Antique Malls

I love going to antique malls.  Over 20 years ago, a friend introduced me to estate sales, auctions and antique malls as places to purchase everything from a ricer (yes - that's one of my first purchases at an antique mall) to furniture.  I have become more selective in my purchases, concentrating on Depression Glass and quilts.

During our trip to St. Petersburg in December, Carol and I swooped through New Orleans - not the direct route but a fun one.  We stopped in Hartselle, Alabama, where Carol found her quilt top.  I bought a silver thimble there, too - it was pretty and inexpensive.

In St. Petersburg, we went to several antique malls.  One place was a glass repository - stacks of glass on racks.  That could have been dangerous but they didn't have anything in my pattern that I didn't already have.  On Christmas Eve, we managed to sneak into one of Carol's usual haunts right before it closed.  Guess what I found  - a quilt, of course!  It's in wonderful condition and I love the fabrics. 

It's been interesting to use Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns and Jinny Beyer's The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Pattern reference books to determine the official pattern names and to learn more about their derivation.

The Rainbow Tile Quilt pattern, introduced by Eveline Foland in the Kansas City Star, August 30, 1930.  This pattern is also known as either The Diamond Field, Field of Diamonds, Honeycomb, or Martha Washington's Flower Garden. 

The quilting is outline quilting in all of those little hexagons.  Whew!

 Well, yesterday I had a meeting in Brown County and on my way home, I stopped at the Brown County Antique Mall.  Look at the beautiful quilt I found there.  The center of the quilt is in pretty good shape but the binding is worn along the edges.  One reason I bought it is that it felt so soft and comforting - well loved. 

This pattern was introduced around the same time by Nancy Cabot in the Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1934. 

There is a lighter pink in the middle of the snail's trail - it has faded quite a bit but is still slightly visible.  If you look at the white below the pieced block you can see a slight difference in color along the block edge.

But the other reason I bought this quilt was the back had a name cross stitched on it.  As best I can make out, it says "Mrs. Marks, age 79."

The other interesting thing is that this was a single bed quilt and had been made to drape down the sides of the bed.  There is a flap of quilt that extends down the foot of the bed and it had definitely been made to go around the posters on a bed.  All in all a lovely quilt.  Although it doesn't quite fit on the double bed in my guest bedroom, it goes so well with the colors in that room.  I love it!

Cheers!
Margaret 

Cool Tools

I'm so excited!  All sorts of things went right this past week and it's so nice when that happens.  On top of that, we had a few snow days that cancelled several meetings I had so there was that much more time to work on quilts and quilting projects.

First, I have several quilts for customers and one customer wanted a single cable design in the borders.  I know that there are ways to make cables using tracing paper for hand quilting but haven't yet found a good way to make cables for machine quilting...until now.  Although not a perfect system it works very well for single cables and I've even drafted some double cables with it.  Triple cables (and I'm talking about the number of stitching lines) are somewhat more tricky.  Anyway, the tool is a template called the Sweet Set Curve designed by Pat Barry, another longarmer.  The template is designed to provide a nicely and evenly spaced undulating design around which other motifs can be quilted.  But I used it for these single cables.  Nifty!

You can see the cables in the yellow borders.  The corners are the tricky part but I was able to use the template to swoop into the corners on one pass and to round the inside corner on the return pass.

I think I had mentioned using acrylic sheets before, an idea gleaned from another longarm quilter.  She was using it to audition quilting designs on quilts and I've used it for that as well.  But there's another way to use it...

Another use for the acrylic sheet - to temporarily modify designs on a pantograph.  One of my customers liked the overall panto but didn't like the fish tale in the center of the feathered circle.  Easy to modify and then move the sheet along as I quilted.  Slick as a whistle.

 The week's biggest triumph, however, was getting my embroidery software loaded on my new laptop so that I could take the laptop down to the basement rather than having to lug  my sewing machine upstairs when I needed to embroider something.  It only required downloading a few Windows patches (to a new computer - pretty scary) and a few updates to the Bernina software that drives the embroidery. 

Here it is - laptop and embroidery module all working together nicely in the basement!  For me, this was thrilling!!

