Virtual Booth at Quilt Market: Metropolitan Fair

Manhattan's Metropolitan Fair

1864

I usually entertain myself in the spring by Photoshopping a virtual booth for Quilt Market---how I'd decorate a booth if I had a large budget and they didn't have a height regulation for booths. Moda will be introducing Metropolitan Fair, my new Civil War reproduction collection, inspired by the fairs and bazaars held to raise money for soldiers' aid societies.

 A recreation of the 1864 Brooklyn Fair

wouldn't fit the height regulations,

 although it would be eyecatching

Here's my imaginary double booth with my Metropolitan Fair project quilt added. The quilt color scheme fits in nicely.

The Civil War fair extravaganzas were so over-the-top I really don't have to Photoshop to create some silly pictures. The events were well recorded and the exhibits and costumes can hardly be improved upon.

I could tell you I was sewing hats this week.

For many years this costume worn at the Fair was thought to be a Civil War nurse outfit. You could stash a lot of nursing supplies under that hat, but it's actually a folk costume from Normandy."The Girls of Normandy" was one of the exhibits at the Manhattan fair on Union Square, known as the Metropolitan Fair.

Another display was the Knickerbocker Kitchen in which re-enactors dressed up in period clothes and did old-fashioned things like spin yarn and cook over an open fire.

Most of these costumed people are from the Brooklyn Sanitary Fair (Brooklyn was a separate city from New York at the time.)

I could photoshop me and my friends into silly outfits, but pictures don't get any whackier than some of these.

Brooklyn: That must be an "old-fashioned" quilt behind these men.

I will be doing an actual schoolhouse (teaching session) for shopowners at Quilt Market next week in Kansas City (3:45 Thursday May 17th----Do come!)

 I will not be dressing in period costume.

And don't look for my virtual booth. It's all imaginary.