A Few More

This is an appliqued summer spread, Poinsettia with Grapes and Grape Leaves.  It consists of nine 18" blocks with flowers, grapes, and leaves.  The sashing is 4 1/2"with red appliques at the intersections.  There is no filling, backing, or binding.  The outside edge of the border is turned under and stitched.  This is c. 1860.

This next one is a pieced quilt.  The pattern is called Borrow and Return, which is a new one on me.  It consists of 35 blocks of tan print cotton pieced with four half round pieces of blue lattice fabric.  You can see that the maker kind of mixed things up in one corner.  ;)  The binding is plain cream, and the backing is a madder brown floral, which I somehow missed getting a picture of.

This is a pieced and tied, silk and taffeta Tumbling Blocks quilt with a silk and taffeta prairie point border.  The edging is 5/8" purple bias ribbon machine stitched with red thread.  It has a bright red wool backing.  It is filled with a cotton sheet, and the construction was very odd.  We spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. The sheet was tied to the back with thread, but the top was only attached by the binding.  C. 1900, machine pieced and quilted.

This one is a pieced nine-patch with a basket border from the first half of the 1800's.  The border looks to be later than the center.  The hand pieced nine-patch blocks are primarily brown, teal, and pink cottons.  I just love the pastel, worn look of this one.

Here is Betty Brink, one of the volunteers who donated their time to help "turn" the quilts.

This is a late 19th century Pineapple pattern.  Eight 17" solid white cotton blocks alternate with eight blocks appliqued with sold red, green, and chrome fabrics.  No backing, filling, or batting.  Hand and machine pieced, hand appliqued.

You can see along the left hand edge of the above picture, and below, the maker signed her name, Mrs. Hannah Floyd.

Okay, don't forget to check back, because there are plenty more to come.

Bed Turning

With AQS in town, the Grand Rapids Public Museum decided to haul some of their antique quilts out of storage and have a bed turning.   We saw 13 quilts, and I can't wait to share them with you!  I will start and end with the most exciting ones, for me anyway.

They set up two stations, and then moved the quilts to the center table after viewing, and started all over again with each group seeing the ones from the other table.  Each station had a reader telling the particulars of the quilt, and everyone got to inspect the quilts up close and take pictures.

The first one is a Baltimore Album quilt dated 1847.

The quilt is made with 13 appliqued 16" x 16" blocks set on point.  The fabrics are mostly solid and print turkey reds and greens, but the center block also has blue, pinks and browns.

There are many handwritten signatures on the quilt, but only one is dated.

Sorry it didn't show up better in the picture, but it reads Mathilda Kindle, or Hindle, May 30th, 1847.  The donor of the quilt said it was made for a wedding that took place in 1857.

There are two more lyre blocks.

The ship block has tan and brown embroidery for the rigging.

  Two basket blocks.

And several floral blocks.

The center urn is my favorite.  Some of the roses are actually broderie perse, which I don't think I've seen on a Baltimore before.

It is finished off with solid red sawtooth borders and binding.

Stay tuned, because there are many more to come, and I'm saving the best till last!

I want to thank everyone who emailed and commented on my illness.  I appreciate your thoughts and prayers more than I could ever say.  I'm still trying to respond to you personally, but please know how thankful I am.  I am feeling better, and hope to return to work soon.  My surgery is postponed until after the first of the year, as there are some things that need to be resolved first.

Please let me know in the comments if you came to town for the AQS show! 

Winner and an Update

First of all, if you remember, I had a giveaway a while ago, and I've drawn a winner.  It's Heather from Creative Confessions.  Heather, I'll get that out to you as soon as you send me your address.

Secondly, I apologize for disappearing.  I have had a flareup of my chronic illness, and have been in bed for almost 6 weeks now!  It looks like I will need surgery, but hopefully I can get a couple of posts up first.  I will put up more about my TESAA trip, and I also am working on a post for my other blog that I think you'll like.  It's about a fabric line that's not very well know, and I even have a link to a store that still has some of it!  I couldn't post without a picture, so above is a pic of some DAR fabric I bought when I was in Williamsburg.  It's one of my favorites.

Take care, and I hope to see you soon.  I have a lot of blog reading to get caught up on.  ;)

Here, There, and Everywhere

I've wracked my brain trying to put everything I saw and did into some kind of order for the blog, but there's just too much info, so I decided to just jump in and tell it in no particular order. I will, however, start at the beginning. Here's the car, packed and ready to go.  You'd think there were more than just Joan and me!

