Baseball!
On this day in 1968, Henry “Hank” Aaron, age 34, hit the 500th home run of this career, leading the Atlanta Braves to a 4-1 win over the San Franciso Giants. Aaron was born in 1934 in Mobile, Alabama and was a star player in both football and baseball in high school. He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. An unknown quiltmaker machine and hand pieced and hand appliqued this now fragile Baseball quilt between 1901-1929. It was documented in 1993 as part of the Connecticut Quilt Search Project. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hank-aaron-hits-500th-homer Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreA Quaker Farewell.
On this day in 1656, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, two English missionaries traveling from a Quaker center in Barbados, became the first Quakers to immigrate to the American colonies when their ship landed in Boston. Shortly after arriving in Puritan-controlled Massachusetts, Austin and Fisher were arrested and jailed for their liberal teachings and after five years in jail, were deported back to Barbados. Philena Cooper Hambleton’s Quaker Friendship Quilt was made in New Garden, Hanover Township, Columbiana, Ohio in 1853. Lynda Salter Chenoweth has done extensive research on the quilt and documented it in The Quilt Index as part of the Signature Quilt Pilot Project. From this Quilt Index record: This quilt is a single-pattern friendship quilt comprised of twenty five 12″ X 12″ blocks, a border, and a folded, front to back edging. The quilt was made by Philena Cooper Hambleton’s female relatives and friends to take with her to Iowa when she and her husband migrated there from Ohio in 1854. The quilt passed from Philena to her daughter, Angelina Craver, then to Angelina’s son, Arthur Hambleton Craver, then to Arthur’s daughter, Florence Philena Oberholtzer. It became part of an estate sale in Danville, CA in 1995 when Florence died and was purchased from an antique shop in Petaluma, CA in 2001. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-quaker-colonists-land-at-boston Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreBela and Belah.
On this day in 1958, American banjo player Béla Anton Leoš Fleck was born in New York City. “Widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most innovative and technically proficient banjo players,he is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.” (Wikepedia) Belah Beatrice Sumrell of Ayden, North Carolina, finished this Dresden Plate quilt in 1952. From this Quilt Index record: Mother had given the unquilted top to a cousin and she gave it to me; Finished in 1952, probably was in the making for a few years, Scraps from making clothing, feed sacks, Made other quilts, VA, DC, GA and WA; Children: Reginald, Marion, Winifred, Alene, Billy, Grace. Sumrell’s daughter documented the quilt in 1985 as part of the North Carolina Quilt Project. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Fleck Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreLobbing Peter to Play Paul.
On this day in 1877, the first lawn tennis tournament was held at Wimbledon, then a suburb of London. The event, hosted by the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, attracted twenty-one amateur male competitors. In 1884, the Lady’s Singles was introduced at Wimbledon. An unknown quilter hand and machine pieced and hand quilted this Robbing Peter to Pay Paul quilt around 1885 in Pennsylvania. From this record: “The back is made of two different fabrics. The center one has a brown ground with light brown, pink, rose, and red figures, roller printed. It depicts male and female tennis players playing mixed doubles, a women reclining in a hammock with a dog, 2 children playing, parrot tulip, birds, roses, ferns, trees, morning glories, etc.” The quilt is now in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and it was documented in The Quilt Index as part of the Michigan Quilt Project. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wimbledon-tournament-begins Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreLiberty Bell cheater cloth.
