Bauhaus and Babylon

Building designed by Walter Gropius

Examples of Bauhaus weavings

On Monday we walked through the diplomatic quarter to the Bauhaus archive museum, Berlin being the last resting place of the Bauhaus school after Weimar and Dessau.I didn't have my camera with me but I really enjoyed the exhibits. The precursor of my kitchen chairs was on display. Most directly relevant to patchwork were the weavings, one in particular I liked  but it doesn't seem to be featured in the book I bought.
Yesterday we visited the Pergamon in the throes of massive building works (like so much of Berlin. Here the blue version of the Coca Cola tiles appeared on the Ishtar Gate built by Nebuchadnezzar.

Detail of Babylonian gate

On my travels

Detail of tiles on Coca Cola building

I am in Berlin at the the moment, house exchanging and getting a taste of city life. This morning we walked along to look at a remaining section of the dividing wall by the river and remembered a long ago holiday in the Harz just in the West and seeing the watchtowers. always with two not a single occupant, and hearing the guard dogs barking.  The old communal gas pipes wend their way along some of the former East side streets where we are staying but corporations are erecting smart newedifices by the river. Two offered a smidgen of patchwork inspiration.
Before I left I prepped wadding before having a quilt long armed by spraying, steaming and hanging on the line to disperse creases from tight packaging. It worked too.

Wadding on line

The very day before leaving it was the U3A Open Day and I was delighted to see two quilts including the blocks I taught last autumn term.

Grace's quilt

and Georgie's

Finishing Post

Thimbleberry Squares

I find hand quilting very enjoyable and relaxing but make too many tops to have time to quilt them all, quilting by chequebook is expensive and I find machine quilting stressful and tend to put it off but I have gritted my teeth lately and got past quilters' block.
I did hand quilt the Thimbleberry squares as my husband found it an acceptable replacement for the 20 year old lap quilt currently in use but worn out; another one (Poppies) is going to a friend so that merits longarming, another (Sisters Log Jam, photo later)  has been machine  quilted and now I'm sewing down the binding (a task I  like) and as I was machine quilting Hawaiian Snails Trail in the ditch I took control by using my hand Singer for the job. And the latest Linus quilt I machined the binding as well as the top (photo later).

Poppies

First Linus Quilt of this year now handed over.
This is the top as I forgot to take a photo of the finished piece.

Sandwiching Hawaiian Snails trails adding extra height to
table  legs.

Trusty hand turned Singer

Hawaiian Snails Trails laid out on wadding.