I Know This Puppy

I was searching for vintage fabrics and came across an ad for a children's fabric.  It's actually a reproduction print, not a vintage fabric.  But the designs used are vintage.  A couple of them are identical to appliqués on a 1940s child's quilt that I helped bring back to life.  And couple of others are similar enough, that I'd guess they came from the same original pattern set.

Quilts in Outer Space

Image credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Doesn't this sound like fun?

Astronaut and quilter Karen Nyberg is going to combine these two activities when she joins the space station crew in a couple of weeks.  Read more about her quilting plans here.

I hope she publishes photos of her space quilts when she gets back to Earth.

Being Organized

So.  What do you do when you have 26 young actors wearing 56 costumes and different sets of parents helping out on different days?  You get organized.  You get super organized.  Organizing the dressing room became nearly as big a job for this show as creating the costumes themselves.

Kids and Toys

Here's a sweet fabric in a quilt that was brought to me for repair.  I think it's quite a bit older than the other fabrics in the quilt.  It may date to the 1930s or so, or is a clever reproduction fabric.  I think it's vintage, though - at the time this quilt was made several decades ago, I don't think reproduction '30s fabrics were in vogue as they are now.  There are just 3 triangles of this fabric, making it seem like a special scrap.

When I asked the quilt owner for permission to publish the photos here, he told me that the quilt was made for his mother-in-law, and that she was very involved in early childhood education. So he wonders if this fabric had been included in the quilt to represent that part of her life.  Cool!

Forest Park

I visited the Forest Park Library to clean the quilts that have been on display for several years.  See the previous post for an explanation of the vacuuming process.

Here's a little tour of one of the quilts.  This is a log cabin, barn raising set.

Have Vacuum, Will Travel

Vacuuming is probably the safest way to freshen a hanging quilt.  

I spent a good part of the day yesterday at the Forest Park Library, vacuuming three quilts that the library has on display.

An Old, Old Quilt

If, like me, you always like your antiques "the older the better", here's a quilt that fits the bill.

I came across this article a short while ago - it tells the story of a very, very old quilt that resides in Ohio.

The quilt is a whole cloth wool quilt.  It was made by the aptly-named Martha Crafts, born in 1760.  Family history says she made it prior to her 1787 marriage to Zachariah Howard.  This dating information consists of documentation written in 1910.  The style, fabric, and large size all help support the family's information.   This potential date would make it older than the oldest such quilt in the collections of the Smithsonian, and the folks in Canton are pretty pleased with that fact.

It was displayed last month at the local quilt show, only its second public appearance in all these years.

There is a great deal of family history associated with the quilt, making it an even more interesting piece.  The article details the history of Martha, her life and marriage, and the path of ownership and restoration of the quilt, a very interesting read.

Wouldn't we all love to have quilts with such great historical value and provenance in our family collection?

http://www.thecantoncitizen.com/2013/03/28/true-tales-howard-quilt/
Published in the Canton Citizen.  Written by George T. Comeau.

A Good Day's Work

We've got just one month left to get ready for Thin Ice Theater's production of The Phantom Tollbooth.  Costumes have been designed, sewing is in progress, with many moms lending their hands and sewing skills to the process.

Today was set aside for creating miners' hats for the workers in the numbers mine of Digitopolis.  My costume assistant Cheryl and I made our game plan, and in two hours, voilà, all done!  The idea grew bit by bit between us:  plastic hardhats plus cat food cans plus Mardi Gras beads.  Here's how our afternoon went.

The cat food can.

Tapestry Talk

A friend alerted me to this wonderful tapestry that was posted on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Featured Artwork of the Day page.

It is entitled:  Emperor Vespasian Cured by Veronica's Veil, and is Flemish, c. 1510.  The page about this tapestry has a full description, including the story of Veronica's veil and lovely close-up photos.

In style and execution and age, it looks very like the one I was lucky enough to work a year ago.

Phantom Tollbooth Costume Sketches

Step # Next in the costume process for The Phantom Tollbooth.  It's a real treat to do this show.  For several years now, when we've come across some outrageously silly costume item in the storage boxes, we'd smile and nod at one another and say, "Yep, we'll use that for Phantom."  And now, here we are!

Here are the current working sketches.  Because we have 26 actors and something like 56 costumes, it's, well, quite a project.  (See the costuming progress here and here.)

Cathedral Windows

Cathedral Windows quilts aren't, strictly, quilts.  There isn't the 3-layer fabric and batting "sandwich" that is the standard definition of "quilt".  The pattern is based on folding squares of fabric.  The folded squares are whipstitched together, and then small colorful squares are appliquéd over the joins, inside gracefully turned curves.

  

I like to think of the process as being very similar to the folded paper fortune tellers my friends and I made ad infinitum when we were 8 or 9 years old.  Does anyone else remember recess on sunny afternoons, choosing numbers and colors, and then getting a funny fortune?  Over and over and over?

Phantom Tollbooth

My next big costuming project for Thin Ice Theater is The Phantom Tollbooth.

We're producing the play by Susan Nanus, based on the book written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer.  The book was published in 1961.  When I was in fourth grade, and the book and I were still both pretty new, my teacher read it to us, chapter by chapter.  It's been one of my top favorite books ever since, and both my kids are big friends of all the characters, just as I am.  I can't recommend it highly enough, so I am delighted to be part of this production.

Favorite Quotes #1 - Nora Naranjo-Morse

Years ago, at a show of Native American art, I fell in love with the sculptures of Nora Naranjo-Morse.  I also fell in love with this statement that was quoted in the description of her artwork.  It's become kind of a goal for what I want art to be in my life.