On this day in 1776, the Liberty Bell, a 2,000-pound copper and tin bell, rang out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia calling citizens to come and hear the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, signed four days earlier. The crack in the Liberty Bell is though to have first happened when tolling for the funeral of U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835, and then expanded to it’s current size in 1846. An unnamed quilter from New Jersey hand pieced and hand quilted this Centennial Quilt in 1876. “This patriotic quilt is sewn from 18 printed Centennial banners. Each of the twelve banners on the outside edge has thirteen red and white stripes and thirty-nine white stars on a blue field. The fabric includes Cheater fabric (pre-printed appliqué or pieced design) depicting flags and portraits of George Washington….Above [Washington’s] head is the Liberty Bell with the crack showing.” The quilt was passed down by the granddaughter of the maker, who was a young girl at the time the quilt was made, and documented as part of The Heritage Quilt Project of New Jersey, Inc. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/liberty-bell-tolls-to-announce-declaration-of-independence Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreQ.S.O.S. Spotlight
Today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight is about genealogy. But not in the way you’re thinking! Sometimes, in searching the Q.S.O.S. archives, I find small, delightful connections between interviews. Today, I was reading an interview of Canadian quilter Lorraine Roy from 2008. In it, interviewer Bernie Herman mentioned a project by quiltmaker Dominie Nash. His question was about ‘quilt genealogies’–the way that quilts relate to each other and their history, their lineage, connections, and references. Both Dominie and Lorraine shared their thoughts about the way the quilts they made referred to their own past work, their evolution as quiltmakers and artists, and their quilt making process. These two Q.S.O.S. interviews are very different conversations, but they’re all part of the great family of quilts and quiltmakers. In the spirit of quilt geneologies, this week’s Spotlight starts with an excerpt from Dominie Nash’s 2001 interview, as she explained the great variety in projects she’d been working on recently: For a while I had been obsessively filling up areas of my quilt with little tiny pieces of fabric and I decided I wanted to simplify, so that at least for me worked here because as you can see the shapes are not as complex as some of my earlier work. And it led to a series which I’ve been very pleased with I’ve done five altogether… The series that I worked on before this and I don’t think I’ve finished with it is called “Peculiar Poetry” and it’s done in very much the same style although as I’ve said the use of fabric is a little more complex. Each of the big shapes was filled with many more smaller pieces of fabric and from the same color range to kind of create an overall color for each shape. And then I’ve done, I’m working on a series that I call “Deconstruction/Reconstruction” where I take old quilts that I’ve done that I haven’t been happy with and cut them up and recombine them to make new quilts so I’ve done maybe five or so sets of those. I have more candidates waiting in the wings. And then is a series called “Chimera” which involves taking pieces from one quilt and using them as a starting point for the next and those are based on drop cloths that I accumulate when I’m dyeing and printing the fabric. So with most of them I’ve taken a whole piece of cloth that has a lot of paint and dye splashed on it and I add some to it and use that as the ground for the quilt and then add, pieces on top of that from the previous quilt, do stitching and printing on top of the whole newly assembled piece… I don’t usually know when I do the first one or even two whether it’s gonna go on and I have some that have just sort of dead ended. But I like to work in series because it’s a way to develop my ideas and have what everybody seems to want is a body of work that kind of hangs together. I never say, you know I’m going to do ten or four or whatever, it just happens and at some point with some of them I might say this is finished and with others I know that I may come back to them. But I usually have two or three different series that I’m working on at the same time which may not look anything like each other. So I have to be careful when I’m presenting my work not to confuse people. 