QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Saturday, September 29, 2012

A Great Reproduction Quilt

Have you been following Will at Not So Zen-Quilts
 in Paris and this great reproduction quilt this year?


 
This picture of the finished quilt was posted in June.
 
 
 
Will Vidinic was inspired by a picture of an old Dutch quilt found in a Japanese magazine.
 
The original

The reproduction
 
 
Since 2007 the original quilt, made in the Netherlands about 1800, has been in the collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum. Click here to see a good photo of #2007.005.0001

 
See Will's pictures of her top here:
http://willsquiltsinparis.blogspot.com/2012/04/im-boring-another-quilt.html
 
I especially liked Will's quilt because I spotted some of my prints in her excellent reproduction scrapbag.

 
Like these two that looked quite familiar. It's nice to know I helped---in a  minor way.
 
 

 





Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Labels from Spoonflower

 
 
 
I've been printing fancy labels for my quilts by finding copyright free imagery with a space in it. (Anything before 1920 would be copyright free.)
 

 
Old postcards and greeting cards are a great source. 
 
I'm good enough at Photoshop that I can erase the original words and leave a blank space for writing. I love the old arts and crafts look like in this poppy graphic. Instead of printing these on my desktop printer I am sending them to Spoonflower.com and having them print them.

I made yardage with 15 different labels, some arts and crafts, some old fashioned clip art.

And some just silly.
 
Here is a fat quarter of the LabelArt yardage.
Each label is 4" x 6"
 

You can buy the yardage at my Spoonflower shop. Click here:
 
Fuzzy photo of label
 
Linda made some yardage with repeat labels for our guild donation quilts to local charity. She added type to a graphic, did a layout with many of these per yard and added it to her Spoonflower design studio. After it arrived in the mail she backed it with an iron-on adhesive and cut them with a pinking rotary cutter blade.
 
We have a stack of labels to iron onto our donation quilts. And she can print another yard of it when we need it. This is a great way to get high quality fabric labels.
See what Linda has been doing with the precuts from my precuts here:

She says she'd get something done if she wasn't so distracted by scraps.
 

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Patterns From my Books

 
Women of Design
by Julee Prose
 
Several quilters have recently asked my permission to enter quilts made from my patterns in contests and shows. Julee Prose was kind enough to ask permission for the Woman of Design basket quilt she did from the book I did a few years ago.
 
My thinking on permissions and copyright on published quilt patterns is that Julee's use of my pattern is fair use. She doesn't need my permission to enter the quilt in any contest or show, but it is reasonable to assume she give me and the book credit for the design.
 
There are a few things that do not seem to be fair use.
 
One is to photocopy the patterns and use them in a class or for a guild.
We never give permission for that, even for nonprofits like guilds. We publish books so that everybody in the class buys a copy of the pattern.
 
Another item we will not give you permission to do is to make the quilt and sell multiple copies of it---say in an Etsy store.
Both those uses seem to be copyright infringement.
 
But you are always welcome to make quilts from my patterns and show them and win prizes---please do.
 
 
Barbara Clem
Symphony of Roses
 
The good thing about people asking me permission is that I get to see what they are doing with my books and patterns. Barbara Clem used my Encyclopedia of Applique for inspiration for this prize winner.

 
 
 
 
 
 
The block is indeed sketched out in that book #41.99, indexed as Democratic Rose from the Nancy Cabot column in the Chicago Tribune in 1935. I'm glad to provide inspiration but I would say this quilt is 99.5% Barbara Clem. Nancy Cabot and I can take credit for the rest.
 

Helen Williams Butler
 Turkish Delight
 
The same with Helen's quilt which was also inspired from a sketch in the Encyclopedia of Applique---maybe one of the variations of this traditional Coxcombs and Currants pattern on page 84. She asked permission, but in my opinion it's all Helen.
 
It's always fun to come across a familiar quilt in shapshots of a show.
 
Many years ago Terry Thompson and I did a line of reproduction prints for Moda called Remember the Ladies. Here's the project---a medallion with a toile in the center.

Remember the Ladies
 by Annemarie Yohnk
I found the photo posted here:
http://www.eagan.k12.mn.us/librarynew/quilts/quilts08/index.html

And Polly Mello sent a photo of a quilt inspired by my Prairie Flower book. You may have seen it at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach recently or at one of their show venues.

Deep Within My Heart Lies a Melody; A Memory of Texas
by Polly Mello & Illona Hull
 
She used the blocks representing prairie wild flowers from the book.
 
 
 
And added a lot of her own ideas. She wrote me last year:
"My quilt has a Texas theme. I grew up on the Black Dirt Prairie of North Texas, Irving, Texas, so as I made the blocks, I began adding all of the animals, birds, snakes, insects that I grew up with there. It has been nine years since I started the quilt.
There is, 1 amphibian (toad), 3 prairie animals ( Jackrabbit, Prairie Dog, Armadillo), 4 Longhorns (they have the registered brands of my family), 4 lizards.b 5 snakes, 6 birds, 7 buffalo and 50 insects.
I lived in San Antonio many years and visited the Alamo often. It is, of course, sacred to Texans. I wrote a story about all of the critters. It is with the quilt and it has a micro recorder in a pocket on the back that plays prairie bird songs with permission of the ornithology Lab at Cornell University."
See more photos of Polly's quilt here:


Thursday, September 20, 2012

Post Card Backs & Quilt Labels

Do you send fabric postcards?
 
 
Fabric Postcard
4" x 6"
Dots are always good
 
One year Deb Rowden and I sent one to each of 75 friends from a quilt retreat. We had a great time and we made a lot of fronts and a lot of backs.
 
Dots of all kinds
We experimented with all the stitches on our machines and a variety of ideas---good and bad.
 
