I've Been Away!
- Sarah Fielke
- Oct 29, 2025
- 6 min read
I certainly have. What a wonderful trip we had. It was 100% absolutely bananas and non-stop, but also 100% absolutely lovely. If you have children who are grown and gone from the house, you will know that the chances to have them all to yourself are few and far between - and so having Oscar with us for two and a half weeks was such a treat. And despite two and a half weeks of crazy busy-ness, sharing hotel rooms and being in each other's company 24/7, there wasn't a cross word spoken in all that time. I feel very lucky and very happy.
Of course it wasn't all holiday - I taught in The Netherlands for two days - but usually when I take these trips, I get maybe a week of holiday at the most, taken in grabs of a day or two here and there between visits to lots of different teaching venues. Or sometimes no holiday at all. This time it was all holiday and just the two little teaching grabs in between. What a luxury!
We met Oscar in Paris. He had been travelling all through Greece, then Copenhagen and London with his partner, Alyssa, for five weeks by the time we caught up with him. He was well and truly in Holiday Mode. Alyssa had to go home for work, but this is the first big holiday Oss has taken in the four years he's been in his current job, so he had saved up a load of leave and he was ready to party. I don't think we sat still for more than five minutes the whole time he was with us - I slept every night like the dead 😂
I won't drag you through every moment of the trip like some kind of horrifying travel blog, but there are some major highlights I wanted to share with you, mainly of the design and textile kind. Firstly some that aren't from my trip at all, but from Oscar's - he and Alyssa went to the Tivoli theme park in Copenhagen, one of the world's oldest theme parks. It was founded in 1843, inspired by theme parks in Paris. It was established on Copenhagen's old fortifications after receiving permission from the royal family, with the argument that entertainment would distract from politics. The park is one of the world's oldest amusement parks and served as a major inspiration for Walt Disney when creating Disneyland, who admired its clean and magical atmosphere. I hope to visit it one day myself - but as soon as Oss showed me the photos I was completely enchanted, so much so that I've started dreaming up the 2026 BOM. Now, I have other things in the works for that too (hello, The Patchwork Girl of Oz) so I am not guaranteeing that Tivoli will be the inspiration for next year but.... what do you think? Which captures your imagination the most? Remembering of course that neither are exact interpretations, much like this year's Słodki and previous BOMs like Rainy Days and Sun Rays and The Strawberry Thief.
No boobies in the BOM, I promise. 😀 Isn't it wonderful? I of course went down a total rabbit hole and found a load of artwork inspired by Tivoli, both recent and old, which made me even more excited. Some are just inspirations and some original posters etc, here are some links if you're interested. None of them are quilts which is also good, I don't like to do something the same theme as another quilt designer if I can help it.
Buzzing with ideas but I will have to wait, this month's Słodki pattern is not written yet which is VERY unlike me, but with the Sydney Quilt Show right before we left I am playing a bit of catch up. Never mind the Christmas Sew Along starting on Saturday, and a fabric deadline looming eerily in my very near future....
Anyhoo. Once we were in France we started the first in what would be a long string of museums and old houses and royal palaces (and yes, Oscar is just as tragic as me... being a designer himself he loves wandering around looking at arty and design-y stuff). I feel like some of the things will take more than one post to talk about so I'm going to start here with our trip to the Musée du Louvre and we can go from there over the next few posts.
Titania Sleeping by Richard Dadd.... I love the flowers, leaves and curliques in that archway, but most of all I LOVE the bat borders in the corners! I may need a new Halloween design for next year.
This painting is a predella panel from the altarpiece of the Holy Trinity, titled "Saint Jerome and the Lion". It was painted in the 15th century. Quite apart from the excellent expression on the lion's face, the juxtaposition of the tiles on the floor and the black and white stripes in the doorway are making me want to start stitching RIGHT. NOW.
The patterns on this Minoan teracotta larnax (a small closed coffin for ashes) are wonderful. I'm going to add a pic that isn't mine here too, from the Louvre website, so that you can see the whole thing.
This dear little Greek fox (or dog?) with a bird on his back will absolutely make an appearance in a quilt one day. 323BC and he's still got it.
Heiroglyphs would be good appliqué. Just saying.
And yes, we predated the not so genius heist - in fact we had two days before they were stolen looked at every one of those pieces, some in detail, especially the incredible bow of 1,300 diamonds. I photographed the lovely little crown that was dropped outside the museum and sadly broken. It was truly lovely - and so tiny! - so I hope that it can be restored.
The next day we walked up the insanely steep hill that is Montmatre to the Baselique du Sacre-Coer. Despite many trips to Paris I hadn't ever been to Montmatre and it did not disappoint. In the beautiful shopping village below I spotted this marvellous fellow guarding the local butcher.
It is such a beautiful area and our eyes were on stalks the whole time. I won't post photos of the inside of the Basilica as if you haven't been I don't want to spoil the eye candy for that one day trip you may make! I did take pics of this marvellous little thing. Not being in any way Catholic and therefore ignorant of such things, I described it as a teeny church circus and Oscar as a priest teepee, but no, it seems it's called an umbraculum or ombrellino, which is an historic piece of papal regalia and insignia. So you learn something new every day. It symbolises the pope's authority over the basilica, so the next time I see one I shall turn knowledgeably to those with me and explain in a condescending tone, lest they come up with a childish name for it. Whatever it's called it's very pretty and festive and slightly quirky and I like it. I also couldn't resist the stonework on the outside trim of the building - not only are both designs an excellent quilt border, but IMAGINE the work and skill that went into carving those. The wider border is about 2 1/2" wide and the thinner one below about 1 1/2". Around the whole building. Wowzers.
Now I've started I could go on for quite some time but for fear of wearing you down I shall stop before I get to the rhapsodizing I will do at Versailles and The Trianon. We can amble along there at a later date. I hope you've all been well and getting loads of stitching done in my absence, and I hope you're all going to sew along with me for Christmas. If you haven't yet joined the Christmas Sew Along and would like to, all you have to do is sign up at my website. Sign up is free, and to participate you just need to be making one of the six Christmas patterns on this page
and then sign up for free here
and you could be making something very very cute for Christmas and also be in the running to win some fun prizes! We start on Saturday with the first blog post so quick sticks to pop your name down.
Have a great week peeps,
Sarah x
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