Cheers!

Margaret

Holiday Museum Tour

My quilting and singing friend, Carol, invited me to accompany her on a leisurely drive to St. Petersburg by way of New Orleans.  Not quite the direct route but a very interesting one.  We left December 21st and headed south, stopping in Hartselle, Alabama.  Hartselle has several antique shops and we found some treasures there.  Mine was a nice thimble but Carol's was a quilt top.  She was initially drawn to the colors and construction of the top.  What made it even more interesting was that it was paper pieced using newspaper - with quite a bit of the newspaper still present.  And when we looked more closely, it was a newspaper from Gadsden, AL, dating from 1953 - about the time that Carol and her family were living in Gadsden!  So, what could she do but buy the quilt top??? 

Carol with her paper pieced quilt top.  Interesting construction technique and layout.  The question is, what to do with it now so that the paper doesn't deteriorate further.

After an overnight stop in Tuscaloosa, we made it to New Orleans in time for lunch at Herbsaint.  Delicious!  Meg, the daughter of my friend Diane, had suggested we consider the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.  It was an interesting museum, showcasing many artists from Louisiana and surrounding states.  It provided a great view of the city from the fourth floor terrace.  Following that, we enjoyed walking buying pralines (pronounced prah-leenes in New Orleans) and being tourists enjoying the revitalized French Quarter.

Margaret & Carol standing on the plaza overlooking St. Louis Cathedral.

The next morning after a quick stop for the traditional beignettes (delicious and covered with loads of powdered sugar), we headed east across US 90, a road that runs right next to the Gulf of Mexico.  Carol had gone on a mission trip a few years ago to assist in rebuilding a church devastated by Hurricane Katrina.  She was much encouraged by the rebuilding that had taken place.  While there were still many empty lots, there were also many new homes and businesses.  



Our museum of the day was the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art, recently opened in a building designed by Frank Gehry.  The museum had been under construction when Katrina hit and was levelled.  Designed in modules, it is now about 80% completed and there was only one major pod that was still under construction.  The museum featured the pottery of George Ohr, a native of Biloxi and a prolific potter, and included a special exhibit of Andy Warhol paintings.  Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area not only for the pottery on display but also for the center's unique architecture.

These pods are constructed as mini-galleries.  Quite an interesting design for a museum.

We arrived at St. Petersburg on Christmas Eve and enjoyed a wonderful dinner and evening with Carol's friends.  That was the beginning of a pleasant stay in St. Petersburg.  While there, we went to The Dali museum - a wonderful collection of Dali's paintings and drawings.  If you plan to go, they'll be in their new location a few blocks away in a new building built to withstand hurricane force winds.  What made the museum even more interesting for me was that I had read a book on Carol's bookshelf about Dali prior to visiting the museum.  It helped me understand the symbolism in several of his paintings and I was able to see images in some paintings that I might have missed otherwise.

We also visited the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts and had a delightful lunch in their atrium that overlooks the bay.  They had a special exhibit of American Impressionism 1870 - 1940 that was quite interesting and peaceful by comparison to the Dali paintings.



I was intrigued by the design - it would make a great border on a quilt!



The final museum was the recently opened Chihuly Collection, just two short blocks from Carol's condo.  That was an interesting look at the variety of glass sculptures coming out of Chihuly studios.  Just as interesting to me were the paintings done by Chihuly in preparation for the glassblowing.

This is the display outside of the Chihuly Collection.  It's plastic, not glass, but is still a stunning display.

On New Year's Eve, we had a great time strolling around downtown St. Petersburg during the 1st Night Celebration - a party with lots of family friendly artists and activities.  It included two sets of fireworks - at 9 p.m. and midnight - to help ring in the New Year.  

Just one of the fun activities for kids of all ages.  The goal here is to get to the top rung on the ladder without falling off.  What you can't see is the guy at the bottom who turns the rope ladder over to help you fall off!

So - back home again in Indiana (I'm singing this in my head) and with lots of quilts lined up, I need to get to work!  I hope you had all had a Happy New Year, too.

Cheers!
Margaret