~My Crib Quilt/Year of the Quilt/American Folk Art Museum
my crib quilt is finally finished !!
I’ve been working to re-store this crib quilt since before year 2000 – off and on in fits & starts – it found it’s way to me torn and tattered – from the auctions up-state around the Catskills – the small town of Fleishmann’s to be exact.
it is a log cabin – Straight Furrow – pattern and is quite old. I’m thinking it dates back at least to 1880 and not later than 1900. one can see early textiles in it – wood block printed cottons and hand woven pieces.
the Straight Furrow pattern took its inspiration from plowed fields – with the blocks positioned so that diagonal lines of light alternate with darker fabric pieces.
NANCY SMITH, LOG CABIN BABY QUILT RESTORATION, unknown maker, most likely New York State, ca. 1880-1910.
re-stored & repaired by hand, starting from some time pre-2000 – and finishing – this very SEPT 2010.
yep – those are buttons – most them vintage – I’ve put on the borders – to hide worn spots and to make the whole quilt stronger. they make a huge fun clanging sound when the quilt is moved – sort of like a baby rattle – though of course it wouldn’t be baby proof or prudent to place it back in baby care !!
the upper right hand corner was the last section to do. I tried to keep the spirit of the quilt throughout. saving as much as the original textile material as I could – and replacing others with vintage ribbon and other scraps . . . that had sympathetic colors and continuity.
vintage ribbons and hand-stitching along and into – a drop-out element – to preserve it.
note the sheer (vintage) pink fabric ribbon along the right hand side – preserving other original fabric – it wouldn’t have done much good just to sew over all the weak parts – and lose the quilt, that’s the fun of re-storing – creatively as opposed to archivally.
just to make sure – the next person to shelter this quilt – knows it was an artist from the 21st century who hand stitched it back to life – so lovingly – I put in a little code !!
the vintage bowler – says – someone worked on this – well after it was originally put together – but the lucky clover gives the date – a snippet from OLD NAVY – St. PATRICK’S DAY 2010 !!
and in fact – next week – is the opening of a huge Quilt show at the Museum of American Folk Art. titled – ‘QUILTS: MASTERWORKS FROM THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM’ – culled from its own wonderful collection – will go up in 2 stages – PART I opens next week, Oct 5, 2010 and runs thru thru APRIL 24, 2011.
Part II will open MAY 10, 2011.
see: ‘QUILTS: MASTERWORKS FROM THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM’ !!
also celebrating the museum’s self declared – “YEAR OF THE QUILT” – the museum’s smaller LINCOLN SQ. branch will exhibit – ‘SUPER STARS’ – !! – quilts with the star patterns . . . so beloved by American quilt makers from the early colonists, onward and westward. it’s said that there are ‘nearly’ as many patchwork star patterns – as there are stars in the sky. this show goes up NOV 16, 2010 and runs thru SEPT 25, 2011.
see: ‘SUPER STARS: QUILTS FROM THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM’ !!
SLASHED STAR QUILT
SARA MAARTZ, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. dated 1872.
cotton. 82 x 76 in.
gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alan Weinstein, 2007. 15.1
IMAGE COURTESY: AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM
“You can give the same kind o’ pieces to two persons, and one’ll make a ‘nine-patch’ and one’ll make a ‘wild-goose chase’ and there’ll be two quilts made out of the same kind o’ pieces, and jest as different as they can be. And that is jest the way with livin’. The Lord sends us the pieces, but we can cut ’em out and put ’em together pretty much to suit ourselves, and there’s a heap more in the cuttin’ out and the sewin’ than there is in the caliker (calico) …” – ELiza Calvert Hall, Aunt Jane of Kentucky.
from: ‘QUILTING: QUOTATIONS CELEBRATING AN AMERICAN LEGACY’, compiled by Joyce S. Steward,
Running Press, Philadelphia – London. 1994.
ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT: NANCY SMITH – UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.