 
 
I made myself some postcard backs to print on my desk top printer. I have quite a collection of old postcards so I scanned some and found others online. I came up with nine different backs from antique postcards.
 
When I saw what Spoonflower.com can do with fabric I realized I would be smart to have them print my postcard backs by the yard. So I uploaded the artwork.
 
 
Here is what a fat quarter of my POSTCARD_BACKS VINTAGE fabric looks like. The 4 x 6 inch backs fit nicely in a fat quarter---you get 15 backs to cut up, nine different designs.

 
I had to to turn them sideways to fit them efficiently in a fat quarter---but you get the picture. You can buy my vintage postcard back yardage from Spoonflower. Here's the link to this fabric:
 
  

 
A label with an arts and crafts border
 
 
I've also uploaded yardage with quilt labels to Spoonflower.com---more later. And I did some Votes for Women prints too.
 
 
 
 
 See the
 
 box on the left. Click on that to see my Material Culture shop with a few designs.
 

Monday, September 17, 2012

The Garden Quilt: Recent Interpretations

My Garden Quilt
Jo Bunker
Auburn, Maine

Jo's very close version of Rose Kretsinger's Paradise Garden won Viewer's Choice at the Maine Quilt Show in 2010.
See Karen Kay Buckley's blogpost here for a detail


 

At the bottom of the page is a very long URL for a snapshot album of this quilt.

Paradise in Kansas by Ilyse Moore

When Ilyse Moore and I were working on our Garden quilt pattern book (See The Garden Quilt over on the left) I made a file of photos of recent quilts inspired by the original Garden quilt pictured in Ruth Finley's 1929 book. Several of these quilts have been prize winners at recent shows.



Paradise Garden
Thuy Nguyen
Quilted by Naomi Gingerich
2005

Thuy's version is also very much like Rose Kretsinger's. She's reproduced several other Rose Kretsinger quilts. See more at her webpage:


Around the Garden
By Kathryn Zimmer
Tucson, Arizona
Kathryn won a few prizes with this quilt based on The Garden, including a first for Wall Quilt at a 2009 NQA Show

Barbara W. Barber
Rhode Island
The Broderie Perse version of a Garden Quilt is on the cover of Barbara's 1997 book Broderie Perse from American Quilters Society. Barbara echoed the general construction of the Garden using the cut-out-chintz technique.


Rose Garden
Terri Doyle
Gilbert, Arizona

Terri also used Broderie Perse in her Rose Garden quilt, framing a basket of flowers with Rose Kretsinger's swag circle. The machine quilting, inspired by Rose Kretsinger's designs in spectacular. See a detail of Terri's quilt here:
http://www.mqinnovations.com/QS09_Winner_Photos/100-Traditional%20Lg/TL2ND-3.jpg

Some designers have taken the basic structure of the Garden quilt and gone off in new directions.

Birds & Roses
Pat Peters
Hurricane, Utah
Pat's medallion center includes some of the flowers but a different repeat.
The corner structure is similar. I think I took this photo of Pat's quilt with its red ribbon at the 2010 Road to California show.


See more of Pat's quilts here:

Summer Garden
Northwest Quilters
Designed by June Bradley & Carol Schaefer
Hand applique and hand quilted
112" x 112"

The Northwest Quilters 2011 Raffle Quilt was Summer Garden designed by June Bradley and Carol Schaefer. The center is very much inspired by Kretsinger's Paradise Garden with a brand-new set and borders.
Read more about the quilt and the pattern here:

More pictures
Jo Bunker's quilt
http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&biw=1589&bih=843&tbm=isch&tbnid=00NUNT1X7ORXxM:&imgrefurl=http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/578629177FPEYft%3Fstart%3D84&docid=RrrHNMxJgTPN9M&itg=1&imgurl=http://thumb12.webshots.net/t/87/87/2/20/82/2615220820104536752kSmjoD_th.jpg&w=100&h=75&ei=8BIMULrAAZGK8QSouKG5Cg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=448&vpy=382&dur=2153&hovh=66&hovw=89&tx=98&ty=30&sig=106792872096320089158&page=1&tbnh=66&tbnw=89&start=0&ndsp=26&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:98

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Flea Market Find

Over the Labor Day weekend small towns often turn into giant flea markets.

Are there any bargains left?


Too bad the camera couldn't capture the gold glitter of that accordian or the luster of the purple kleenex box holder.

Here's a visual memo for Christmas decorations:
 glitter, gold paint and egg cartons.

A sewing related craft.

If one had room for a four-piece set of deco furniture there was a bargain.


The pie is still a deal.

At the Legion Hall.

On the quilt front, there were unusual items I did not need.
A pink sateen, flounced item with a chiffon-painting in the center.

The Seth Thomas Rose from the
 Kansas City Star column---not in great condition---
but always nice to see the pattern done.

A good date on an embroidered quilt.
These are things I did not need, however.



Feed sacks in a whole-cloth tied comforter.
 More ties than you can shake a stick at.

Wait a minute, on top of that stack of tied wool comforters.
 Is that a linsey quilt?

It IS a linsey quilt---I only have ONE of those.
Well now I have two.

It was ONLY $25. And of course only valuable as a catalog of linsey and home-woven fabrics.

But what a catalog of samples.
All were wool or wool/cotton or wool/linen combinations.
There is blue jeans cloth, butternut, hickory cloth...
Quilted in diagonal lines.
 Bound with the white linsey twill back brought over the front.

Plaid linsey-woolseys and plaid and striped wools.
How old is it? These things are hard to date.
Saw nothing in it like machine stitching that would help in the date.
All home woven and hand stitched.
Could be 1810 but more likely a late-19th century quilt made from earlier home-woven cloth.
 
Read more about linsey quilts in my 1812 blog post here:
 
So I guess I'll have to go back and poke around again next year.