Today in Textiles

A couple of interesting textile notes:

A piece of a skirt worn by Elizabeth I (bearing striking resemblance to the skirt she's wearing in this 1602 portrait) was found in St. Faith, Bacton, a 13th-century parish church in Herefordshire, England, where it had been cut up and used as an altar cloth for hundreds of years.

Two fascinating quotes from Eleri Lynn, curator of historic dress at Historic Royal Palaces in the January 7 article in the Guardian:

"In Tudor times, clothing was so expensive that it would be passed from one generation to the next, or taken apart and reused for something else, like cushion covers."

"On top of that, Oliver Cromwell sold off every item of clothing in the royal stores, so the only things we have, including a hat which might have been worn by Henry VIII, have come back to Hampton Court after they have survived elsewhere."

(I was drawn to this story, in part, because I lived in Hereford in the mid-1980s. Hope to get back there this fall.)

And an amazing quilt collection is on sale this weekend in Berkeley.

Eli Leon, quilt collector

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/07/27/vintage-quilt-collection-passionate-local-collector-eli-leon-sale/

Quilts for sale

Log cabin quilt from Eli Leon collection

Double wedding ring quilt from Eli Leon collection

I remember hearing about Leon when we lived in Berkeley—at the time (late 80s-early 90s) he was collecting quilts made by an African American woman in Richmond, CA, among others, and years later an exhibition of his quilts appeared at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA. Boy, do I wish I was in Berkeley (although it's probably a very good thing I'm not)!

Today in Textiles: Things I've Enjoyed This Week

This art deco sewing machine cabinet (I've never seen one in this style). You can bid on it here.

This upcoming exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum (AMFA), War and Pieced: The Annette Gero Collection of Quilts from Military Fabrics. I saw a quilt of this genre at the International Quilt Study Center (IQSC) last August and it stopped me in my tracks. The first two quilts below are from the upcoming AMFA exhibition (to be held from September 6, 2017 to January 7, 2018) and the last photo is a detail shot I took of the quilt at the IQSC.

And finally, not this week, but on June 28, Art Quilts of the Midwest opened at the Texas Quilt Museum.

This is the exhibition's last scheduled stop, after shows at the International Quilt Study Center, the National Quilt Museum, and the Iowa Quilt Museum. If you haven't had a chance to see it in person and you're near LaGrange, stop in to check it out. Cheers!

The Feed Sack Match Game

One of my favorite things about the kind of writing I do is meeting new people and hearing their stories. It happens during the interview process, but I also hear fabulous stories from folks who come up to me after I give a talk, or who contact me because of something I've written.

The latter happened recently, when I got an email from Pamela Shadle Flores, who works at the University of North Texas (UNT). She's from a family of ranchers and farmers who lived in the Texas panhandle during the dust bowl and she'd always wondered whether the quilt she inherited (above) was sewn from feed sacks. Pamela learned about the feed sacks book from an interview I'd done in the with the UNT Libraries about using their Portal to Texas History in my research.

To her delight (and mine), she was able to match two fabrics in the quilt to those in the book. I asked if she'd send me photos and whether I could share them, and she agreed to both. It appears that many, if not all of the bow-ties are feed sack—they stand out so nicely against the solid fabrics.

I especially loved that she told me her husband and two teenagers were as excited as she was by the discovery. Teenagers are hard to impress! Thanks so much, Pamela, for sharing your story and these images. 

Kalona Quilt Show: A Visual Tour

April 28 was the opening of the annual quilt show in Kalona. It's a mix of old and new quilts, and the old ones are definitely the thing that turns my head.

QuiltCon 2015 Follow-up

It's been a wonderful few days in Austin, where I'm attending QuiltCon.

Admiring City Center by Angie Henderson at the QuiltCon 2015 exhibition hall

There's really nothing like being with folks who love what you do. On Thursday morning I started chatting with a young woman from Victoria, B.C., as we walked across the lobby floor. She said "I want to live here!" And I said "In Austin?" Her response was that the location didn't matter so much, but she wanted to be with people who loved what she did on a day-to-day basis. She'd tried to describe her passion to her work colleagues, but they didn't understand and were glad she was going where others did, because they'd heard enough. My guess is that she won't stop talking when she returns—she may be so pumped full of enthusiasm that she makes a few quilting converts.

