Renaissance Gown

 

I made a Renaissance-style gown for myself.  I belong to a little group that plays for English country dancers (as seen at any ball you've seen in movies of Jane Austen novels).  When we play for the Christmas Madrigal feast at one of our member's churches, we go in costume.

When I make costumes, I always start with the internet.  I found some great illustrations for style inspiration.

Then I went resale shopping.  I decided to combine a maroon velvet jumper, a nicely patterned navy tablecloth, and a woven blue decorator fabric scrap for trim.  I much prefer having a base piece of clothing or two to start with than working totally from scratch.

Sunburst Quilt

 

I love this quilt! 

The blocks are c. 1860.  And some of the fabrics were in pretty bad shape.

 

Then some 120 years later, in 1980, the circles were set into squares and the quilt was backed and quilted.  That event is recorded in embroidery on the back of the quilt:

 

“Quilted: 1980  Carversville Pa”

A Quilt from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

 

For the past few years, I've been creating a quilt series called Something From Nothing.  These are generally just-for-fun, design experiments.  In addition, I've been making a more major piece, like this one, each year as my entry for the Fine Art of Fiber show.  (More info on Something From Nothing: intro to the series and quilts of 2015.  Previous fiber show entries: Cleopatra's Fan 2014 and What the Birds See 2013.)

The title of the quilt is Gas Giant.  No, this is not Saturn.  This is a planet in a solar system or galaxy that we haven't seen yet.  Gas Giant is probably the largest piece so far in the series (78" x 44").  Being about outer space, it needs to be pretty vast, right?

Mending a Large Rip in a 19th Century Tulip Quilt

Sometimes, a quilt with a very sad story comes to me to be repaired.  The sad story here is that this gorgeous c. 1860 tulip quilt was torn during a move.

It had been mounted on the wall with a velcro strip.  It looks like the movers just pulled straight down, and the quilt gave way just under the velcro.  Also, the area marked with a safety pin in the photo suffered many small tears.

Crib-size Crazy Quilt, c 1890

Antique crib quilts don't come around often.  For pretty obvious reasons, they were used hard and washed a lot.

This one came to me for repair and sprucing up.  In addition to being well over 100 years old, it has family history and provenance.  This adds up to a quilt whose significance way outstrips its actual size (22" x 35")!

To make this even more fun, the quilt's owner sent me two old family photos to include here.  Here's the family home in Blue Island, IL.

And here's the family photo taken at the wedding of her great-aunt Sadie.

A Log Cabin Quilt that Fools the Eye

A few weeks ago, I visited an open house at Harvey Pranian Art & Antiques.  Harvey has decades of experience in the antique/folk art/fine art biz, and finds the most wonderful things.  I highly recommend browsing at his site. 

Here's a small log cabin that really intrigued me.  (Photo by permission.)

From across the room, I thought the quilt was made of log cabin blocks with a pieced black and red vertical sashing.  It's a great visual rhythm.

But actually, the whole quilt is made from square courthouse steps blocks with the same patchwork placement, just rotated 90 degrees in alternate columns.  Brilliant fool-the-eye effect!  Hooray for homespun artists!

You'll note that the black squares are all pieced with their own little logs!  The logs are 1/4-3/8", both wools and cottons, as I recall.  You can kind of get a sense of the scale by looking at the little hang tag on the left edge in the first photo.

La Grange Community Quilt

This quilt was made in 1979 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of La Grange, IL, a western suburb of Chicago.  

It hung in the La Grange library for quite a while, and then was in storage during and for a while after the library's move to a new building.  The library is now ready to hang the quilt again, and they contacted me to help spruce it up.