My Day in Mulhouse, France: Part 1, Touring the DMC Factory

DMC-USA, the maker of the embroidery threads we have loved all our lives, arranged for me and my fellow contest winners to take the train to Mulhouse, France, for an in depth and personal tour of their factory, as well as of their archives which are housed by the City of Mulhouse.

Truly, it has taken me a month to digest all we saw and I hope I can convey some of our great experiences there.  I must say from the onset, I would very much love to return to Mulhouse for at least a week to properly investigate those archives.  With a good camera!

But this post is about the venerable factory.  At the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, DMC was the first in Europe to buy steam operated machinery for the purposes of manufacture...from the City of Manchester, England.  The company has of course had to adapt to many changes over the centuries, going from employing 5,000 in the 1920's to the 250 employees working there today.  But they've stayed on the cutting edge of efficiency, environmental responsibility, and most of all, quality.

This is the company's founding document, from 1746, from the archives.  But more of this in the next post.  Let's go see our thread being made!

Patti and Laura, on the left, are the shop owners invited by fellow contest winner Louise, center.  They are located in Lancaster, Pa, at Threads Needlework. (That's Louise's wonderful husband, Jerry, also in the center.)  Here we have just arrived after being picked up at the train station by our hosts, Michel Biechlin (current head of Research and Development, but retiring) and Jean-Luc Barbier, Michel's next-in-line.

Jean-Luc and Michel.

We went into a lab where we were shown how threads are meticulously "stress tested" to ascertain exactly if their tensile strength is up to standard.  (DMC invented all these machines, by the way.)

They keep records of every dye lot of every color they make, to ensure that colors are exactly the same.  They make over 400 colors, so this is some amazing documentation.

 

Never will I take a skein of DMC thread for granted again!  This thought went through my mind often during the day...

Once the individual threads were spun, they are here being plied into the 6 strand floss we know so well. (The cotton is from Egypt.)

Another shot of the thread being plied.

It had then to be put into hanks, large ones, so the thread could be mercerized.

(This might be a different thread, like perle.)  But you can see it being wound from the cones into hanks.

Mercerizing is a chemical process that makes the thread smoother with a subtle sheen, and able to accept dye better.  The hanks get dipped into a solution for a short period of time.

Michel probably knows more about thread than just about anyone in the world!

All the different weights and types of threads were there.  I was thrilled!

 

 Have some perle....

You can see, I was starting to get overwhelmed!

And so was Louise....

And this was before we got to the dyeing room!

The hanks have been transformed...

Once they were dyed, three hanks went into a unit.  Each unit gives over 5,000 skeins of the thread we buy at our local needlework shop.  But if it seems like a lot, remember that DMC sells their thread to over 120 countries around the world.

We are talking a zillion miles of thread here.

Every color, every thread, tested and true....and ready for our needles.

The dyed hanks go back onto the cones so they can be measured, cut and packaged into the 8 meter skeins we all know. (We didn't see the other threads being packaged, just the floss.)
Due to reasons of industrial privacy, we were asked not to photograph the machinery where the skeins are made, but here are some labels!

There was so much pride amongst all the employees, and it was well deserved.  They didn't like being photographed, so we left them in peace, hard at work.

Before Michel and Jean-Luc dropped us off at the train station to return to Paris (and after we all had a celebratory glass of wine at the station), we were given bags of goodies.

The tour was treat enough, but we all came home with lots of beautiful thread.

And while the factory was fascinating, the Archives absolutely blew me away, maybe permanently!
That will be in my next post...

I will always treasure the memory of my day at the factory!

Paris Food

The French eat better than we do.
There is just no two ways about it.  We had some wonderful meals, saw some exquisite shops, and each of us, Mary and I, also had some truly memorable experiences...come along and bring your appetite!

Our first stop after checking into our hotel was Angelina's, a tea shop where Coco Chanel and Audrey Hepburn used to go on the Rue de Rivoli across from the Louvre.

The African hot chocolate was truly to die for.

Mary is here having her first crepe.  The Nutella ones were good, but here she was really hungry and ordered one with egg and cheese.  Just scrumptious, and cheap too.

 For our first restaurant experience, this little place looked so quintessentially French!  In we went...but alas...

Mary ordered brains by mistake.  Before we left on our trip, it was the one thing she had said she would not eat in France.

