A Quilter's View of Cologne Cathedral

(We've edited this post to add the church and now if you click on the images, you'll go to larger pictures.)

Sonja's husband, Phillip, took the train over to Arnhem late Monday and on Tuesday, the three of us drove to Cologne, Germany, to see the famous Cologne Cathedral and then back to Amsterdam. Cologne Cathedral is one of the largest churches in the world and it was hard to photograph from our vantage point. You can easily find information online about its history, but, ever the quilter, I was as interested in the floors as anything else!

When quilters look at this tile floor, we see Square Within a Square and Variable Stars:



The floor came first, but in my book Six is for Hexagons, a design similar to this tile floor pattern is called Stars Among the Tumbling Blocks:



Below is a cool version of Jack's Chain. When we introduced the multi-size hexagon ruler, one of the quilts I planned to make was Jack's Chain. I've made several other quilts using the hexagon ruler, but Jack's Chain is still on the back burner.


I saw many beautiful "appliqued" mosaic floors like this one:



and some amazing mosaics that would make terrific border patterns:




Cologne Cathedral is huge, and I took many more photos than I can share here. But, to give you some idea of how big the church is...

Sonja stood by a nearby statue so we would have a series of photos to show scale. See the signs going around the statue?



This is what they say:



Now, imagine that "statue" perched on top of one of the church spires! And putting it up there in the 1880s. Amazing!