A Brush with History...

Such occurred this week...and a deep curtsy to fate I offer for it! Two textile treasures found their way to me.

The first is this glorious silk quilt, passed on to me by a lady in California.

The quilt historian Barbara Brackman described it thus, after seeing a jpeg of it:
"Boy it's a pretty quilt. I wouldn't call it a crazy quilt since it seems quite sane to me. I think an embroidered silk medallion, about 1880-1900 would describe it nicely."
In fact, it was made in 1890 by a woman named Eve Ollie in Buffalo, New York, so good call, Barbara!

It does have a few elements of crazy quilting to it though, namely, that there is no quilting or batting. But it isn't tied either! What is unusual is that traditional crazy quilt type stitching along some of the seams holds the front and the back layers of the quilt together.

Not all of the seams are embroidered...(click on the picture to see better). I don't think Eve was into embroidery, but she sure had a lovely collection of silks.

Even the backing fabric is of silk. See the stitching lines on the back?
I get goosebumps, going back in time into another woman's life, via her stitches and fabrics.
I will cherish this...

A very different scenario produced my other historical treasure...try to imagine, at least 60 or 70 years ago, women in Russia hard at work producing handmade bobbin lace for commerical sale...

This collection of bobbin lace was given to me by a very gracious lady named Kay Pauling. Her late mother-in-law left this lace to her in 1981; Kay had kept it all these years but decided to pass it on to me as someone who would use it.
What Kay didn't tell me until we met was that her mother-in-law was Ava Helen Pauling, the wife of the great 20th Century scientist, Linus Pauling.

photo from Oregon State University

Dr. Pauling won two Nobel Prizes - in 1954 for Chemistry and in 1962 for Peace. He was globally admired for his tremendous contributions to chemistry and for advocating peace. Dr. Pauling shared the spotlight in this latter endeavor with Albert Einstein.

Kay told me that Ava had purchased the lace during one of their trips to Russia.
So indeed, the wings of history have brushed me by, leaving the lace in my hands....

I wanted to find out more about it, so I scanned it and sent the image to Betty Pillsbury, the wonderful CQ teacher and friend (who used to make bobbin lace) and also to Lacis, the lace museum and textile supply shop in Berkeley, California.

Jules Kliot of Lacis wrote to say,
"An interesting collection mainly due to the attached labels.
The laces themselves appear to be handmade with the exception of the one on the extreme right.
Designs are generic and could have been made most anywhere. There are examples of torchon, Genoese, Cluny. all considered as "straight" laces.
There are many traditional Russian designs, but not in this collection."

Betty sent me some interesting links about bobbin lace, such as this beginner's guide. We thought this link on torchon lace described my lace, too. This site on English laces has more on the torchon lace.
Kay had told me the lace was of cotton, but Betty suggested it might be linen, and on closer look, I agree with her.

I am so grateful to Kay for entrusting this lace to me. It will be well used.

It's been another busy week, so no stitching of my own do I have to show...next week, hopefully, we will have a silk ribbon poppy!

International Quilt Festival, Long Beach.....A Report

I had a terrific time with my blogging buddies in Long Beach, California!
The picture below is dark, sorry....but there are Barbara, me, Debra, and Rian, about to be served our lunch after a long morning at the show for them, and in class for me. We cleaned our plates, let me assure you....

Our time together was everything I knew it would be...so full of easy and stimulating friendship, lots of stitching talk, and late night storytelling in our pajamas, all of us sharing one big hotel room. What a great gift, for us bloggers to get to spend time together...

I only had one class with Paula Scaffidi, a mere three hours, but it would have been worth the entire trip to Long Beach just for that.
Entitled "Luscious Fruit", the workshop taught how to create three-dimensionally shaded felted fruits, for applique or needlefelting onto textile projects (could be wearables, too, as these items were constructed to be washable).
I am an ethical blogger, so will not post step by step pictures of how I made my fruit...Paula worked hard to put together a class that was just aces....and she deserves to be paid for her great information.
Visit her website to see pictures of the incredible work she does.

I will say that one of the reasons her presentation was so strong was that she made optimal use of her PowerPoint capabilities. As we went through the steps of creating our fruits, she would tell her helper, "Lights down!" and present clear sequential pictures on a big screen of the technique she wanted us to learn next. She even had videos embedded in the Powerpoint that showed her doing what we were supposed to do...again, these were perfectly in sequence so that the class just flowed.
I truly think the efficiency this gave us all allowed her to present much more content than a normal 3 hour class.

Here is a sample screen shot I took from my seat. This shows how to lay out our roving to make a more rounded looking shape.

When a question came up, she had her flipboard all ready to illustrate her answers.

And here is my class project, after 3 hours....

The piece of inner brocade background is 9" X 12", to give you an idea of the scale and size. My little cherries don't have their stems yet, and I need some more velvet leaves.....
I can't wait to finish this!
Paula says she has a book coming out next year, and she intends to include a DVD with it that will illustrate her techniques the way she used videos in class. This is so innovative, don't you think? Her book will set the standard for needlefelting, of this I have no doubt.
Thank you, Paula!


Speaking of standard-setting books, on the flights down and then back home, I had the enjoyment of reading Cindy Brick's new one, Crazy Quilts: History, Techniques, Embroidery Motifs. (It is available on Amazon, but the first printing is almost sold out. A second printing is due to ship by mid-August. You can order it from her website, of course, which is actually better because I think she gets more profit that way!)
I found it to be a very classy production. It is informative, written in an engaging style, and with lots of pictures of wonderful quilts. The printing and production of the book itself is of very high quality. Cindy includes some new techniques to try when making your own crazy quilt, as well as the tried and true traditional methods.
There will be more about this book in an upcoming review in CQMagOnline.

From my reading I felt much more informed about what I was looking at when Debra, Rian and I happened upon a very fine pile of crazy quilts from the 1880's at a vendor's booth. I was allowed to take some pictures of my favorite CQ element...fans!

I love how narrow these fan blades are. These are the exact same colors I used for the fans in my "H" quilt....I was going for this look, as you can see:

Pretty cool that I actually got that right!
Here are some more of the fans from that quilt in the booth....

So nice....

And here is a detail shot....

I include this because it shows how the stitcher very cleverly solved a big problem with these narrow-bladed fans. The seam treatments get really smashed into each other in the little round corner, because of course the seams are so close together there.
Look what this lady did: she provides stitching detail on the seams, but it is not continuous. The eye reads it as such, but really there are just dots and singly spaced Turkey Track stitches that suggest lines of stitching.
I'm going to remember that one...

But what of the quilts hanging in the show?
Alas, what was there was pretty much a retread of what won in Chicago and Houston, with a TON of journal quilt pages on display. The same art quilt exhibit from Studio Art Quilt Associates, the same Tactile Architecture quilts, the same almost everything. Not that there wasn't some outstanding work there, but overall I found this rehash quite disappointing.

But between hanging with my good buddies, studying with Paula, reading Cindy's book and also getting some quality time with my father-in-law while staying with him in Manhattan Beach last night....it was a terrific trip.
Always good to be home, though!
Let's hope they do better next year and include a competition.