I may or may not have purchased some of this fabric at Stitch Lab's booth in the vendor area

For coverage of QuiltCon, visit UPPERCASE's blog—though she was on of the three jurors for QuiltCon (along with Carolyn Friedlander and Stevii Graves) UPPERCASE editor Janine Vangool wasn't able to attend and asked me to to cover for her. You can find words and photos about QuiltCon 2015 here and here, with more to come. 

String Piecing

Back in March I decided to try some string piecing. Not sure just what got me going, but I was having a good time of it. Over the next few weeks I plugged away, and wound up with 16 blocks. It got put on the back burner for awhile as writing projects intervened, but yesterday I got back at it and did another 8 blocks. (I must have done a few more in there somewhere because I have 43 blocks total.)

While I'm using true scraps—and having so much fun remembering just which projects the strips originally appeared in—I'm trying for a little consistency by including red and/or turquoise and/or black in every block. I'm piecing on newsprint, with a white strip diagonally centered on each square.

I'm using a 9.5 inch square ruler, so my blocks will finish at 9 (it's the biggest one I have) and I'm trying to decide how big to make it. If I make it 7 blocks both ways, I'll wind up with a 63" square, but I might go with 8 blocks one way to make it long enough for a tall guy (like the one I'm married to) to cover up comfortably. I'm not even sure I'll be keeping it though. 

Do you have a favorite/most useful size that you tend to make?

What's keeping me BUSY

Poor, neglected blog. If there are any readers left out there, I certainly appreciate you! Here's what's been keeping me busy:

1. I'm working on a book with the tentative title of Art Quilts of the Midwest: publication date is March, 2015. I'm interviewing and writing a bio of each of the 20 artists whose work will be included—there were close to 100 entries—and have yet to talk with one who hasn't taught me something new, provided an interesting perspective on art and place, and been kind and lovely to "meet."

2. The spring issue of Stitch includes a couple pieces I wrote: an article on cross-stitch (loved learning that history) and a back-page essay about sewing the same pattern multiple times.

3. Posts I'm working on for Moda's Cutting Table blog continue to enable me to talk to some talented designers...I've got an interview this afternoon set up to "meet" one of their newest (you can find the story on Monday on The Cutting Table).

4. I've been working at Home Ec on Thursdays. The sock monkeys at the top of the page were tucked into my bag yesterday in preparation for the class I'm teaching on Sunday at Home Ec—it'd been so long since I made a monkey that I stitched the one on the left as a refresher....and I must say its cheery outlook during these dreary, cold days was my reward. (Sock monkey history here.)

5. And I've been putting Pearl's booties on nearly every time we head out into the Polar Vortex (we refer to this as Pearl's booty call). She hates them, and stands on three legs, holding the offending bootie up until I force her to put a leg down so I can put on the next one. This continues until all four are on, her leash is hooked to her collar, and she trots out of the house and down the sidewalk.

6. I made mitered-corner napkins for Maggie for Christmas out of Minick and Simpson's fantastic woven Midwinter Reds.

7. I finished binding the quilt I started last summer based on the workshop I took with Bill Kerr of Modern Quilt Studios. Linda Duncan quilted it, along with two others you'll soon see, and I really love it.

8. I've been knitting, but both projects are gifts, so their unveiling will have to wait.

So that's what's up with me...how about you?

Two Fall Favorites: Quilt Shows and Leaf Peeping

I've never been to New Albin, Iowa, but got word of a quilt show in October you might want to add to your calendar. New Albin is on the Mississippi River, just south of the state line between Minnesota and Iowa. Driving along the river in the fall is always lovely. Our first year back in Iowa we took our girls and drove to Effigy Mounds to see the autumn color. At dinner that night, in the tiny town of Harper's Ferry, we waited our turn in a restaurant and noticed two women giving us the eye. One of them leaned over to the other and said, sotto voce, "Leaf peepers." The other nodded solemnly. "Leaf peepers" instantly become a McCray family favorite phrase. But I digress.

The photo I got about the New Albin quilt show features cow quilts, based on the book by Mel McFarland and Mary Lou Weideman book: Out of the Box with Easy Blocks. You may remember when Mel brought samples from the book to my parents' house, or when everyone was stitching them at our Lake Tahoe retreat.  The variety is endless (and often hilarious). Looks like the quilters of New Albin have caught cow-fever, but there will be other quilts, as well: this is the show's fifth year and in years past they've had as many as 200 quilts.

