by Quilt Alliance | May 23, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1911, the New York Public Library was dedicated in a ceremony led by President William H. Taft. The building is the largest marble structure every constructed in the United States. The library took over 14 years to complete and was designed to house a collection of more than a million books. Today the library is visited and used by more than 10 million people annually and more than two million people have borrowing privileges. This quilt, titled “Little Snake River Valley Friends of the Library Memory Quilt,” was completed in 1996 in Savery/Baggs, Wyoming. Agnes Stock and Mary L. Duncan came up with the idea for the quilt and led the group who made it. An poignant note is included in this Quilt Index record: “Quiltmakers of this isolated Wyoming/Colorado valley had little access to new techniques until a new woman, Kerry Jonke, moved to the valley with her husband who was a forest service (or other government) employee. She showed the quilters how to use a rotary cutter, plastic rulers, and to be very careful about measurements. But she died very young, at 33, of cancer. However, quilts made in the valley show her influence after 1990.” The quilt was documented in 2008 during the Wyoming Quilt History Project. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Sources: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/new-york-public-library-dedicated Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | May 22, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1843, a wagon train made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle sets off along the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. This “Great Emigration” of Americans reached Oregon in five months. Travel over the Oregon Trail peaked in 1845 when more than 3,000 made the journey. The trail was abandoned in the 1870’s after the advent of the railroad. Pat Hubbard of Greeley, Colorado made this quilt, titled “South Fork of the Oregon Trail,” in 1994, a tribute to her grandparents’ travel from the east to the Colorado Territory. The detailed embroidery accurately depicts many plants, birds and other animals found in the region. This quilt took 6th place in the National Lands Contest and was exhibited at county fairs. The quilt was purchased by the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum for its permanent collection. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Sources: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/great-emigration-departs-for-oregon Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | May 21, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1881, the American National Red Cross was founded in Washington, D.C. Founders Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons started the organization to provide humanitarian aid to victims of war and natural disasters in affiliation with the International Red Cross, for whom Barton had worked during the Franco-Prussian War. This stunning Red Cross fundraising quilt was completed by Anna Clare Tate Stanfield of Wichita Falls, Texas in January 1917. From this Quilt Index record: In all there are more than 500 names on this quilt, and the quilt raised over $300 for the Red Cross. The five-pointed stars are hand pieced and appliqued over the block seam junctures. Additional names were also written around the edge of each wheel. Some of these are company names, with the names of employees within the wheel. Stanfield’s son, J. Tate Stanfield currently owns the quilt and documented it during the Texas Quilt Search. The quilt 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) and was included in an exhibition by the same name in the Texas State Capitol Rotunda, Austin, Texas, April 19-21, 1986. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Sources: www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-red-cross-founded Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | May 20, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets they called “waist overalls”—blue jeans were born. Strauss was a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria who ran a successful dry goods business with stores all over the Western states. Davis, a tailor from Nevada who bought supplies from Strauss, designed the new garment and asked Strauss to fund the patent application. The 501 brand jean was originally sewn in worker’s homes and quickly became the best selling work pant in the U.S. Levi Strauss & Co. now employs over 10,000 people worldwide. Pauline Salzman of Treasure Island, Florida made this house-shaped quilt, titled “It’s All in the Genes,” for the “Home Is Where the Quilt Is” contest held by the Quilt Alliance in 2012. From Salzman’s artist’s statement: “Finding the perfect pair of jeans is not a unique problem. It’s about the jeans and the genes. However, this quilt was, also, about expanding my horizons. I took a class from Susan Shie where I learned to paint and write on fabric. This technique allows me to tell a story and have a great deal of fun.” View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Sources: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/levi-strauss-and-jacob-davis-receive-patent-for-blue-jeans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss_%26_Co Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | May 19, 2013 | QSOS, QSOS Spotlight
Have you ever started to make a quilt–gathered your fabric and started cutting pieces pieces–only to change your mind about the design or pattern halfway through the process? Today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight features two quiltmakers interviewed at the 2011 International Quilt Festival in Houston who shared the stories behind their quilts and the serendipitous change of plans that shaped their designs. Sometimes the detour can be just as fun as the original route! Barbara Ann Bauer Barrett shares a quilt that started as an intricate traditional block and unexpectedly took flight: “I call this quilt ‘Sing a New Song’. It features a large bird in the center that happened by accident. A few years ago, I thought I wanted to make a New York beauty quilt. I got started on all of the arcs that takes and soon decided that I really didn’t want to finish that. They sat around for a while on the table and one day they started to look like feathers to me. I put them up on the design wall and a bird came out. I decided he was pretty enough to pretty much stand on his own with a few friends and a little suggestion of nature. The border is interesting. It’s made of scraps from a weaver from Taos, New Mexico. She makes garments and sells her scrap bags here at festival. I picked up a couple last year and turned them into a fringed border. It’s one of my favorite parts… I think the quilt represents a joy in nature. We’ve recently moved to the country, so I have nature all around me. I’m more aware of it. I like that it used old things and repurposed them. That made it special for me. It also represents freedom. The bird is having a good time flying in the beautiful batik sky.” Helen Ridgway tells the story of a collaborative quilt and its continuing evolution from balloons to fairies: “This quilt is called “Fairy Frenzy” and it started as a quilt with five balloons and a big bow at the bottom. And since you’re looking at it, you can tell it looks nothing like that with a big bow at the bottom… We all went home from this meeting and we were all supposed to make something that looked like a balloon. So we were just doing little ideas. I remember well that I only did a quarter of mine because I thought, ‘Gosh, that got pretty big,’ and it was going to be round. I was going to have four of those… When we brought them together we thought, ‘I think those look like flowers, not like balloons. Why don’t we make a garden?’ So we scrapped the bow, we scrapped the balloons, and we decided to make a garden. We still didn’t have fairies in it at all but we all started using–I hate to tell you–ugly fabrics that we had in our stash and we put all these fabrics that we thought were ugly fabrics together and made all of these flowers. They are all paper pieced and then appliquéd onto the background. We had a hard time coming up with the background and somebody had this green batik in their stash so they gave it to us so we did that and then we started putting stems on the flowers, we started fraying some of them, we thought that was cute. We turned one of them upside over at the leaves, and then we decided what were we going to do with the bottom of this thing. Then somebody said, ‘If it’s a garden, we probably need some grass.’ So we took all of those greens and we put fusible on the back of them and then we kind of swirled them and put all of that green there. We still didn’t have a way to stop it. So we must have worked on ending this quilt at the bottom for three months.” You can read more stories from the International Quilt Festival (and hundreds of other locations!) 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…
