by Quilt Alliance | Oct 4, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1941, Vampire Chronicles series author Anne Rice was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Rice, one of four sisters, was christened Howard Allen O’Brien, but insisted on being called Anne when she started school. She wrote her first novel at age 7 about aliens coming to Earth. Rice married her high school love, Stan Rice, and the two moved to San Francisco to study creative writing. The couple’s daughter died of leukemia at age 5 and Rice devoted her life to writing and producing her popular, yet critically snubbed novel, Interview with a Vampire. This Bear’s Paw quilt was made by suspected vampire Mercy Lena Brown in the late 1800’s. That’s right. Mercy “was believed to be a vampire by the townspeople. When Mercy died of consumption, like her mother and sister before her, her brother began to get sick as well. Mercy’s body was exhumed to see if she had blood in her heart, in which case she was a vampire and may be draining her brother of life.” The quilt was documented by its owner in 1992 during the Rhode Island Quilt Documentation Project. Was Mercy found to be a vampire? View this quilt on The Quilt Index to find out! Read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/anne-rice-is-born Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Oct 3, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1895, the American novel The Red Badge of Courage written by 24-year-old Stephen Crane is published in book form. The Civil War tale from a soldier’s perspective first appeared as a syndicated newspaper series. Crane was the youngest of 14 children, born in 1871 and raised in New York and New Jersey. Crane self-published his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Street, about a poor girl’s decline, based on a woman his lower-class New York neighborhood. J. B. Roberson of Cleburne, Texas made this Family Tree Quilt in 1893. From this Quilt Index record: “The December 20th date suggests that J. B. Roberson made this quilt for his wife as a Christmas gift. At the bottom of the quilt he credits his brother-in-law J.W. Mills, who held the bulk of the quilt for him while he guided it under the needle of the treadle sewing machine. One of the quilt maker’s sons remembers his father as selling and demonstrating sewing machines, among other jobs.” The quilt was documented during the Texas Quilt Search Project and is included in the book Lone Stars: A Legacy of Texas Quilts, Vol. I, 1836-1936, by Karoline Patterson Bresenhan and Nancy O’Bryant Puentes (Austin: University of Texas Press,1986.) It was included in an exhibition by the same name at the Texas State Capitol Rotunda, in Austin, Texas April 19-21, 1986. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-red-badge-of-courage-is-published Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Oct 2, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1949, American portrait photographer Anna-Lou “Annie” Leibovitz was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the third of six children.Leibovitz started her career working for the newly launched Rolling Stone Magazine in 1970. Her work includes many intimate celebrity portraits, including one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono for a 1980 Rolling Stones cover, the last professional photo of Lennon to be taken before he was shot and killed five hours later. Fannie Hershberger Plank, made this Rolling Stone (or Broken Wheel) quilt around 1921 in the Amish community of Arthur, Illinois. The quilt is machine pieced and hand quilted, and is now in the collection of the Illinois State Museum. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Leibovitz Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Oct 1, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1949, communist revolutionary Mao Zedong proclaimed the existence of the People’s Republic of China after years of battling the Nationalist Chinese regime (backed by the U.S. government). The People’s Republic did battle with the U.S. during the Korean War (started in 1950), and the U.S. did not extend diplomatic recognition to communist China until 1972. Kim Sunghee, of South Korea and China, made this natural dye Korean patchwork quilt between 1976-1999. The quilt is part of the Michigan State University Museum collection. From this Quilt Index record: “Sunghee and fellow members of the group Dyetree create these and other naturally dyed silk and cotton textiles for decorative use and clothing, teaching each other new skills. The colors expressed by the dyer not only represent the conventions of the time, but also secret recipes and experiences, passed down through generations. Sunghee has earned three degrees in textile studies and has published a book on the colors of classic textiles.” View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mao-zedong-proclaims-peoples-republic-of-china Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Sep 22, 2013 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
Did you know that next year–2014–will be the 15th anniversary of the Q.S.O.S. Project? Over the past 14 years we’ve collected almost 1,100 interviews with quilters around the world! This week’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight shines on one of the very first Q.S.O.S. interviews from 1999, Paula Nadelstern (who’s also one of many special guests at our upcoming Quilters Take Manhattan event!). Paula shared with interviewer Lorraine Jackson a bit about her kaleidoscope quilts, her family, and the unusual places she finds inspiration (like photographs of snowflakes from the 1920’s)! Paula started by explaining a bit about the touchstone quilt she brought with her: Kaleidoscopic XX: Elegant After Maths Each quilt that I’ve done has lead to the next idea, and the next idea. So, working in a series, creating a body of work in one series, has really stretched me as an artist. I mean, there are ideas in here that are rather simple that I didn’t think about in my first quilt, or my fourth quilt, or my tenth quilt. I love the idea that what might look very simple to somebody looking at this quilt, were very new ideas to me that I came to because I really stretched the one idea. So, there’s that sense of it. I started working with a lot of silks in my quilts, starting at about my fourteenth or fifteenth quilt, so there’s a lot of silk in this quilt. The “elegant aftermath,” the aftermath really relates to the fact that, this is really the result of understanding the sense of the kaleidoscope and the geometry that is involved in the kaleidoscope, that I know now how to make an image seem as if it’s fleeting and is spontaneous, and really give the sense of a kaleidoscope, using the methods and materials of quiltmaking. The fabric part of quiltmaking is very, very important. And shared a bit about her studio and very patient family! I live in my two bedroom apartment in New York City with my husband and my daughter. She’s a college student and she’s twenty-one and beginning to move out and I’m still working on my kitchen table. I’ve never had a studio, though I’ll probably be able to start working in her room a little bit… They don’t mind stepping on pins in the living room. At this point, they are used to the kitchen table being my studio instead of the place where they, you know, have dinner, that sort of thing. They’re very supportive. Inspiration for a kaleidoscopic quilt can start anywhere… I’ve written two books one on group quilts and one on the kaleidoscope method. And a few other little things for Dover. And I’m now starting a book on snowflakes… Yes, actually a snowflake is really a six-sided image, in some ways it’s very much like the quilt we have in front of us. Except that basically I’ll use a blue and white palette. Not a very rigid blue and white palette, really stretching that but then also using it in the shape of a snowflake. I will be working in one sixth, designing the snowflake from that one sixth and then duplicating that six times. Photomicrographs of snowflakes were taken in Vermont in the 1920’s so we have these small, little images that I’ve used to identify the specifics of a snowflake. I’ve made one quilt like that and now I’m doing a book about it. Interested in reading more about Paula? You can find her interview and more quilt stories at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Alliance’s site! Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
