Antique Quilt Shows Fall 2019 & Winter 2020

Embroidered & dyed roadster needlework

Hop in the roadster and head for a quilt show featuring antique quilts.

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Buzz Saw, Docella Wilson, Bradley Arkansas

Arkansas, Little Rock
Old State House Museum. A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans. Years ago the late Cuesta Benberry curated this exhibit of quilts from the collection, now rehung, up through Fall, 2019.
http://www.oldstatehouse.com/rotating-exhibits/a-piece-of-my-soul

California, Los Angeles

Craft in America Center. Quilts: Highlights From the Episode coordinates with the PBS TV series Craft In America: Quilts, premiering on PBS December 27th. Show: January 11-March 21, 2020.

https://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/4261-deep-dive-into-quilts-with-craft-in-americas-new-pbs-episode-and-

Colorado, Golden

Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. In The British Style: English Paper Pieced Quilts and Antique Paper Pieced Quilts from the RMQM Collection. October 21 - January 18, 2020
http://rmqm.org

Connecticut, Hartford

Connecticut Historical Society, Connecticut Quilts, curated by Lynn Z. Bassett.

Through May 16, 2020. Tours of the exhibit every Saturday.

https://chs.org/exhibition/coming-soon-connecticut-quilts/

Georgia, Carrollton

Southeastern Quilt and Textile Museum. Antique Quilts from the Collection of Marti Michell

Through January 25, 2020

https://www.southeasternquiltandtextilemuseum.org/

Louisiana, New Orleans

New Orleans Museum of Art: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. Five new purchases. Through March 8th, 2020.

https://noma.org/exhibitions/the-quilts-of-gees-bend/#about

Nebraska, Lincoln

International Quilt Study Center & Museum

Old World Quilts. The earliest quilts in the collection, curated by Carolyn Ducey. Through July 12, 2020.

New Views: Shape Shifters. Recent acquisitions. Through March 29, 2020.
Quilts from the Claire Vlasin Collection. Through February 23, 2020.

https://www.quiltstudy.org/exhibition/old-world-quilts

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North Carolina, Raleigh
North Carolina Museum of History, QuiltSpeak: Uncovering Women’s Voices Through Quilts
Through March 1, 2020
https://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/exhibits/quiltspeak
Catalog available for $20 at the museum's shop:

https://www.ncmuseumofhistoryshop.com/

Ohio, Kent
Kent State Museum. Ohio quilts from the collection.
https://www.kent.edu/museum/news/explore-ohios-rich-history-ksu-museums-ohio-quilts-exhibit

South Carolina, Columbia

McKissick Museum, Piece by Piece: Quilts from the Permanent Collection. Three rotations illustrating the evolution of this textile tradition.

Through July 18, 2020.

Washington, Spokane

Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. Memory and Meaning: Textiles from the Permanent Collection, featuring an embroidered 17th-century Bengali quilt.  

Through January 12, 2020

https://www.northwestmuseum.org/exhibits/current-exhibits

Daredevils Block #11: Elsa's Wheel

Daredevils Block #11:  Elsa's Wheel
Scroll down to see the pattern for a 15" finished block.

Dorry Emmer's #11

Becky Brown's block #11 with an empty center.

How it really looks.

A sunflower style circle seemed a good fit for a Daredevil block. I started with one published in Hearth & Home magazine, probably about 1910, BlockBase #3417. I shrunk the center circle and lengthened the points in EQ8.

They may have called it Charity Wheel because it was the kind of design popular for red and white signature quilts used to raise money for charities. People donated a dime and some good soul would embroider their names in Turkey red thread on the blocks.

Elsa's Wheel by Denniele Bohannon. You can see she used the original Charity Wheel proportions. She drew it in BlockBase.

The Block

Daredevils pattern for a 15" block.

Cut paper templates. Add seams to the fabric.

How to print:

• Create a word file or a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11".
• Click on the image above.
• Right click on it and save it to your file.
• Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". The small square should measure 1"
• Adjust the printed page size if necessary.