7 years later, Bernie Herman interviewed Lorraine Roy and mentioned Nash’s work, sparking a conversation about the ever-evolving technique and passions of an artist: Bernie Herman: Your thoughts on this question make me remember two conversations with two very different artists working in the same medium. First, some years ago Dominie Nash described a quilt project in which she made a quilt, rent or cut it into parts, recycled those parts into a second generation of quilts, rent or cut those into bits, recycled those fragments into the third generation, etc. In the end, many generations later, traces of the original continued to surface. Second, Irene Williams of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, explained a process in more or less these words, ‘Every quilt I make remembers all the quilts I’ve ever made and all the quilts my mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, and grandmothers ever made. In fact, every quilt I make remembers every quilt that has ever been made in this place.’ So, in the context of quilt genetics (for want of a better phrase), how do your quilts, using the example of “Luck and Skill,” express their genealogies? Lorraine Roy: My first love in textile technique was embroidery. Even though embroidery techniques were not taught in the area where I grew up, I sought out every possible source of information and was able to master quite a few different types, including canvas work and white work. Needless to say, these are slow painstaking methods of expression, and I wanted to work larger, faster, and in an even more painterly way. Over 20 years I developed the collage technique that I now use, but only in the past 10 years have I been using quilting as a way to finish and present the work (I was previously stretching onto frames). Because my imagery is so strongly influenced by the linear and painterly character of embroidery, my hangings are rarely called ‘quilts.’ In fact I have never made a real quilt, and because French Canadians have a stronger tradition of weaving and rug hooking, I was never exposed to them while growing up. So we could say that “Luck and Skill,” like all my other hangings, expresses its genealogy by referring more strongly to the linear and painterly elements of embroidery than it does to the traditional construction of quilts. As for visual genealogy: grids have appeared in almost every one of my series in some form or another. One of the reasons I was so drawn to my early Canvas embroidery was the orderly rows of stitches and the rhythmic motion of the work itself. I respond to grids in other artists’ work as well, so I suspect it’s simply part of my natural inclination or vocabulary, a symbol of order that balances beautifully with more chaotic elements… [E]ach piece I make captures (in the best way I can) one moment in a continuum of moments. It is not perfect but it has built on previous experience, and is a step to the next level. Just because one individual piece is not perfect does not mean it has less value. On the contrary, it has much to offer someone who is truly observing and searching – the mistakes, the inconsistencies, the omissions, the triumphs and failures – they are all there, plain to see. Each viewer enters it, contributes to it, and grows with it, in his own way. The viewer is a co-creator with the artist. You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories qsos@quiltalliance.org …
read moreCarpenters from Plains.
On this day in 1946, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter marries Eleanor Rosalynn Smith at the Plains Methodist Church in Plains, Georgia. When the couple met, she was 18 and working in a hair salon. He was 21 and a recent graduate of the Annapolis Naval Academy…Since 1984, the Carters have given their time each year to build homes and raise awareness of homelessness with the international charitable organization Habitat for Humanity. Excerpted from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/future-president-jimmy-carter-marries Mariah Davenport of Plains, Georgia hand pieced and hand quilted this Carpenter’s Wheel quilt between 1800 and 1849. It was documented during the Florida Quilt Project by the current owner who inherited the quilt. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/future-president-jimmy-carter-marries Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreA Blue and White Sunflower from Idaho.
On this day in 1890, Idaho become the 43rd state in the Union. Since exploration of North America began from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the southern borders, Idaho remained virtually untouched by Spanish, French, British and American trappers and explorers up to 1805 when Lewis and Clark came through the territory. To date there are only 26 records in the Quilt Index of quilts made in Idaho. Betsy Anne Sargent, a homemaker and cook who ran a hotel and livery barn with her husband in Kooskia, Idaho, machine and hand pieced this Sunflower quilt between 1901-1929. Sargent made more than 30 quilts in her lifetime and this one, a ribbon winner at the Idaho State Fair, was documented as part of the ongoing Minnesota Quilt Project. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/idaho-becomes-43rd-state Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreTwin Darts and Sisters.