The show will be held int he New Albin Community Center on October 11 to 13 (Friday, 4 to 7pm; Saturday, 10 am. to 5 pm; and Sunday, 12 to 4 pm).

Back to Reality

Pearl the Squirrel inspecting the perfectly still lake

Just returned from vacation (sniff, sniff)—nearly two weeks at our family cabin. Though it was much cooler than usual and we weren’t able to swim or even be out on the lake much, it proved perfect for sewing.

I hauled along my trusty Featherweight and finished up my Fabric Fusion quilt that I started after a workshop with Bill Kerr of ModernQuilt Studio. It was a lot of little pieces. But I really wanted to give Bill’s (and Week’s) concept of mixing Jo Morton and Anna Maria Horner fabrics a try. The “fabric smackdown” we did in the workshop was where this started and this Brandon Mabley fabric was my initial inspiration.

These oranges and greens and reds and pinks aren’t “my” colors, either, and that provided an additional challenge. But I’m quite pleased with the end result. I used something like 38 or 39 fabrics in the quilt—including a tiny scrap of this madras plaid in the center, which I found in my mother’s sewing room, a leftover from a summer top she made me when I was in elementary school! I purchased about ten new fabrics, but the rest were from my stash and some of them were truly just scraps: the Amy Butler fabric was from my first Birdie Sling and the orange batik (top right) was from my very first quilt.

I love the crispness the white sashing provides. A highly satisfying project!

We did manage to kayak across the lake on two occasions for blueberries. That, also, was highly satisfying. Two pies and two batches of blueberry pancakes made mornings and evenings quite pleasant. 

The swimming dock, too chilly for a swim until the last day

Driftwood in a quiet bay

A wobbly panorama from my kayak on our last, finally warm and sunny, day

Belated Blogging

Guess it's time to catch up! I have been busy with this and that, including a bit of traveling and a bit of sewing. It seems to have taken a toll on blogging. So here are some highlights.

I was super-fortunate to have both daughters home for my birthday. But did I get a photo of us all together? No. I feel quite sad about that, as it's a rare event for us all to be in the same spot at the same time. But suffice it to say we had a wonderful long weekend that among other things, included lots of good food (like this lovely birthday cake from Deluxe, our neighborhood bakery.)

On July 4th we took our annual trek to the Hanson's Grove Antique Sale in Solon. I just couldn't resist this feed sack quilt. My birthday money must have been burning a hole in my pocket, because it cost just $10 more than the sum total I'd received.

I hemmed and hawed about whether to get it and wasn't sure I should, but about an hour after I handed over the money and was still fretting a little, a woman told me she'd been standing behind me, ready to pounce on the quilt if I'd decided against it. That made me feel a bit better.

Here are some more photos of the day. We got there early and compared to last year, it was much cooler. A lovely way to start Independence Day.

Double-cross Quilt

My 8 small cross blocks

I'll hold off on sharing my shirt, because it needs some size adjustment (just learned the acronym FBA—full bust adjustment—which is what apparently I need to do to take in the excess under the arms while still making it fit across my chest).

Erick "squaring up" my blocks—a relative term for this quilt

But I'm happy to share the finished quilt top I made for my class with Erick Wolfmeyer at Home Ec. I was having one of those days when my brain just wasn't firing on all cylinders and Erick helped me out—cutting and ripping.

Emily and her scrap quilt—she's wearing a skirt stitched from one of the quilt fabrics

We all arrived in class with our 8 small crosses (and a few of us had 9 and had to decide which one to omit). Then it was time to decide on fabrics for the big crosses and how to arrange the 8 small ones. All of this required a lot of shifting and standing back and squinting. But each of us (save one person who had to leave early) finished our tops. It was a great lesson in color and in loosening up, as the quilt's so wonky. I love how differently they all turned out! And once again Erick was terrific—and even stayed late so we could go home with finished tops.

Maureen and her butterscotch and blue quilt

Lisa and her neutrals—she's going to make 4 more for a queen-sized quilt

I still feel a little like I've made a quilt for a clown (baby), but Erick said it reminded him of the alebrijes I have all over my house, and that made me feel that perhaps I have a consistent (highly colorful) aesthetic.

My finished top