Vintage Quilt Tops

Another top completed today from various existing squares.

I have five or six vintage quilt tops to turn into finished quilts. This is the newest one - purchased in Wisconsin a few weeks ago. Nothing really for me to do on this top except maybe add a dark border. It just needs quilting.

Fibre Content

Upcoming September 9-16 at the Art Gallery of Burlington (Ontario) is a wonderful and inspirational show of fibre art - FIBRE CONTENT exhibiting about 125 pieces by 80 artists. Please come if you are in the neighborhood.

I was thrilled to have my work selected for the show, and  honoured to have been selected by Emma Quin from the Ontario Crafts Council to receive one of the three Juror's Choice Awards for my piece "Settling".

It has reinvigorated me.


If it's not too late, can I still mention this past winter? It seems I haven't posted since January. I did not fall off the face of the earth nor disappear in a snowdrift. I have had many new beginnings, each exciting in their own way, and so there is much work waiting to be finished. It has been a challenging several months with work at the Museum absorbing much of my time and creative juices.

I have been working more with straight-up quilt making recently - quiet and meditative and restorative - and I continue to be under the spell of the grid.  I found these star squares at a second hand shop, put them together with pink sashing, and now it awaits a large border made up of 9-patch squares which were also picked up second hand. I love working with unfinished vintage tops. I must be careful that I don't create too many of my own!

new life for an old quilt

We have some cherished old whole cloth quilts at the cottage.

 

This one is my brother's favorite quilt for sleeping on the porch swing. It is so worn that it's easy to put a toe through the fabric. It is covered with tiny repair scars - finally time to give it some more protection.







I chose a vintage patchwork top that I collected a few years ago and made some necessary repairs to blocks that had completely disintegrated...

Then miraculously found a number of scraps of backing fabric of the same character and quality as the original quilt, which I pieced together... it was exactly the size of the old quilt.

A border of soft brushed cotton to make the top the right size, a bit of putting together and tying with embroidery floss and voila! The original quilt has many more years of use ahead of it - many more nights on the porch swing.



My brother's only request when I started the project was to "please make it feel old".

textiles waiting to be found

Yesterday was a day to browse, to take in beautiful things, old things. I rescued this charming, simple quilt top. It's thin - a variety of loose woven cottons. It will be a beautiful summer quilt or even a table cloth - maybe for a picnic.

This beauty was also there, but I had to leave it behind.  It is that perfect combination of precision and softness - evidence of the hand and heart.

And then there was this stunning, unusual wool flat-woven, strip pieced kilim! Terrific colours.
Big - 10' x 10'! At Jonny's Antiques in Shakespeare. Please don't buy it before I do.

Cuties

It's been a very busy month preparing for a new feature exhibit on Signature Quilts, as part of the Stratford Perth Museum's year long exhibit A Common Thread: Quilts of Perth County. More on that soon. In the the meantime, here are a couple of charming pieces I've recently acquired.

I'm still not sure how to use them. I'd like to keep them intact, but still use them in some kind of quilt textile. Not cutting them up - rather stitching them to a large fabric and overlaying other stitching, combine them with other fabrics? Maybe.  Maybe with this one....

 

Inspiration in Montreal

Early Quebec textile - wool embroidery/crewel work.

 I had a wonderful visit to the Musee des Beaux-arts de Montreal and was able to take pictures in most of the galleries. Even the non-textiles - have quilt-like qualities.

Paul-Emile Bourduas - 1957. Rather quilt-like.

Jean-Paul Riopelle

I've misplace my notes on this one - but it's a printed textile - I'm guessing circa 1930.

Natalia Gontcharova - 1914Set design for Le Coq d'Or by Rimsky Korasakov

The exhibit is up!

The Stratford Perth Museum's new exhibit "THIS is a Quilt!" showcases contemporary quilts from SAQA artists. These extraordinary gems are shown alongside traditional quilts from the museum's collection. The juxtaposition makes the exhibit sparkle.

Just for fun

I went with the sashing. It certainly changed the character of what was a gentle old fashioned, charming look to something a bit more exuberant and funky. I like it, though I may have pushed it a little too far. It overwhelms the original squares a bit... but this is about fabric and fun and being light in spirit - so nothing to get too critical about.

 I found a bundle of 24 cotton crazy quilt squares at a second hand shop. The fabrics mostly look to be from the 40s and 50s, but a few charming ones look to be earlier - maybe 1920.





They're foundation pieced on old cotton sugar bags.


 

With a little trimming, they're now ready to stitch together. The question is - to sash or not to sash?  To stay true to the quilt as it is, or to add just a little funky new-old-fashioned bits for the fun of it?