I thought it was hysterical, as only an older sister can.  But my turn was next.

Chartier was highly recommended as a landmark restaurant, not fancy, but venerably serving the working classes with great food for over 100 years.

You had to walk through a little courtyard to find it.  We were so excited!

The waiters scrawl the orders on the paper table cloth..

Our starters were fine, hard boiled eggs with rich homemade mayonnaise, leeks en vinaigrette, and pate.

The grilled anduille sausage, not pictured because it looked SO GROSS, was next to the fries here.  Three bites was all I could manage.  Mary got even with me for laughing at her!

We saw this shop window on our walk home from Chartier, and wished we had eaten here.

The food at the humble sidewalk brasseries was much better.  Salad du Nord and Crock au Madame, yum yum, yum!

We loved going into the little shops, just to see how they have their food arranged so beautifully. (But then, everything is beautiful in Paris.) Fruit on one side, vegetables on the other.

This was a greek "deli".  Everything looked so good, but we were just window shopping.

This little table of pasta was in the Italian deli next door to the Greek one.

The French onion soup was truly the best we ever tasted, the real deal.

Our favorite meals were picnics.  Here is a typical boulangerie where we bought bread and pain au chocolat.

The peaches straight off the shelves were juicy and perfumed...real fruit, not bred for shipping with no flavor like ours.  ;-(  The cheese was brie and glorious.

 The evening picnics on the Seine are our favorite memory....

 For our last picnic we found this extraordinary cheese shop in St. Germain des Pres.

I was not supposed to take pictures in there, but I did anyways.  We found the most incredible Camembert  that just defies description.  We got drunk on it.

And where else to go for a late night desert than a chocolate shop?

We walked so many miles every day that we didn't gain any weight....and agreed that the cheese was our favorite food...I need to go back and do some serious study of the pastry!

In my next post I'll write about trim shopping in Montmartre....
Adieu!

Just Home from Paris...

 

I have SO much to tell you about.....

But I have to get acclimated being back home.  Many pictures and posts to follow....

Thank you DMC for ever!!!

50% Off My Craftsy Class Through Spetember 21st!

50% off is a great bargain!  Craftsy has so many great classes and lovely fabrics, yarns, and other goodies, too.
Remember, you'll receive an ebook copy of my book, Allie Aller's Crazy Quilting with your class materials when you purchase my class, even at this low price.

HERE IS THE LINK!!!!!!

Noah's Quilt

My niece Naomi and her wonderful husband Dino had a baby boy in June.  I finally get to meet the little prince this week-end and will come bearing his baby quilt.

I have got this burgeoning passion to work with vintage textiles, incorporating them into contemporary quilt work.  For Noah's quilt I dipped into my Ebay bin of old blocks, tweaked a few of them, assembled them with some old jellyroll Moda sashing, some plaid cotton upholstery samples, and a few quilters cottons that I had on hand....seriously, this went together F-A-S-T, especially as I quilted it on the HandiQuilter Sweet 16 and machine sewed a ribbon binding on it.  4 days was all it took, with time off for baseball too!

One of the blocks needed red in it to match the other two I used, so a quick applique job took care of that!

Another block had its center taken out (you can see it on the left), with some vintage feedsack cotton swapped in place, so that I had a place to put the name.

These letters have fusible web on the back.  I've learned the hard way to always always always use a ruler to line them up before ironing them down.

 And here are the blocks, ready to be sashed and bordered!

You can see, this will be quick....

Sashings and borders on, piece of cake!

Then I used a tip I learned in Cindy Needham's Craftsy class, "Design It, Quilt It".

Maybe you all know this but I didn't: tape the quilt back to the table nice and taut before layering it with batting and top to pin baste.  What a difference this made! You can see the tape in the upper left corner.

I enjoy making an all over fan quilt design, freehand, no marking.  Easy peasy, and really fun.

A plaid taffeta ribbon made binding the quilt a snap.  What you see here is one of the corners from the back.

One line of zig zag stitch, carefully making sure that the front and back binding edges were sewn down, and it was a done deal.

I didn't want to make a big ol' label but thought a little inscription for the record would be better for this baby quilt. I used a Pentel Gel Roller for Fabric pen.

And here is Noah's quilt, ready for delivery...

 

It is 46" X 48".

Hooray for Noah!