QuiltMania Comes to Visit

Last month I got a phone call from France. QuiltMania editor

Carol Veillon was on her way to the Houston quilt market.

 Could she drop by to interview me?

This Friday????

I corralled some willing friends (fans of the magazine) to help dress the set

at the new house.

We hung our Paducah prize-winning dog quilt.

Quilts everywhere...

After a flurry of activity things looked pretty good.

Carol was primarily interested in my antique quilt collection.

They photographed a few reproduction quilts.

Here is photographer Guy working with one of Roseanne's Smith's

star quilts.

Combination Log Cabin/Crazy about 1900

The new living room became a photography studio.

Is this not a fabulous quilt? I've got room to hang a lot of quilts now.

Zig-Zag quilt of 60 degree diamonds, about 1915.

I never get to see these so it was great to see them up.

Carol and I went through the quilt closet.

Deb and Linda hung quilts and Deb photographed.

Here's a mid-19th century ten-pointed star.

Pretty soon all was in gorgeous disarray

But we all had fun, including Dottie Barker.

We are planning the article for spring, 2015

See QuiltMania's English page here:

http://www.quiltmania.com/english/home.html

See more about the reproduction Birds in the Air quilt in the last photo here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2014/08/backstitch-at-national-quilt-museum-in.html

My Fabric in Quilts I Didn't Make (yet)

Sister's Paint Box 

by Carla at Cora Quilts 

Carla had two packs of Moda precuts: My repro line Metropolitan Fair and Paint Box by Edyta Sitar for Laundry Basket Quilts.

She was pleased to see how well they complemented each other so she

used them to make this quilt from a how-to by Bonnie Hunter. I love her binding

of the stripe from Metropolitan Fair.

The pattern has several names. BlockBase says

Sister's Choice  and Greek Cross from the Kansas City Star

plus

New England Block.

The BlockBase numbers are 1802a

1802b

1802c

(Don't forget the "a" when you type in a numerical query)

See Carla's post here:

http://coraquilts.blogspot.ca/2014/03/sisters-paint-box-quilt.html

And the Woolen Needle has a pattern and

a kit for the quilt they call Ladies' Aid 

using another variation of the vintage pattern.

They chose my fabric line

Ladies' Album.

And it looks like #8280-17 is the border print

I'm guessing she used this two-block variation of the same design:

BlockBase #1001, commonly called Snowball.

See more about the quilt here:

http://www.thewoolenneedle.com/quiltkits.html

Jan Hutchison framed a medallion as a presentation

quilt using a chintz print from my Lately Arrived from

London collection a few years ago.

Check her blog post where you can see the masterful quilting better.

http://thesecretlifeofmrsmeatloaf.blogspot.com/2012/09/thank-you-madame-president.html

Elbe Herbert Johnson's Sampler

Elbe's Sampler

Collection of the Sanibel Historical Museum & Village

Willow Ann snapped this picture of a wonderful turn-of-the-20th-century sampler when she was in Florida. See her post here:

http://www.unfinishedquilter.com/blog/category/travel

Here's a link to the Museum:
http://www.sanibelmuseum.org/

The initials are EHJ for Elbe Herbert Johnson, whose first name was pronounced LB. He was born in Traverse City, Michigan in 1887, so we can guess the quilt was made some time between 1887 and 1907 or so, while he was growing up.

The images are fanciful and familiar.

Perhaps the goblet hopes the Elbe will be temperate.

The flag and Christian cross speak of other hopes.

Knox County, Ohio grave

of Elbe (1887-1967) and Bertha Beckwith Johnson

Elbe grew up to be a physicist who was on the faculty at Ohio's Kenyon college for 41 years. He retired to Danville, Ohio, where he is buried. He seems to have had a long and successful life.

His quilt is in a popular turn-of-the-century style

for samplers. Quilters combined blocks of

different sizes in rather disorganized fashion...

as in these three samplers from the same period.

Elbe's is unusual in it's variety of images and in the building in the center.

One might consider the center block a schoolhouse

but with two stories and two bay windows it

looks like a Queen Anne-style Victorian house...

Perry Hannah house Traverse City, Michigan

something in good supply in Traverse City.

Perhaps the house in the quilt was Elbe's home.

Minick and Simpson, Austin Bluebird Sampler, 2014

Polly and Laurie have captured the circa 1900 sampler style in their Austin Bluebird Sampler.

Here's a link to more about their pattern:

http://minickandsimpson.blogspot.com/2014/06/austin-bluebird-sampler.html

A Tale of Two More Chairs

Side chair newly upholstered with the Strawberry Thief

reproduction from my 2015 Best of Morris for Moda.

On my Modernism blog this week I show some mid-century modern chairs found in Roseanne's basement. I said I hadn't seen any Stickley furniture in any one's basement in quite a while. But I did find these chairs at a garage sale last summer. The original upholstery was a green cotton duck. I immediately thought---William Morris repro.

There are no labels on the chairs. 

They aren't Stickley---at least I couldn't find any like this online.

A Gustav Stickley spindle chair

And they are quite short--although I can't see that they have been cut down.

They make great side chairs.

(I'm really trying to make my new 1970's house

Mid-Century Modern but it keeps turning out Arts and Crafts.)

