19th Century Basket Quilts at NEQM

Here's my Ethel's Treasure Baskets quilt hanging behind its beautiful inspiration at the New England Quilt Museum.

Ya, I'm pretty thrilled and honored to see it hanging there and I sure wish I could visit the exhibit and see all the quilts!  Feeling waaayyyy too far away in Japan.  If you are near Lowell MA and love quilts, the NEQM is a must!  (While you are in Lowell, visit the Boott Cotton Mills too!)

And there is a Brown Bag lunch on August 1st at 12:30 with a talk by Laura Lane, Collections Manager at the museum:
Join the NEQM Collections Manager, Laura Lane, for an in-depth look at our Genre Gallery exhibition, 19th Century Basket Quilts, on loan from the American Quilt Study Group (AQSG). Members of the AQSG were challenged to study a basket quilt from the 19th century and create a new quilt of their own that was inspired by the original. The new quilt could be a reproduction or simply reflect the original in a way that spoke to the maker. Among the inspiration quilts are three from the NEQM permanent collection, which will be on view in the Museum’s Donahue Gallery.

Laura was so helpful to me, providing time and space at the Museum for me to study that wonderful old basket quilt.  Here's my post about making my study quilt.   It was such a fun challenge. 

You can see all of the 2016 study quilts here!

And a little plug for the book, available on Amazon.  Proceeds support the work of the American Quilt Study Group. 

xo
Cynthia

Baskets! A Study of Nineteenth-Century Basket Quilts

Baskets! A Study of Nineteenth-Century Basket Quilts is now available at Amazon.   It is simply terrific - fifty small quilts inspired by old quilts -



Mine is on page 74... and I blogged about it here.  It was a labor of love for sure.   (If you order a copy, and I hope you will, because you won't be disappointed, you can use Amazon Smile at smile.amazon.com/ch/47-0813103 so that AQSG will get a percentage of the sale!). 




I am thoroughly enjoying all the quilts, and all the essays!  I hope to meet many of my fellow Study Group quilters at the AQSG Seminar in October!

Meanwhile.... the purging and packing continues.  Most of my quilting and sewing stuff still really does "spark joy" - my new sewing room will be quite small, but that's OK.  I'm good with small kitchens and small sewing rooms - ;)


x
Cynthia

Cynthia Nanto on Instagram

Basket Study Quilt - Ethel's Treasure Baskets

Ta-da!  I can finally share my basket study quilt.   I participated in the AQSG (American Quilt Study Group) Study Quilt project this year.  The theme was Basket Quilts, and fifty quilters each chose an antique quilt (from a museum, or collection, or wherever) to study and reproduce/represent as a small wall hanging.   The quilts were displayed at the annual seminar in Tempe this past weekend.  I am new to AQSG and have never been to a seminar, but next year it is local!

Anyway, for the study, I went straight for the collections at the NEQM (New England Quilt Museum) and chose to study this 19th century scrappy "Baskets and 1000's of Triangle" (maker unknown).  I just loved the scrappiness of it! Pink and brown overall but not matchy matchy - plenty of interest.




I sat with the quilt for a long time, taking notes and photos.



This one roque blue block intrigued me and I knew right away I would use one of David's old shirts to represent the blue:



The only clue to provenance was this label:



Somehow or another, this quilt must have been treasured by Ethel.  So I called my study quilt "Ethel's Treasure Baskets."

I gathered fabric and searched high and low for a good sashing fabric to represent (if not replicate) the original.  Finally had to call good enough good enough, just dig in and start.  I drafted a pattern, and decided to applique the bases, to retain the soft angle of the original.







I'm sure there are better ways to piece it but this worked for me:

Trying this and that...






We were each required to write a short essay to accompany our study quilt.  That in and of itself was a fun challenge.  All fifty will be published in a book and what a thrill that will be!   To my surprise, "Ethel's Treasure Baskets" was among the twenty five quilts chosen to go "on tour" - so I won't see it back home for a long while!  I really feel honored.





Next year's "Seminar" is in New Hampshire.  If you are local and have an interest in quilt history, consider joining AQSG and let me know if you do!

xo
Cynthia