Thursday 25 July 2013

American Museum Quilts.....

Hi everyone,

Goodness, I have been absent for a while and I've just been told off for it by my sister. All for a good reason though. We've been visiting our daughters and attending our eldest MA Graduation. Earlier this year our youngest graduated, so that should be it now and we're very proud parents.

One of our trips was to Bath and we took the opportunity to visit the American Museum. If you ever get the chance it's well worth a visit, not only for their quilt collection.

The Native American collection is beautiful with intricate beading patterns, horse blankets and rugs etc.
As usual my camera was in action, I've been through and selected a few of the images to show you.....

Native American Head-dress
Moccasins
Everything was behind glass so you'll have excuse the light and more often than not my reflection, sorry.

The same goes for the quilts, they were behind plastic sheeting and it was a real struggle to take photos, I'd have much preferred to buy a book. They have a large collection but display around 50 at a time and rotate them, so another visit is on the cards. Be prepared for a flurry of quilts now........

Baltimore Album Quilt Top 1850

Log Cabin Quilt 1863 by Ellen Bryant Smith



The picture on the information card above is the beautiful back of the Log Cabin Quilt and was made by Sarah Bryant in 1886, a sister to Ellen.

Crazy Patchwork Portière (door curtain)
Embroidered in the top corner of the above quilt was 'January 24th 87'. In the lower corner 'Finis August 1890'. It was covered in embroidery stitches.

Turkey Tracks Quilt 1845 - tiny hand quilting stitches
Dresden Plate Quilt 1920 Mrs Sam Skeen
Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt 1840
This one is for Carolyn, her favourite technique...Hexagons
detail
Some of the groups of three hexagons were cut in one piece, omitting the two centre seams, clever!

Here is the final one and well done for sticking with me....

Diamonds Navajo Rug 1890 New Mexico
As you can imagine I had such itchy fingers after being with these beauties. I'll leave you with those images for now but obviously that's not all of them, so if you want to see more then leave a message and I'll post another batch.

Thanks for reading, back soon
Sue




2 comments: