This week I have found myself in a place of transition. Over the past month, I have done a good amount of reading and research through multiple books and websites. Throughout this process I was vaguely thinking about what I would like to achieve with my final quilt, but didn't have any specific ideas. Now, I am beginning to sew experimental blocks, so the reading I did this week has been in search of conceptual and aesthetic ideas to incorporate into these blocks (and, if they work out, into the final product). The following quilts are three that I found especially interesting, and might draw ideas from for my own quilt.
1842-3
This unfinished piecework top is an example of a Marriage Quilt (a sub-genre of the Friendship Quilt). What interested me most about this quilt is the center block, a detail of which follows:
The quilt below has a similar center block, although it was made to commemorate the building of a church in Louisville, Kentucky:
1899
What interested me about these two quilts is that they both feature buildings as arguably the most important part of the quilt (or, at least, the most eye-catching). This leads me to believe that these places held some significance both for the makers of the quilt and for its recipient. The idea of a certain place being connected to a set of memories is something that I have addressed in my own work, and am interested in thinking about for the quilt I will make.
c. 1840
This block, made for a Friendship Quilt, documents the Rollins family. It's interesting that the layout of this block works so well when family trees and other similar documents usually present their information in a linear way.
With all that said, my plan for the next week is to make three experimental blocks:
Working from old photographs, I will make line drawings of different houses that my family has lived in in the past hundred years. If there are figures in the photographs, they will be drawn as outlines. I will transfer these images to white muslin squares and embroider them with red thread (like the Louisville, Kentucky Church quilt). I will also incorporate names or signatures into these blocks (similar to the family history block above). These will fill in the white space where the figures would have been in each photograph.
With all that said, my plan for the next week is to make three experimental blocks:
Working from old photographs, I will make line drawings of different houses that my family has lived in in the past hundred years. If there are figures in the photographs, they will be drawn as outlines. I will transfer these images to white muslin squares and embroider them with red thread (like the Louisville, Kentucky Church quilt). I will also incorporate names or signatures into these blocks (similar to the family history block above). These will fill in the white space where the figures would have been in each photograph.
Sources:
Forget Me Not: A Gallery of Friendship and Album Quilts
Jane Bentley Kolter
The Main Street Press: Pittstown, New Jersey, 1985
p. 59-60, 70-1, 96-7