On this day in 1939, twin sisters Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer and Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips (columnists who wrote as Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, or Dear Abby) were married in a double-wedding ceremony two days from their birthday. The twins were born in 1918 to Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in Sioux City Iowa and owned a chain of movie theaters. Marie Zeiler Achziger of Nebraska made this Twin Darts (Brackman* pattern number 2323) quilt in 1940. The quilt was documented in 1987 as part of the Nebraska Quilt Project. *from Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, first edition 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Phillips http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eppie_Lederer Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreOh, Canada
On this day in 1867, the British North America Act (today called the Constitution Act) was passed by Great Britain, recognizing the Dominion of Canada, a group that included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the future provinces of Ontario and Quebec, as a self-governing entity. Today Canada Day is a federal holiday celebrated by outdoor public events and citizenship ceremonies. Liza MacDuff, an English-Scottish Protestant housewife from rural Prince Edward Island, Canada, hand pieced and hand quilted this Sixteen Patch quilt in the late 1800’s. MacDuff’s granddaughter inherited the quilt and documented it in 1992 as part of the Rhode Island Quilt Documentation Project. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/canadian-independence-day Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
read moreQ.S.O.S. Spotlight
This week’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight is extra special! Last Wednesday, the National Endowment for the Arts announced the winners of the 2014 National Heritage fellowships–the highest honor in folk and traditional arts in the United States. Among them was quilter and quilt advocate Carolyn Mazloomi, who founded the Women of Color Quilter’s Network in 1985 and has worked tirelessly to advocate for not only quiltmakers of color but all quiltmakers and lovers of quilts. Carolyn was interviewed in 2009 for the Q.S.O.S. project–read some excerpts from that interview about the WCQN and why Carolyn loves quilts, or check out the full interview here. Congratulations, Dr. Mazloomi! “I started the organization as a means to let African American quiltmakers know about the cultural significance as well as the monetary value of their quilts. We started out with nine people and over the years it’s grown tremendously. One of the things that we do is present quilts, quilt exhibitions to museums around the country. We give workshops around the country to children and youth, try to interest them in learning to quilt because when you think in terms of the quilt population of African American quilts within the realm of quilting in this country, there are not that many of us so it is important to me to try and interest young people in learning how to quilt. That is very important, because I think about the future…” “Quilts are important because, physical quilts are important to me because they give me joy, they bring me joy, they bring me joy. That’s the first thing and then the second thing I think about the historical aspect of quilts. I’m interested in recording that history, that is important to record quilt history because it gives us a window into American society, families and lives and social structure of people living here in this country. It is fascinating and it’s important. That’s what is important and then the quiltmakers themselves, people. There is just a wide variety of people that I’ve met and everybody brings something interesting to the table so that’s been an interesting point for me, meeting quilters of all races, gender across the country and sharing that common love of quilt making.” “My legacy and so forth with quiltmaking will be the founding of the Women of Color Quilters Network and finding a recording the contributions of African American quiltmakers to American quiltmaking, especially for the contemporary African American quiltmaker. It’s important for me that I do everything that I can to record their works, to exhibit their works so that they have a place in quilt history.” You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories qsos@quiltalliance.org …
read moreFrom Rochester with Love.
On this day in 1964, Christopher Allen Eselgroth was born in Greece, New York, a suburb of Rochester. A typeface -knowing, ridge-conquering, rock and roll-playing, moon pie ice cream- devouring, basil-growing, family-loving man–he is. Happy Birthday, sweetheart. xo Amy This stunning signature quilt was started in 1900 as a fundraising effort by Mrs. Addis Elliot and later purchased for $65 by the Rochester Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Rochester, New York. From this Quilt Index record: “The red and white pieced quilt with fan blocks with an American Flag in the center. The border is pieced with the blades of the fans. Outline stitched in each of the blocks are what appear to be a series of 1900 store names and Rochester businesses along with dozens of names of people.” The record also includes a letter the quiltmaker wrote to the Rochester Historical Society in 1950, recalling the story of the quilt. Here is an excerpt: “I have been requested to write to you about the quilt that I sold to the W.C.T.U. I will say that it was started in the year 1900 while I was living at the restaurant at 95 E. Main St. I belonged to a lodge called the good Templar I.O.G.T. Independent or of good Templar. It met every Friday night. We got short of money to pay our rent so it was proposed by the members to start to raise some money. Each member went out and worked and got names for to put on an advertising quilt at so much a name or whatever they could give…” The quilt is now privately owned and Elizabeth Davis contributed the quilt and its history to The Quilt Index during the Signature Quilt Project. 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 or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
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