Preserving Our Quilt Legacy - Virtual Workshop - Starting soon!

Hey, hey - I'm starting to get the hang of this video promotion situation! My second video is up and running. It's a little "tour" of a great crazy quilt that I've been repairing. 

And this video is by way, of course, of reminding you that the start date for my quilt care and repair workshop is coming closer and closer. You can register for the whole workshop, or for selected alá carte items. Full details and registration info can be found on my website.

 

Bringing a damaged quilt back to life is such a satisfying endeavor. It honors the quiltmaker and the whole of quilting history. You can check out this blog for stories and photos of the repairs of quilts like these:

beaded crazy quilt, made by the owner's grandmother

signed by the grandmother of the current owner

Improved Nine-patch, before restoration

 

Improved Nine-patch, after restoration

1894 wedding quilt, signed by friends and family

Preserving Our Quilt Legacy - Virtual Workshop

What do these things have to do with taking care of vintage and antique quilts?

 

Two-step greens?

https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/tap-dance" Tap Dance Vectors by Vecteezy

 

Straw needles?

Insect pins?

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Come find out!  

I'm offering a virtual workshop this fall that covers quilt restoration, conservation, and preservation. 

There will be lectures, triage sessions for participants' quilts, how-to videos, samples of repair supplies, etc., etc.

You can attend the whole workshop - five Saturdays October 16 - November 13 - 3 hours per day.

Or you can attend selected lectures alá carte.

Or you can sign up for a private session with advice on mending and caring for your family heirloom quilt.  

All the details are on my website.  Email me if you have questions.  

 

 

 

 

Preserving Our Quilt Legacy - Virtual Workshop

Might I suggest a new quilt adventure for your fall?  I am teaching an in-depth workshop focusing on repairing and caring for quilts.  Here's the scoop:

The workshop covers:
• restoration
• conservation
• preservation
• identification and dating
------
• philosophies
• supplies
• techniques

We will start with the basic information in my book, Preserving Our Quilt Legacy, and explore the topics in more detail and with hands-on experience:
• lectures
• discussions
• "triage" sessions for students' quilts
• a library of how-to videos teaching stitches and repair processes
• specialty sessions (including how to run a quilt repair business and yoga for tired hands and shoulders)

Sewists, appraisers, and collectors - quilt lovers of all sorts - will all find useful information here.  

There is a maximum of 15 students, so everyone will have time for individual attention, and we'll have several Q&A periods.

 

The workshop takes place on 5 Saturdays, October 16 through November 13, 3 1/4 hours per Saturday, for a total of 16 1/4 class hours plus the set of how-to videos and other useful resources.

Class sessions will be recorded and available for students who have missed a session.  

Several of the lectures will be available separately for "alá carte" registration, as will private lessons and private triage sessions.  

I have 40 years of education gleaned from workshops, symposia, and reading, plus the experience of working with 400+ quilts.  I will be joined for some sessions by Martha Spark, who has long and deep experience with quilt restoration also.  My goal is to pass this knowledge on, and keep more quilt history alive.

Full description and registration can be found on my website:
https://www.annquilts.com/POQL_Workshop.html

Email me with any questions you may have:
annquilts@comcast.net

 

Quilt for an 1895 Wedding

I love a dated quilt.  I love a dated quilt with a family story (see full story below).  Combined together....well.... it's simply grand.

The fabrics have some preservation issues and staining throughout.  And at some point, a critter chewed a hole in the quilt and almost chewed a second.  The good part of that story is that the critter was polite enough to avoid chewing up any of the embroidered history.

#1

#2

Family Quilts: A Quilt from Every Generation for 150+ Years

A customer sent me a quilt for repair, and included photos of her collection of family quilts.  She gave me permission to share them with you here.  What a treat to have this many quilts passed down for so many generations!  And only one, the Grandmother's Flower Garden, was in need of repair.

The owner says:  

I have a quilt from every generation down through ones that my mother made for me and for her 9 grandchildren. My family tree goes back to the Mayflower as a direct descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullin; it also includes James Bell Stevenson, whose brother Adlai was VP of the United States and Secretary of War (equivalent now days to Secretary of State).  

(The owner's comments continue below in italics.) 

 
star (made by the owner's great-great-great-grandmother)
Made by Sara Ann McLure Marsilliott (12-19-1793/8-23-1868)
for her daughter Mary Jane Marsiliott           

tag:
Quilt by
Sara Ann McLean Marsilliat
(Mrs Jacob Marsilliat)
(1797-1868)

A Couple of Short Updates

 

1.  The Current Quilt Repair Job
What better way to spend some summer days than mending a mostly wool and flannel crazy quilt?  Well...yeah...I know...  I took this in-progress photo just for fun, and have decided I really like the photo as its own little piece of abstract composition.   

The dark fabrics are wool, the check is cotton flannel, and the red and white leaves are a woven upholstery-weight fabric.  It had pulled out from under the binding and frayed.  I took the photo when I was in the midst of inserting a nicely matching piece of wool, the bottom edge of which is turned under and stitched to the binding, the top edge of which is underneath the turn under of the fancy fabric.

