Saturday 18 October 2008

"Quilts in Common" and "Patchwork in the Parlour" at the Quilt Museum, York

Today we visited the Quilt Museum, York, to see the two new exhibitions - sorry there aren't photos of these, but there are lots of clickable links below! Thanks very much to Val Shields of Gresford Craft Group for organising the coach - also for the photo above.


"Quilts in Common" is a touring exhibition from the International Quilt Study Centre, Lincoln, Nebraska, and "Patchwork in the Parlour" from the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles' own collection.

The Nine Patch Strippie quilt was probably my favourite from "Quilts in Common".
The IQSC Object Number is 1997.007.0752 - use this link to go to the search page http://www.quiltstudy.org/discover/search.html and enter the object number (with the full stops/points in the right places) in the correct box at the bottom of the "advanced search" section. That will find it! (I tried putting a normal link straight to the results page here, but it stopped working.) It seems more indigo in real life - the online photo looks more brown. The slightly misaligned blocks gave it a great charm.

There is a free colour guide for the exhibition availa
ble at the museum shop, which was very useful, and a catalogue to buy. Not all the quilts in the catalogue are featured in the current exhibition (antique quilts can only be hung for so long at a time before needing a rest) so it is a bonus to see other quilts included in this - plus, turn it over for the catalogue for Nancy Crow's "Cloth, Culture and Context" (not shown at York, but here is Nancy Crow's website for you to browse). And of course, it is possible to view the exhibition quilts again once you get home via the "search" function on the IQSC website.

Both exhibitions are well worth a visit. No photography for these antique textiles is as would be expected, so remember to pack some graph paper, both square and isometric (and hexagon paper, downloadable here from the wonderful Lizard of Oz (mostly) English Paper Piecing website) for taking notes! Plenty of inspiration for both the traditional and contemporary quilter.

We also visited The Miniature Scene, a fantastic dollshouse shop in the city, where I bought some a brick-effect stencil and materials for some of my miniature projects (like the 1/12th scale quilt shop that I've been working on for a couple of years - more about that another time!)

1 comment:

Quayquilter said...

I've went last before attending the BQSG weekend conference (Val was there too) and the strippy was my favourite too - I drew it out, more or less.
Mary aka Quayquilter