Textiles and the Triplett Sisters

It’s that time of year, the start of the holiday season.  For many people it starts with Halloween, followed by Thanksgiving, etc. For the quilter, the holiday season starts with quilt market/festival in Houston.  It is the time to see old friends, quilting family, and make new friends. So, we hope to see you in Houston!  Please feel free to stop by our exhibition, Pioneer Quilts.  Check out one of our demos at Open Studios or book signings.  Although many of my classes are sold out, I still have some places left in my Adire: Indigo Resist & Dye Class on Wednesday or the Making Material Mine on Friday afternoon.  Come up and be sure to let us know, “I read your blog.”  We love knowing it is being read! If you can’t make it to...

One last adventure from Netherlands...until next year. After leaving the amazing chintz exhibition in Leeuwarden, we traveled to Zutphen, a historic city existing from Roman times. It received the official city designation in 1190 and still has wonderful architecture to see. One of the oldest libraries in Netherlands, with the oldest and rarest books...however, don’t plan on getting to walk in and see the ancient books. Instead simply gape at the architecture. Zutphen was also where we visited our second De Hann & Wagenmakers quilt shop. I needed to pick up some Dutch Heritage fabric for my quilt Tree of Life: Netherlands, a quilt I’ve designed to remind me of my wonderful time in The Netherlands. However, the real adventure planned for the day was a visit to Quilt it & Dotty quilt shop in Overloon...

Previously the La Conner Quilts museum, the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum, is celebrating twenty years. To go with the new name, they have a new slogan: Imagine. Create. Inspire. Any nonprofit reaching the five year mark is a cause for celebration, let alone twenty years. Congrats to all who had part in making the museum happen and thrive! Besides the museums two other quilts exhibits Pieces of the Past: 20 years of Collecting and Time Flies...20th Anniversary Festival Challenge exhibit,  QTC was honored to be selected to help with the celebration. Pieces of the Prairie one of our traveling exhibitions will be there. This exhibit will give viewers in the Seattle area a firsthand look at some of the quilts from our new book, Pioneer Quilts: Prairie Settlers’ Life in Fabric. It is...

I come from a theatre background, so it isn’t unusual for lines from plays or songs from musicals to pop in my head. Especially because sometimes the song catches the mood and moment more adequately than I can.  Such was the case when Kay and I went to visit the Chintz Exhibition at Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. A moment when the breath is taken away…then the song begins. In the musical Oliver, the boys have been starving and craving something other than gruel. Thus begins the songs of dreams of food or in this case dreams of chintz.  If you know the tune to Food, Glorious, Food…sing along! Chintz, glorious chintz, Red colors and mustard! While we're in the mood -- Step too close you’ll get busted! Hats, coverlets, and tunics What next is the...

Located in Amsterdam, it isn’t a surprise that the museum is known for the best collection of Dutch art in the world. However, with more than 8,000 artefacts on display in 80 wings...it is almost too much eye candy to be seen in one day. Kay and I were quite determined and mapped out a plan of attack. First we inquired about the textiles on display to be sure we’d included all of those. The attendant couldn’t think of many textiles on display, but dutifully marked a few spots. (We later learned, it wasn’t that they didn’t have wonderful textiles, just in relation to the vastness of the collections, it was a smaller percentage.) Understanding that the textiles might be limited, we began taking photos of art with early examples of clothing. Ten statues at the...