Broken Star....Mended

The color play on this quilt is spectacular!  

This turned patching some of the diamonds into one of those good news / bad news situations.  Good news: the quilt is gorgeous.  Bad news: it really, really needs the perfect patching fabrics so as to not detract from the wonderful color play.

There were just a few diamonds damaged.  So it could have been a relatively quick job, but it wasn't....

Family Names on a Signature Quilt - Part 3

Well, well, well.  The story continues.  The backstory for this post can be found in two previous posts:

Flexner Family Names on a Signature Quilt
...in which researching names on a 1910 quilt traced the relationship between those people and my ancestors.

Family Names on a Signature Quilt - Part 2
...in which I was contacted by relatives of the people whose names are on the quilt, and they confirmed that whole new (to me) branch of my family.  The discussion left many more unanswered questions of the exact ties between the two branches.

---------------

And now for Part 3.  This chapter comes about because a second person came across these posts of mine while researching his own Flexner family history and wrote to me.  It didn't take much conversation to determine that we are indeed, also, related.  Our great-great-grandfathers (Moritz and Jacob) were brothers, so our common ancestors are our three-times-great-grandparents (Michael and Rebecca).  Isn't it marvelous to know the tree for that many generations?

A major question I had at the end of Part 2 was how the branch of the family on the Iowa quilt - descended from John Flexner - and my branch of the family - descended from Moritz Flexner - are connected.  The research of one of these new cousins of mine pretty well confirms that John was another brother of Moritz and Jacob.  They all emigrated and all headed branches of the Flexner family in this country.

My new-found cousin had traveled to the Czech Republic in 2019 as part of his research, and was able to locate and photograph the birthplace of my great-great-grandfather Moritz Flexner (b.1820) in Vseruby, Bohemia!  What a wonder!  He also found the birthplace of John and Jacob, in a different city, as the family had moved. 

A Log Cabin Quilt with Mystery

I really fell in love with this "homey" log cabin.  It's such a cozy look - and feel, too, as the fabrics are well-loved and very soft.

Family history says it was made in Virginia for the owner's mother, at or shortly after her birth, so in 1920-22.  The fabrics support that oral history, and it's a lovely collection of fabrics from the 1920s.

The mystery is that the top row of blocks was cut off at some point, and then reattached.  You can see that the straight furrow design reverses at the top row.  The reattaching was done by simply overlapping the two raw edges and stitching several rows of machine stitching with no attempt to neaten up the rough cut.

A Sparkling Crazy Quilt - Part 2

I've just received a wonderful story in my email.  It comes from a woman whose family quilt I've just repaired.  If anyone ever asks why history is important and fun and how quilts can be a part of history, here is the best answer!

Good morning.  Last evening my grand daughters, Desmin 7 and Cecilia 3 were over for dinner and we were sitting in the dining room. Desmin was facing the quilt and Cecilia with her back to the quilt. The girls are usually very observant and notice anything different in our house but had said nothing about the quilt. Suddenly Cecilia said I love this and went over to touch the bottom of the quilt. Desmin who is quite the artist at her young age and since very small done lots of art projects with her grandpa and daddy and on her own, still said nothing. I said Desmin what do you think. She said, I just keep looking at the quilt and how beautiful it it is. Then she gets up and go to the quilt and very gently feels some of the patches and is especially interested in the beaded ones (sparkle ones). Then they wanted to know how old great great grandma would be. Desmin wanted to know how old she was when she made it, how long it took her and how she did it. The quilt lives on.

I recently posted about the subject of this story, a sparkling crazy quilt.  On that post, you will find lots more photos of the creative and fun embellishments and fabrics on this quilt, and why there is a ribbon on the quilt bearing the name "Nordd. Lloyd / D. Havel".

A Sparkling Crazy Quilt

 

This is a stand-out crazy quilt, isn't it?  

I generally think of Victorian crazies as having so many more blacks and maroons, browns and navies, with brighter fabrics and embroidery threads interspersed only now and then. 

So I looked back at photos of other crazies that have crossed my path, and well, was surprised to see how many are very colorful after all.  So what is it about this one that makes it feel so very different? 

This quilt is super joyful!  It is packed of a wide variety of embellishments, all heightened by beading and other creative and fancy bits - it is simply dancing.  The brightness has been heightened a bit by patching done in the 1970s that add in that era's colors, too.  But clearly the quilt was a riot of color right from the start!

Antique Photo from Melrose, MA

A few years ago, I did a lot of research on a quilt with many names inscribed.  It seems to be fund-raising quilt, and was made in Melrose, MA, in 1897 or 8.  The information and connections made via this quilt just keep on coming...

You can read about the quilt, the research process, and the results - there are 14 blog posts - starting here, if you want to read through the whole process step by step.  There also is a summary of the process, a description of my adventures taking the quilt "home" to Melrose, and downloadable sets of data that I collected.  