The real daredevil here is me. My New Year's resolution was to get better at digital patterns. This one is evidence I'm not good enough yet---small crash. Ellen noticed that in the pattern I drew for the PDF you bought that the large circle is not round and some of the points don't touch the circle.

This is an EQ operator error. I should have made more snaps.. If there aren't enough pinpoint snaps you can't match the circle to the points. I fixed it, at least I hope so. You will see that on the pattern above it says revised. If you bought the PDF pattern you might want to redraw that large arc. Ellen says on her pattern she redrew a radius of 5 5/8+ or 5 11/16" with a compass. Thank you, Ellen.

Elsa Andersson

Bicycle Wheels!
https://www.skbl.se/en/article/ElsaAndersson
A sad end

Southern Spin: Mary Ann Rouse Thomas

Mary Ann Rouse Thomas 

Blount County, Alabama

Quilt made perhaps 1890-1920

About 1950 Robert Cargo, a young Alabamian, inherited a group of quilts made by his great-grandmother Mary Ann Rouse Thomas. Cargo went on to get a PhD in French literature and teach in the Romance Languages department at the University of Alabama, but those quilts created an interest in an alternate specialty: Alabama folk art. He and wife Helen operated the Folk Art Gallery in Tuscaloosa for many years. Before their deaths they donated their collections to museums, particularly the Birmingham Museum, which has 700 pieces of folk art from the family.

Mary Ann Rouse Thomas (1842-1930)

She would be in her 50s in the photo

Bob Cargo also inherited a photograph taken in 1898. It looks like

an itinerant photographer came by the William Mabrey Thomas farm

and suggested the family show their proudest possessions in the yard.

Mary Ann has dogs and chickens around her but also a group of her quilts.

The Cargos also donated the photo to the Birmingham Museum of Art.

We can presume her husband is standing on the left

and her nine surviving children are in the photo.

Thomas children according to Find-a-Grave

Three of the quilts in the photo went to Bob and are now in the Birmingham Museum.

Also being shown off: a horse and a banjo and a granddaughter. 

A little Photoshopping

Seven Sisters, before 1898

Goose Chase, before 1898

Snail's Trail

Bob quilted this top, which may be the one in the photo

or a copy of it. He attributed it to his mother Mildred Thomas Cargo (1909-2004),

Mary Ann's granddaughter, born ten years after the picture was taken.

One quilt visible in the photo is unaccounted for.

An odd pattern, sort of a vase or tree, sort of a star.

This tree quilt is not in the photo.

It looks like Mary Ann enjoyed the pattern variety available in the turn-of-the-century publications.

Perhaps she bought patterns from the Ladies Art Company in St. Louis, which offered this one as Tree of Paradise as early as 1889.

The pattern the family called Snail's Trail was published three times in 1931,

long after the photo.

Here's a post from last year on the pattern:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/06/broken-stone.html

Spider Web Star

These Thomas quilts are classics of Southern style:

• An emphasis on chrome orange plain fabric (so much of it woven and dyed in Southern mills must have been available.)
• Blocks separated by strong sashing with contrasting sashing squares, we call them cornerstones.
• No borders except the sashing brought out to the edge.
• Fan or arc quilting.

Here's a star that the family thought was made in 1928

And a Carpenter's Wheel done in similar style.

Red sashing squares seem to have been a late favorite.

What color was the tan sashing originally?

The quilts were made in Blount County, north of Birmingham but

Mary Ann had lived in various Alabama counties when younger.

Her children commissioned a formal grave marker but I like the one below better:

 MARE&ANe THOMAS 

BO 1842 DI 1930

AGE 88 10 M

FISHER UND (ertaking?)

Thanks to her great-grandson her quilts are her best memorial.
Link to the Cargo quilts at the Birmingam Museum of Art:
https://www.artsbma.org/collection/?fwp_work_type=quilt&fwp_search=cargo

See another post about the Cargo collections here:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-cargo-collections.html

Looking at the Cargo quilts got me interested in Southern style in general so I started a Facebook page QuiltHistorySouth. See it here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2427588900863781/
Ask to join.

