Visit to the Past
Quilting from present to past
Last weekend my wife and I went to the Shelburne Museum, in Shelburne Vt. it was museum day – sponsored by the Smithsonian. We figured if they are going to give us free admission – why not!
The Shelburn is a variety of life style snapshots back thru this countries history. One of the exhibits was on Quilting past and as present Art. The older quilts on display – one made with 1″ squares – over 12,000 different squares, were really something to see. Although they were made for the most part as practical everyday quilts the way in which they were crafted by hand – they are works of art.
Then there were the present day Art Quilts – a couple of them were very nice, the rest were quilting craft gone wrong. One in particular had started out very nice then the “artist” just went nuts with freehand stitching, there was no rime nor reason, in fact it detracted from the original work.
I can’t say that the Quilting Art exhibit was the highlight of the days visit, but getting the chance to see some of the 100 year old handcrafted quilts was very interesting – the older quilts where very much “works of art”.
Where it begins I can begin to tell you
sorry neal
This is the start of my adventure with my first quilt. It will be a wall hanging. I don’t want to take on to much to start with and if it does not come out to well it can hang in the back of the closet.
My wife who is the quilter has had me help some on a new baby quilt. Yes another one, remember the Wedding Quilt saga – well we got the news that the newly weds are to have a blessed event.
I have helped to cut squares – sounds easy but it does take some careful laying out with the template to make sure that they are all square and the same size.
The squares then had a small triangle sewn onto each corner. The fabric of the original square was then cut off and the resulting new corner was then ironed flat – which i got to do – so that each square now has a corner triangle of different material.
I was then handed all of the squares and told to lay out the quilt top – making sure that the squares conners did not match and that i had a good random pattern. The original squares where cut from color prints and pattern print fabric.
With just a little bit of rearranging we soon had a quilt top laid out we both like. Each square was then pinned to the old sheet they were laid out on and we now have the top ready to begin sewing together.
I still have not quite settled on what I am going to do for my wall hanging but should have it planned out for the next blog entry – wish me luck
