’d need to climb the hill, as for good reasons castles generally aren’t built at low level are they?

It was understandably quite a way up, and a great lookout spot. But if we hadn’t meandered this way we’d have missed walking through the scent filled ‘tunnel’ and missed seeing this magnolia with it’s rickety fence.

I wasn’t expecting to see such formal gardens in the former moat of the castle, it was just what we needed to spur us on - as not only did we have to walk up, we also needed to walk around the boundary of the castle. The more usual route would have been far less steps, but I’m glad we didn’t opt for that.

We didn’t find a way to get down into this part of the castle gardens, and it may not have been possible - but having seen them as we approached the castle we didn’t mind so much.

And before I finish, let’s take a moment to admire the slate edged wall - that’s equally as impressive. We made our way to the castle entrance and enjoyed more gardens inside the castle’s walls, I’ll share some of those photos in the next post I share from our French trip, but until then I’m off to figuratively get my breath back.

From Sewing to Sowing

* I was invited to this year’s Gardeners’ World Live preview and provided with a pair of tickets for the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

This is the perfect name for a garden isn’t it? I think the designer Annabel Davies should win a prize solely for that, and I’m sure she’s very happy with the Gold award that the judges gave her, but even so - or should that be sew?

But anyway, the garden reflects Annabel’s journey from sewing film costumes to gardening after she discovered a love of growing flowers and vegetables in 2020, which sounds like the perfect lockdown distraction too. And I think I’d love to see her costume designs if this is what her garden’s look like, don’t you agree?

But I digress, the garden is inspired by Arts & Crafts gardens and combines ornamental and productive planting - so no doubt another reason why it scored so highly for me. The show notes said that the garden uses a ‘varied textures of flowers and vegetables much like fabrics bring life to a costume design’.

And looking at this garden again a month or two after the show, that totally makes sense - the dense planting (another favourite of mine) meshing together to form the fabric of the garden.

All the while the plants are struggling to be contained by the raised beds and so spill over the edges with abundance.

It really is a garden, with planting that’s full of joy. Sigh.

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for once again inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was another great show! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to this year’s show throughout the year - I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Modern Quilts by Mandy Munroe

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some quilts from this year’s Newark Quilt Show, so today I’ve got some brightly coloured modern designs to share. The quilts here are all made by Mandy Munroe for a variety of modern quilting magazines over the past twelve years or so, and it was great to see them all together. Mandy says this is just a small selection of her quilts, and I’d love to see them all, but for now I’m happy just seeing, and sharing, these - I hope you enjoy them too.

, MANDY MUNROE

The show notes also said that it took Mandy a while to get used to designing quilts six months ahead of publication, so making winter quilts in summer and vice versa, but with access to top-secret fabric prints pre-release must have been thrilling, even if they couldn’t be shared widely, just yet.

I love the colours in the next two square based quilts, but I’m under no illusion to the amount of work in either of these. The Happy Squares quilt below brings ‘doodles in [Mandy’s] notebook were brought to life’ against the colourful squared backgrounds. I’m not sure my doodles could be a quilt, or even if they’d ever be this structured!

HAPPY SQUARES, MANDY MUNROE

CHEQUERBOARD, MANDY MUNROE

And what’s better than a chequerboard - well a chequerboard within a chequerboard of course! This quilt was made from scraps, and the smaller chequerboards meant that using every small scrap was possible.

BUCKLE UP, MANDY MUNROE

Mandy notes that for the Buckle Up quilt above she’d had the bold repeat pattern in her notebook for a while, and with this fabric she ‘went large!’ - I like it, and I like how the shapes make your eyes keep moving over the design.

This next one appeals for the colours, and is an experimentation of different colour combinations pieced into square blocks, and I can see what Mandy means when she says the finished quilt looks like a summer garden with umbrellas (from above).

AL FRESCO SAMPLER, MANDY MUNROE

The brief for this quilt was colours of the Kasbah, and the design is based on a motif that Mandy saw everywhere in Marrakesh. It’s great isn’t it, and I love how the bright colours pop against the neutral background.

KASBAH STAR, MANDY MUNROE

Now this one is very clever, and uses a bundle of Dear Stella Intermix basics which clearly I now need to check out! The bold prints were used on the triangles and the paler prints used to create streaks across the sky - I’m definitely a little bit in love with this one.

INTERSTELLA, MANDY MUNROE

What also struck me though was not every quilt needed to be quite so detailed. These next two take repeating shapes and are no less impactful for it. The one below was for a ‘Monochromatic with a pop’ issue and Mandy kept the design minimalistic and graphic.

MONOCHROMATIC, MANDY MUNROE

STACK, MANDY MUNROE

The quilt above according to the show notes was ‘possibly inspired by containers loading at the docks’ - and now I can’t unsee that, it just goes to show that inspiration is everywhere if we take time to notice it.

WINDOWS AT KEW, MANDY MUNROE

This final quilt was inspired by the brickwork surrounding the windows at Kew Palace, and is based on a photo that Mandy took and then simplified. And if you let your imagination wander it’s perfectly possible to imagine the flowers reflected on the glass.

They’re all brilliant quilts, and I’d be hard pressed to choose a single favourite from them, but what about you - is there one that speaks, or sings to you?