Daredevils Block #10: Katharine's Wheel

Scroll down to see the pattern for a 15" finished block.

# 10 Katherine's Wheel by Dorry Emmer

 Katharine's Wheel by Denniele Bohannon with pink corner shapes drawn in.

Becky Brown's block, modified....

As you can see the center is empty.

Not for long.

A Dresden Plate fits neatly into the center of the Daredevils format. I found a pattern structure in a block called Nellie Bly in BlockBase, published in the Farm Journal. I erased the points and big curve in EQ8.

Nellie Bly was the pen name used by 

Elizabeth Cochran Seaman (1864-1922)

 a daring reporter and daredevil herself before
the age of flight.

The Block

Daredevils pattern for a 15" block.

Cut paper templates. Add seams to the fabric.

How to print:

Create a word file or a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11".

Click on the image above.

Right click on it and save it to your file.

Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". The small square should measure 1"

Adjust the printed page size if necessary.

Katherine Sui Fun Cheung
https://www.vogue.com/article/katherine-sui-fun-cheung-aviatrix

AQSG & the Quilt Research Center

Our first AQSG meeting was in 1980....Not so long ago as the doctored photo.

Only about 40 years ago

I recognize Lucy Hilty, Cuesta Benberry, Flavin Glover, Bets Ramsey, me

The American Quilt Study Group's annual seminar is meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska this month. We'll be making good use of the University of Nebraska's offerings to quilt enthusiasts, the International Quilt Museum and the Nebraska Libraries Quilt Research Collection.

Quilt House/International Quilt Museum

Merikay Waldvogel is giving a tour of the Quilt Research Collections on Friday afternoon, October 11. Librarian Mary Ellen Ducey and I will be assisting. Archives and Special Collections in the University Libraries has established a Quilt Research Collection located in the Library Depository Retrieval Facility, a new building at the edge of the UNL East Campus.

Someday it will look like this with collections stored on stacks of shelves

and access from a fork lift picker and digital finders.

There is a reading room for researchers and a fabulous storage facility that can house 900,000 volumes.

Here's a description of the tour:

"Take an opportunity to see the materials and patterns related to Merikay Waldvogel’s research and study center. A tour at the reading room of the UNL Library Depository and Retrieval Facility (LDRF) will include Alice Brooks, Mildred Dickerson, and Laura Wheeler quilt patterns. The tour includes a peek inside the high-density storage locations and showcases additional items from the Quilt Research Collections."

The collection is processing many donations.

Merikay has sent tons of paper (I probably only exaggerate a little.)

Quilt collector Pat L. Nickols is going through boxes and has sent several full of her correspondence with fellow quilt historians Sally Garoutte, Mary Katherine Jarrell, Cuesta Benberry and others "as well as lots of old quilt paper." She writes, "So nice not to be just throwing all of this paper away."

From the Pat L. Nickols collection, Mingei Museum

Pat's quilt collection is in the Mingei Museum in Los Angeles  San Diego. Do a search for Nickols here to see them:
http://collections.mingei.org/

State birds and flowers signed M Lieb

Donna DiNatale is processing a collection of Omaha World Herald clippings, a treasure given to her by someone who attended one of her talks on Nebraska quilts and collections.She's been busy photographing every pattern and also will be conducting a study center session on the topic: Omaha World-Herald Contests & Exhibits from 2 to 4 on Friday, October 11.

Another recent gift:  Susan McKendry drove to Lincoln to deliver her grandmother Eloise Viall Brittingham's (1904-1990) pattern collections.

Mary Ellen tells us that with the help of colleagues and students, she's gone through many of the recent donation boxes and completed basic re-housing into folders. We are raising funds for a staff member to complete that work.

And me: I am going through the paper files I did for my books on Civil War quilts. The despair pictured above is because I cannot resist looking up every old lead on the internet and I get bogged down. But I am determined to have at least one file box full of quilt paper to take with me to Lincoln.

See more about the Quilt Research Collection at this post:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/12/quilt-research-collection-at-university.html