But wait - now there's more!

Good-bye, Amazon....

I've decided to make a change to my business plan.  I am going to stop selling my book on Amazon.  The sales page will be set to "out of stock".  

The book will now be available only on my website, which links to my sales page at Square for the financial paperwork.  I hope that folks who come looking to buy on Amazon will now come looking for me as an independent seller.

*****  https://www.annquilts.com/book.html  *****

Read on if you want to know why I'm making this change.  I am much crabbier about this than I sound, believe me, and have decided to put this in the most positive way I can. 

1: Selling through Square costs significantly less for nearly the same list of services.
2: Square provides a smoother and more flexible seller interface.
3: I feel much more in charge of my business decisions by selling this way.
4: My sense of morality is not nearly so threatened. 

One change to my seller rhythm is that I needed to design my own receipt since Square doesn't provide a pre-formatted one.  This was not a hardship.  The only thing I've really lost is Amazon's huge marketing reach.  And I'm quite happy to trade that in for peace of mind and making my own decisions.

It's definitely the way to go for my small business and for my world view.

I am happy to say that I’ve been getting more and more orders at my website this calendar year, and am very, very grateful to those of you who are already shopping from small businesses and independent producers and artists.  

A Beauty of a Quilt

 Here's a gorgeous quilt.  It's as simple as that.

This quilt came to me for repair.  The quilt dates to c1850.  As old as it is, it is in nearly pristine condition, save for a place in the center where it got wet somehow with something.

Here's how fabric looks in an undamaged block.

Virtual Quilt Restoration Workshop - Update

Here's what my living room looks like when it turns into a video production studio!  

Martha and I are pleased that our February workshop is now full.

The good news is that you can still register for alá carte lectures and private sessions.

You can also add your name to the mailing list in case of cancellations, and to be notified of future workshops.  We are considering holding another in late spring.

Visit my website for full information on content, to register for alá carte items, or to add your name to our mailing list.

Learn to Repair Quilts! New Virtual Workshop

Hello!  Martha Spark and Ann Wasserman are hereby announcing our brand new Virtual Quilt Restoration Workshop!  

More Snowflake Quilts for the Winter Solstice

Yes, I'm a day late for the Solstice, but better late than never, I figure.  Let's slow down for a while and appreciate the cycles of time and the amazing Earth we all share.  Wishing everyone health and kindness. 

And so, let's talk about the quilts.  I've showcased two Snowflake quilts here on my blog made from a Paragon kit.  And now, here come numbers 3 and 4!!!  

The first quilt I wrote about was a repair job.  The quilt was made in the late 1930s.  There are two posts.  One tells about the quilt and its history, which is noteworthy because the owner also has the diary of her great-grandmother who made the quilt.  She describes details of shopping for the kit and how the sewing progressed.  The other post details the repair work I did, which is noteworthy because the owner asked me to add an embroidered dedication to her great-grandmother and the cousin who received the quilt as a graduation gift in 1940.

The story of the second quilt was sent to me by a reader.  She inherited her quilt from her grandmother's house.  She doesn't know who exactly made the quilt, but it is likely someone in the family. 

Now come these two quilts!  This information was sent to me by a quilter/quilt historian friend.  She says:

Quilt Repair Success!

Tooting my own horn here for a moment! 

Here's the lovely email I just received from a woman who bought my book.

My mother-in-law made the crazy quilt in the photos in the 1920's.  My daughter inherited it.  It had damage where it had been folded for all those years.  Otherwise, it was in pretty good condition.  I show the before and after pictures of a pink piece (photos 1 & 2), and the last photo is of the quilt.  I used your book to plan and make the repairs.  I would not have known where to start otherwise!  I used a lightweight silk fabric to make the appliques, and 100 wt silk thread to do the repair.  I bought silk organza to cover the binding which was badly worn.  We were pleased that the color was so good with the original fabric.  Your book addressed all the issues I was working on, so thank you!

It's so gratifying to know that the book is working just the way I intended.  Here are her photos.  Didn't she do a super great job?!

Before

After

Binding

And the horn-tooting isn't complete without a link to more info on content and purchasing.

Quote of the Day....Quote of the Era, Actually

 I came across this on Instagram (@hayfestival) a couple of weeks ago:

These words were written by author Arundhati Roy.  They are the concluding paragraphs of her article published in Financial Times in April, 2020, called "The Pandemic is a Portal". 

Her words so clearly sum up my dreams and hopes for this difficult time we are traversing.  

I have to follow them with the little quilt I made early in the summer and posted a short while back, expressing my hopes for a new way of living being created from the old.  You can see the new ways and ideas just beginning to pop out from within and behind the old ways. 

World Turned Upside Down
18" x 18"

You can visit a previous post to read about the technicalities of how I created this two-layer quilt, and other stories about the concept that grew as I went along in making it.  

This season, I am most grateful for all the individuals and organizations that are coming up with creative solutions and pathways to not only imagine, but also build, a new lifestyle of respect and understanding for our planet and all the living beings who call her Home.