This is a work in progress. It’s been like this for a couple weeks now and I have not been motivated to touch it. I think I’ve been looking at this fabric too long.
I was using this quilt as inspiration but only got halfway there. Maybe if I post some WIP photos, that will help light the fire…
The Carnival in Binche, dating back to 1549 and now on the UNESCO World Heritage list, was quite different from the Carnival in Aalst (in my last entry). I went to Binche with the American Women’s Club and we had a great time. We rode the train together, toured the Mask Museum, ate lunch, and then watched the parade. Next year, we should definately have a Mask Decorating Workshop before we go. :)
Our Group in front of the Mask Museum
Binche is famous for the Gilles, a society of a 1000 men from the city of Binche, who dress up in folk costumes for the parade. The costumes are linen suits covered with heraldic emblems in Belgium’s colors. Their shirts are stuffed with straw and topped off with frilly lace collars. Bells hang from their belt and they also wear wooden shoes, adding to the noise when they march and dance. When in costume, the Gilles may not sit, or go anywhere without a drummer.
Gilles walking down the street
On Fat Tuesday, the Gilles start their day at 4AM, getting dressed in their costumes, and wait for a drummer to pick them up. They gather for a breakfast of oysters and champagne. Then, they march to the Town Hall to dance. The rest of the day, there was a constant drone throughout the city as they marched on the cobblestone streets.
Gilles in their morning dance with masks
In their morning routine, the Gilles wear wax masks with green glasses and red hair to represent Napoleon III and carry small bundles of sticks, called ramons. In olden days, the sticks would be used to smack people who weren’t wearing costumes.
Laurie caught an orange
Around 3PM, the Gilles gather for the parade, now carrying baskets of blood oranges, that they throw at the parade watchers. I caught 3! They wear huge, heavy hats of ostrich feathers. Parade watchers wear yellow mimosa flowers if they’re single.
Pierrots throwing oranges
There are a couple of other groups marching in the parade too. The Peasants are young boys wearing navy shirts and carrying satchels of oranges. The Arlequin were young girls in colorful outfits and green hats. And the Pierrot were children in green, blue, pink, or yellow costumes. These kids were from the city’s schools.
Hecklers being pegged with oranges
The streets of the parade were reinforced with plywood since throwing oranges and roudy crowds can be rough. These teenagers had climbed to the top of a signpost and egged the Gilles to peg them with oranges. They finally climbed down in defeat and the crowd cheered.
The rest of my photos are on Flickr:
This week, in New Orleans, it’s Mardi Gras, and in Belgium, we’re celebrating Carnivale. Schools are on holiday and for three days, various towns host parades and celebrations. I got to go to two very different Carnivale celebrations here. The first one Thomas and I went to was in Aalst with our new friends, Reid and Kirk, and their daughter. (The second one will be a different post.)
Shiny, Happy Parade Watchers (that's us!)
The Aalst streets were packed with people in costume, the air smelled like fair food, and the street was lined with confetti and streamers. We heard music – from techno beats to polka – all around us. The parade slowly rolled through. These guys (uh, ladies) sang and danced in unison.
The parade was a little racy, by American standards at least. Though I couldn’t understand the songs or read the banners, a lot of the floats seemed to be making fun of local politicians. Costumes also included exaggerated or exposed chests and behinds.
Politician hanging from the chandelier
Costume Malfunction
The weirdest float had Smurfette giving birth. They even had a fake baby smurf come out of a hidden compartment.
Smurfette giving birth
My favorite float showed firefighter playboys posed by their calendar month. Though they were not the sexiest I’ve seen, it was funny.
Complete with strategically-placed star
I recommend checking out some of the other floats and the rest of our photos online:
Jacquie, from Tallgrass Prairie Studios, made a call out to crafty bloggers to challenge themselves and making some improvisational quilt blocks without a pattern or precise cuts. She’s then collecting the blocks to sew into charity quilts. Since I’m one of those persons who will notice a crooked painting on the wall, I thought this would be a great challenge for me. I volunteered for the blue/green quilt and started to dig through my vintage sheet scraps. I came up with three blocks.
This was my first one. She requested a log cabin-style block, but my improv was using scraps without cutting new fabric and not pre-planning the fabric placement.
This is my second one. For this, I wanted to try a hexagon-shaped log cabin. We have a quilt made from blocks like this that my mother-in-law made. This was trickier to know when I was done since it wasn’t square.
This is my last block. It’s less improvisational, but it’s my favorite pattern. I’ve been thinking about a quilt with squares inside squares, so I wanted to give it a try – very easy. The fabrics were still scraps, so the thickness was still improvisational.
Last Friday, I went on a tour of St. Michael Cathedral with the American Women’s Club. The cathedral, in downtown Brussels, was built over a period of 300 years, starting in the 13th century. After some explanation on different architecture styles and time periods, it was easy to spot differences throughout the church.
The tour was specifically focused on the crypts from the 1000′s that were discovered when the church was being renovated. The walls were covered with carvings of people’s names, dogs and other animals and even a date in Roman numerals – graffiti of the time. Though this was interesting, I particularly enjoyed learning about the stained glass windows.
The first thing I learned about the stained glass windows is that it was mostly political – they were honoring the king and his family. In this window, you can see the king and his brother kneeling before God. The family’s coat of arms are shown below and the flag’s of the countries they ruled at the top.
Several of the windows showed political leaders (kneeling) with their patron saints and wives behind them. At the tops, it showed the coat of arms and the initials of the leader. I think this one was Ferdinand and Ann in the 1500′s.
There were also some windows that told stories. I liked seeing the detail in the outfits the people wore in this one.
And there were some that did tell bible stories. This is one of my favorites showing judgment day, with some people going to Heaven, above the blue sky.
Our guide explained that the bright windows like this were made by crushing colored stones and mixing them with melted glass. Other windows from another time period were much darker because they got their color by painting on them.
After the tour of the church, we went by the Belgian Cartoon Center and the Botanique Cultural Center to learn about Art Nouveau and Art Deco architectural styles. Those styles are much more my taste. Our tour ended at a beautiful Art Deco-style cafe called Ultieme Hallucinatie. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos, but it was a very ornate, cozy place.
To see more of my photos from this tour, check Flickr:
Powered by the ZenLite Theme