See my mid-century modern chairs at this post:

http://historicallymodernquilts.blogspot.com/

It's a good thing it's a big house as these pairs of chairs have so little in common.

I can't find a thing about these fumed oak chairs with 12 square spindles. I bought them because they looked so Frank Lloyd Wright.

He did several similar chairs

but none like mine.

And I found this Liberty inlaid spindle chair at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 

London last summer.

I think mine might be a knock-off, perhaps for children.

Sage colorway

I knew I wanted to re-upholster the chairs in the Strawberry Thief

but I had to wait till I received some yardage. The Best

of Morris won't be in shops till February, 2015. Moda airmails

me some early. (Lucky me!)

Indigo Colorway

The Strawberry Thief print is done in three colorways in this line.

Black Colorway

It was hard to choose but I decided on the black and blue-green.

Click here to see more of The Best of Morris:

http://storefront.unitednotions.com/storefrontCommerce/search.do?searchType=keyword&keyword=morris&emailAddress=

Thousand Pyramids Charm Quilt

Thousand Pyramids Charm quilt and Dorothy Barker

I recently got out an old reproduction quilt and spread it over Dot's love seat.

I made the triangle quilt in the early 1990s and it's been folded up

too long. I thought I'd lay it out for a week or two to get out the wrinkles

and then refold it.

The base of the finished triangles on this one measures 2". They are isoceles triangles,

with the base shorter than the side lengths.

I had made my mother-in-law a bed-size, charm quilt like this and

I made a smaller one for me with the leftovers 

This was before I was working with Moda to design reproductions so the darks and lights were from my scrapbag, prints not really marketed at the time as reproductions. I overdyed the really bright white shirting prints with tan Rit Dye to tone them down. I was looking for madder reds and browns, pinks and shirting prints.

Sort of like this one from about 1870-1890

I remember that I was frustrated in piecing this because the differences in the measurements on the sides were hard to see and I was always attaching a base to a side and having to rip. 

I have been looking for a paper piecing project that is NOT hexagons. I think I'll make another one of these with my own Moda reproductions. But I will use equilateral triangles, in which all the angles are 60 degrees and all the sides are the same length.

I looked that pattern up in my BlockBase program and

saw that it is #111a with several names.

I like Joseph's Coat from the Joseph Doyle Company about 1910 and Thousand Pyramids from Ruth Finley's 1929 quilt book.

You can buy paper piecing patterns for equilateral triangles already cut. If you want to cut your own: Paper Pieces gives you a free equilateral triangle grid to print out. Click on this link and scroll down.

http://www.paperpieces.com/contents/en-us/d31_01.html

I fooled around with their grid: Enlarged it 110% and fit it onto an 8x11 sheet which I printed on index paper.

Click on this image and Save it to a JPG file or a Word file.

Print it out on an 8-1/2 x 11" sheet of heavy paper.

The triangles measure 2" on each of the 3 sides.

If you want to stitch triangles without paper templates here's how to cut

an equilateral triangle from a charm pack.

 I have a Charm Pack (5" squares) of my Richmond Reds reproduction line from Moda.

Cutting equilateral triangles from 

Moda Charm Pack Squares:

Begin with a 5" square.

Press the square in half so you

have a fold line down the middle.

Cut a strip off the top 5/8" wide.

Cut a line from the center top of the fabric 

to the exact corner on either side.

Your triangle will be 5" on all three sides.

You are ready to make a charm quilt with no two pieces alike.

The larger triangles really show off the prints.

Charm quilt from the 1870-1900 period

Quilt about 1880-1920 from the Nickols Collection

at the Mingei Museum.

You might be better off aiming for a charming quilt with duplicate prints. It's the

scrappy look that is so appealing. 

The quilt above looks like it was begun on the top left side

with madder browns popular in the 1870-1890 period and finished in

the lower right with blues and grays popular in the 1890-1920 period. 

Don't dawdle too long. Taste could change.

Charming quilt from 1930-1960 with the triangles shaded in diagonal rows.

Here's an updated look from Carla at Grace & Favour blog who used a Cherry Christmas charm pack
by Aneela Hoey from a few years ago. (Carla's look to be isosceles triangles---(longer sides, shorter base) They still work.

http://carla-graceandfavour.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-cherry-christmas-quilt.html

Here are links to more on the mysteries of the equilateral triangle:

Cutting with a 60 degree ruler from Diary of a Quilter:
http://www.diaryofaquilter.com/2013/12/ive-been-playing-with-60-degree-or.html

Cutting with a  regular grid ruler from Fresh Lemon Quilts:
http://www.freshlemonsquilts.com/?p=2132

Thousand Pyramids from about 1880-1920

I'm making progress in just a few days. And I found I still have some scraps

left over from the first project over 20 years ago.

You have to be nuts to save scraps that small.

So I was browsing the web after writing the above and I see somebody

at Atelier Bep had the same idea using my Richmond Reds. And she's finished already.

http://www.atelierbep-winkel.nl/a-38444280/moda-quiltstof-richmond-reds-historical-1870-1900-by-barbara-brackman/quilttop-driehoeken-van-de-winterserie-richmond-reds-van-barb