Textiles and the Triplett Sisters

I love borders or frames on quilts! I’m always looking for some new ideas for my borders. An exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art provided me with a LOT of new ideas for borders. Perhaps I should I say old ideas...really, really old ideas. Some third to fifth century ideas from Syria to be exact. For those of you wondering what is the oldest use of the diamond is in a square design, I would ask you to consider this mosaic. It might not be the earliest known to humanity, but from the third century it certainly is an early example, with...wait for it...multiple borders. This artist didn’t subscribe to the rule of three. Borders don’t need to be geometric shapes, they can also be people or animals. Granted some of these borders seem a...

The Houston Quilt Show also featured an exhibition on traditional quilts. This week we’ll focus on appliqued quilts. I was curious to see how others defined “traditional.”  One website said, “any quilt with a repeated block.” Hub pages said, “a traditional quilt is probably the type of quilt most people think about when they think of the word quilt.” Another defining statement, “these quilts originated before 1970…when quilt stores did not exist.”  Yes, well…definitions are hard, instead simply enjoy these works of art. Two quilts were made by the master quilter, Cynthia Collier. You know the level of excellence when a quilter gets more than one quilt in the Houston quilt show in the same year.  A well-known and loved applique teacher, Cynthia has shared her talents and skills with many.  She recently retired, which would...

Last week, I was asked this question at the Houston Quilt Festival. I pointed the woman toward the exhibition "Quilts 1650-1850: From Broderie to Broderie Perse exhibit from the Collection of Jane Lury." The woman asking the question might not have known the term, but she knew an exhibition that shouldn’t be missed...smart woman!   Broderie Perse, French for Persian embroidery, is a technique of applying fabric cut-outs to background fabric. The decoration could create a new image, or the cutouts could be random like a scrapbook. The technique was most popular from the 17th century until the early 19th century. The term has fallen out of favor, instead we typically use “cutout chintz”, since it is most frequently done with chintz. The quilts in Jane Lury’s exhibition offered an amazing glimpse at the technique by...