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.