I hope we didn't forget anything!  Traveling with me is always an adventure.  We got stopped the first night by the police for no taillights.  Not so easy to get fixed at 7pm on Super Bowl Sunday, but eventually we were on our way again.  After a few hours the GPS took us off the turnpike and onto these increasingly rural roads with speed limits of 30mph.  After about 20 miles of this we started to question what was happening, especially after the road narrowed to one lane over a bridge!  I tried to use the GPS on my phone, but we were so far out in the sticks there wasn't any service, so we continued on Heavenly Acres Ridge Road, and eventually came upon the reason for the name...

I swear I felt like Hansel and Grettel wandering through the forest.  We did make it back on the turnpike after another half hour or so, and decided to call it a night as soon as we found a hotel.

The next day was uneventful, and we arrived at the Williamsburg Hospitality House and checked into our room.  After getting settled, we went down to the Welcome Room and checked in there.  We got a goody bag full of stuff.  We didn't know it yet, but we got some little trinket at every function.  Here's the first bagful. 

The black bag is a little case for sewing supplies.  The neatest idea, I thought, was the case with calling cards in it.  That way we could trade cards with people we wanted to keep in touch with.  I also liked the red bag with the scalloped top for scraps.  Such a simple thing, but so handy.

Since Joan and I were first timers, we got a TESAA pin, as well as a bar pin to attach.  The Academy has been going on for 17 years, and some people had that many bar pins attached!  I hope to get a couple more on there in the future.

That first night we had a welcome dinner to get to know everyone.  Not many people came for the early add-on classes, so it was a fairly small group, and a nice way to ease into the week.

The next day was my first class, a two day with Elly.  She is the sweetest person.  If I had to sum her up in one word it would be gracious.   We started out getting our kits, and gluing our pattern onto label paper.  Then we cut out the shapes and used them for our templates.

You can see what it's supposed to look like at the top.  We traced the rose onto Pellon to use as a guide for the ribbon roses.  Here's how far I got.  I guess the excitement got to me, because I didn't get very far.  Surprisingly, there is little applique on it, only the vase and leaves.  The decoration on the vase and the bud calyxes are ultrasuede, and the flowers and buds are ribbon.

My roses definitely need more practice.  Here's my neighbor's project.  At least I didn't distract her too much.  ;)

Here is Elly demonstrating how to make a rose.  She had the camera set up so that it projected what she was doing on the screen behind her.

Elly had some amazing things in her portfolio.  They were kind of had to photograph through the plastic, but you get the idea.

She also had several pockets.  I love these.  She wore some of them throughout the week. 

We got a pattern for the last one.  And then, of course, I had to buy some ribbon to make it.  Thank heaven I already have a ton of ultrasuede!

After class we had a dinner, and then a talk by Pat and Arlan Christ.  If you have never seen one of their programs, do anything you have to to get to one.  Word cannot describe the amazing quilt collection they have.  They treated us to a show featuring different borders.  Cameras were strictly forbidden!!  But afterwards we were able to buy two books they had of their collections, and almost all the quilts we saw are in them.

You can check out their quilts on the website here, and the books are also for sale there.

That ends the first day.  Much more to come.

Beth Donaldson, previously known as the Quilt Doctor, has had to change her name and blog address.  It's now Beth Donaldson:  Quiltmaker.  Be sure and check it out to see the behind the scenes tour she gave of the MSU Museum collection.  Now how did I miss that!  :(

Back From Baltimore Giveaway!

Okay, so maybe it wasn't really Baltimore, but it felt like it.  The Elly Sienkiewicz Applique Academy was the most amazing experience.  We spent a whole week surrounded by so many talented and creative ladies, in such a welcoming atmosphere, that I can't imagine not going back next year and doing it all over again.  If you've ever wanted to go, but were hesitating, I can assure you it's something you don't want to miss.

I have so much to tell you about that I don't know where to begin, so I thought I would start with a giveaway!  I have two small floral Baltimore patterns by Rita Verroca, a postcard of a Baltimore Album Quilt from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, and a CD by Kelly Kout of gravestones in the Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore.  More about this later, but these patterns can be used for applique, quilting, or just for inspiration.

I'll start posting tomorrow about the trip.  To win the giveaway, just leave a comment by the time I do the last post, which should be around next Saturday or Sunday, and tell me what you like better, applique or piecing.

I want to thank every one who commented, emailed or sent a card on the recent passing of my dear Brody.  It's taken some time to heal, but I know you all know how dear our pets are to us.