A local patchwork club organised a bus trip to the “salon de patchwork” in Tarbes; twelve ladies from my club signed up, including myself and my friend Jane.

After more than 2 hours on the bus, (we had a couple of stops to pick up other clubs), we arrived at the venue. Our first impressions weren’t great; the hall was big, but there was quite a lot of empty space and there weren’t very many visitors either. We learnt that it was a new venture, so hopefully it will be better next year. There was a campervan expo next door and Jane and her husband have a campervan, so we decided that we’d go there later as we couldn’t imagine it would take the next 6 hours to see everything here.

However, we needn’t have worried; most of the stalls were very interesting, selling fabrics, buttons, patterns, bag making kits  and every kind of accessory imaginable for patchwork. There was also a decent exhibition of work, including from two well known textile artists, who were very happy to chat about their work. My brain was buzzing with ideas.

Tucked away near the back of the hall was a “Lunéville embroidery” stand; I’d never heard of this, but loved the work the artist had produced and could see so many possibilities for its use. There was a little notice offering courses, so I signed up. Jane said she’d have a go too, so we ate our picnic lunch and went back to the stand.

The technique uses a tiny crochet hook to embroider thread on a stretched piece of fabric; you can use any sort of thread and once you’ve mastered the basic technique, can start adding beads and sequins too. We sat either side of a frame that had fabric stretched onto it and the teacher demonstrated and explained how to do the embroidery and drew a 2cm line for each of us to follow. There’s definitely a knack to doing this, which I think I was beginning to find by the time our hour finished. Jane was less successful, being distracted by the people passing by, who wanted to watch what we were doing, but I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it.

At the end of the hour, I’d done a little square with a wiggly tail; the artist seemed impressed, saying that most people manage a short line in that time. So I’m looking to buy some hooks and a table mounted frame holder, as you use both hands, but I can only find ones that come from America – I’ll have to ask Kieran to help.

So, in the event, we never got to the campervan expo and only just had time to see everything we wanted to see before it was time to get back to the bus for the journey home.