Welcome to Ann Quilts
I recently had the pleasure of repairing three heirloom quilts made by three generations of quilters. Two are heavy, wool and flannel crazy quilts, and the third is a cotton log cabin. (You can read about the repairs at Three Quilts, Three Generations - The Repairs.)
Here's how the owner describes the quilts:
Insect pins?
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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.
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.
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
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
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)
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.