Asked if she is proud of her work, she says, "Yes....I think so, but even more than that - it sounds like I'm talking about my ego - but I'm amazed at what it does to me when I see it.  I am amazed at the person that I have become, that it makes me want to have character.  It says to me, 'I want you to have integrity.'  In that sense, maybe you should ask them, 'Are you proud of her?' ....  I can't take all this admiration thing too seriously because it's like some joint effort between them and some other force and I am honored to be included."

She is also a poet and a filmmaker.  A nice biography of the artist is here.  And a video made a few years ago at her studio is here.

Naranjo-Morse created a sculpture installation outside the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.  Here's an article about it, and here's a photo from the article.

New Old Clothes

The two items I recently posted about repairing are now up at the Basya Berkman Etsy shop.  Check 'em out if you want more info.

1950's cocktail dress:  my blog Beading on a Little Black Dress , at Etsy here

1950's wedding dress:  my blog Here's A Reason to Get Married, at Etsy here

Old Whites

This lovely star quilt came to me to patch a couple of places with brown stains.  It serves as a wonderful example of how hard it is to match old whites.

Old whites are virtually never pure white.  This is both because the original fabrics may never have been as white as ours today because they didn't go through the same intense bleaching processes.  And then, they have aged, with varying degrees and combinations of browning, yellowing, and greying.

Starry Quilt

Here's a lovely star quilt, probably made in the last decades of the 1800s.  

I've seen this pattern called "Blazing Star" or "Star of Bethlehem".  This pattern has a long history as a favorite.  Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Quilt Patterns lists many other names.  Along with flowers, quilters seem to have always been very fond of stars!

Beading on A Little Black Dress

This otherwise basic little black dress gets most of its personality from the wonderful trim at the front neckline.  

Gathered fabric strips outline some subtle beading with iridescent blue beads - bugles, seed beads, and sphericals - and tiny rhinestones.  

Here's a Reason to Get Married

Oh, such a beautiful wedding dress!  When my friend Julia brought it to me for fixing, she said, "Doesn't this dress just make you want to have another wedding?"  Yep, Julia, it sure does!

Here are the wonderful fabric roses and the beading around the skirt.

Couldn't be more gorgeous!

Puppies, Kitties, A Lamb, and A Duckling

Here's a sweet vintage crib quilt, a special family heirloom.

I asked the owner if she would share the story of the quilt:

Davis Vertical Feed Sewing Machines

As I said in the previous post, I've been having a great time looking and reading my way through Janet Finley's book of antique photos, Quilts in Everyday Life.  

Last night, I read about something completely new to me, the Davis vertical feed sewing machine.  The photo in Finley's book shows a mother and her little daughter sitting at a Davis machine with a 4-patch quilt.  Finley dates the photo to 1895-6.  It is labeled by a photo studio in Afton, Iowa.

So I poked around this morning to see what I could learn.  "Vertical feed" means there are no feed dogs.  The fabric is advanced by the action of the needle and presser foot.  The Davis machine was patented and came into production around the same time as the early Elias Howe and Singer machines.  It's touted as being able to sew cleanly without pre-basting, to sew all sorts of various thickness of fabrics including leather very well, etc.  It looks like the company produced machines between 1868 and 1924 or so.  They are treadle machines.

Quilts in Everyday Life

Quilts in Everyday Life, 1855-1955: A 100-Year-Photographic History by Janet E. Finley

(I have no connection with the author or publisher at all, just thought I'd say it's a dandy book.)

I think I heard about this book via the Quilt History List.  I took a peek at it, and was sold on it right away.  It presents items from Janet Finley's huge collection of antique photos that include people and quilts.  So cool for me!  Quilts, clothing history, and social history all combined in one handy book!  The changing ambiance of the photos over time gives such a wonderful view into the "march of history" on all sorts of levels.

Not only that, the glimpses into homes and private scenes and street scenes are all very touching as well as factual.  It feels right somehow, to look into these old, old faces, many of them now anonymous, and give these people some recognition and credit for a life well-lived.  Personalities are sometimes very apparent, from sedate to out-of-the-box.  And, some of the folks are identifiable, and do have some pretty fun stories attached.  

It's like having a little peephole into daily life of long ago.  I'm always so curious about what the past was really like.  It's something we can't ever know, unless someone does invent time travel.

There's also a lot of photography history information.  It's not a topic I know much of anything about, but I do have some old family photos, some dating back into the 1800s, and I'm inspired now to pull them out and see how they fit into the info in this book.

Here's a review, from the Denver Post.  And here's another review, from the Why Quilts Matter blog.  This one will give you a couple of sneak peaks inside the book.  (Why Quilts Matter is a documentary series produced by the Kentucky Quilt Project.  I also have no connection with W.Q.M., but would also recommend viewing the series to add to your quilt history knowledge.)

I'm so grateful that Janet Finley collected all these photos, and now is sharing them with all of us!

My New Friend

She was rescued from the bottom of a bag of unwanted linens at an estate sale.

I'm guessing, going by the print on her robe, that she was made around 1970 or so.  She has a little bit of an attitude, and I was celebrating the new year by only doing things that I don't have to do, so I decided to spiff her up.

Book Review: Build Your Best Log Cabin

Log Cabin block, Barn Raising setting

I'm starting out the new year by doing something new.  I was invited to write a book review for an ebook about log cabin quilts by Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting.  I've never written an official book review before.  So here goes: