What a year! (so far)

To learn more about this quilt, click here & here.

The antique and vintage collectibles market is hard to predict sometimes, particularly with handmade objects. This year wasn't supposed to be a big collecting year, but I hit the jackpot in the first four months. Here are pictures of a few favorite masterpieces that arrived on my doorstep between January and April.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here & here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here.

To learn more about this quilt, click here & here.

Since 2012, I have documented yearly acquisitions in self-published books created through Blurb. Some years were better than others but each year was special and interesting in its own way. Thinking ahead to this year's book, even though it's hard to predict the antique and vintage collectibles market, I think 2017 will be one of the best years ever.

Beyond Modern: Woodland Chromatics, 1984, by Libby Lehman

Woodland Chromatics, cottons, Libby Lehman, Houston, TX, 1984, 63" x 63"

Libby Lehman's quilt, Woodland Chromatics, arrived yesterday afternoon. It was quite an experience opening the box.

The first thing I saw was a letter with her signature. It took my breath away. Libby showed incredible determination to write her name after suffering a brain aneurysm and stroke a few years ago.

I was already familiar with her pre-stroke signature. It appears in three places on the quilt. Two inscriptions on the front with the same information, name and date, except one is inked and the other stitched. It looks like she would ink her name and stitch over it, and I wonder if she decided to stitch her name in a different place after inking it the first time.

The stitched label on the back has more information, title, dimensions, date including months and year it was made, and Libby's signature.

It's interesting to crop sections and look at the block design. The blocks include very few pieces, and the design is simple, but it's an incredibly sophisticated quilt.

The rich colors are carefully selected, and the quilting is modern. It's hard to believe this quilt was made 33 years ago. It could've been made yesterday.

When modern quilting came along a few years ago, there were declarations about how it was a departure from the past. It was kind of a head scratcher for experienced quiltmakers who were familiar with the work of Libby Lehman and other artists in her generation. They made modern quilts and were pioneers of modern quilting.

Woodland Chromatics is a modern quilt made in 1984. It reveals modernism in a less familiar manner, and avoids referencing a specific period's design style such as mid-century modern. In that regard, the quilt is beyond modern. It is futuristic.

from bargain bin to museum walls

1970s polyeter quilt from Georgia

Today, polyester quilts from the 1970s are generally accepted as part of quilt history. They represent a period worthy of serious academic study, but only a few years ago people were not as open to that idea.

1860s pieced quilt from Kentucky

When I first started getting excited about polyester quilts, some folks gave me a really hard time. I was mostly known as the collector with all the New York Beauties-- high-end antique quilts. Polyester quilts were "less than", and I must have completely lost my mind to be interested in them.

2015 exhibition at Benton County Museum, Oregon

Polyester quilts were unworthy and unwanted, but it paid off to collect them and explore the period. Today, all roads lead back to the 1970s, the most relevant period of 20th century American quiltmaking, and the decade that led the quilt industry to where it is today.

International Quilt Study Center & Museum

Some people still make the dookie face and joke around when I start talking about quilts made of polyester double knit material. Silencing them with the news of my upcoming exhibition of polyester quilts at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum never gets old. The exhibition opens in less than a month. For more information, click here.
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Hawaiian Love

I loved Hawaii long before having the chance to visit. When I was about five years old, I would see Hawaii on TV and ask Mom when we could go. She would always say, "some day..."

I was so fixated on Hawaii as a child, I told the Sunday School teacher our family was going there even though we weren't really. So embarrassing, I distinctly remember being caught fibbing, and I had to hide behind Mom's leg in shame when the teacher asked when we were going. That was around 1970 or 1971.

Hawaii seemed like the most exotic, faraway place. It was kind of like Florida, but better. The Brady Bunch went there on vacation. It looked like Gilligan's Island, but visitors weren't stranded. There were surfers and hula girls in grass skirts, coconuts, tikis and leis. All Florida had was Disney World, Lion Country Safari and Grandma & Grandpa's place in Palm Beach. Been there, done that. I never stopped dreaming of Hawaii.

In 2002, I finally got to go to Hawaii, but it was for a swimming competition. For several days we sat around the pool in wet lycra waiting to race, then collected our medallions before going back to the hotel and doing very little else. I decided to return to Hawaii some day, but not for a swim meet.

A lot of things happened in the 15 years I waited to return to Hawaii. Over the last couple years my interest in Hawaiian fabrics developed as I unearthed examples of scrap quilts representing a distinct but undocumented tradition of quiltmaking in Hawaii.

This scrap quilt came from a seller in Eugene, Oregon, and it is part of the tradition. It includes many wonderful fabrics with lots of fish, such as the humuhumunukunukuapua'a, otherwise known as the reef triggerfish, the official state fish of Hawaii.

The scrap quilt, which could also be called a patchwork blanket, was made like many of the others; lightweight and decorative, featuring crazy patchwork combined with an underlying, geometric structure. Foundation pieced on cloth with backing and edge finish but no batting or quilting, it is 54" x 66" and appears to have been made some time in the 1960s or 1970s with earlier fabrics.

Wordless Wednesday: Bicentennial Quilt Pictures

Show & Tell

April Show & Tell, Portland Modern Quilt Guild

Show & Tell was always one of my favorite things in school, and now it's one of my favorite things about going to quilt guild meetings. Lately I haven't been to as many meetings as usual, but last week I made it to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting where I showed Barbara McKie's "Interacting Pyramids" quilt.

I did not do the best job speaking about the quilt during Show & Tell, but was able to get out a few relevant details. If you would like to learn more about the quilt, please read these two blog posts from March 10th and March 15th.

Whenever I bring vintage quilts to Portland Modern Quilt Guild, I like to show works with aspects of modernism. This quilt is a bona fide modern quilt, only it was made 43 years ago. I wonder if anyone will try to make one now that they've seen it. The guild's April Meeting Recap is now available online, click here; and there is a Flickr page with photos, click here.
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the source of scraps

Hawaiian scrap quilt, c. 1970, 54" x 66"

This Hawaiian scrap quilt is coming soon from an Etsy seller in Eugene, Oregon. It is very much like a lot of the examples I have found so far, but the fabrics are slightly older than most. Does that mean it is an older quilt? Not necessarily.

Early in my search, I saw signs of the early mid-century in Hawaiian scrap quilts, particularly the fabrics. My idea about the period of scrap quiltmaking in Hawaii originally included the 1940s and 50s, but up to this point I have not collected any examples from those decades.

My search turned up quilts with fabrics from the 40s and 50s, but their construction pointed more to the 60s and 70s. One of the big differences between the fabrics of the 1940s and 50s and those of the 60s and 70s is the inclusion of DayGlo in the later period.

The garment industry in Hawaii took a big hit in the 1970s as a result of the decline in tourism. As factories closed, scraps were liquidated. When I first learned about the Hawaiian garment industry and its role in the scrap quiltmaking tradition, it explained a lot. It all boiled down to the source of scraps.

1960s and 70s fabrics glowed a bit more than the earlier fabrics

Only a couple years ago, there was practically no information about scrap quilts in Hawaii. At the time, I read a blog written by a collector of vintage Hawaiian shirts who was very alarmed about Hawaiians cutting up valuable vintage shirts for quilts.

In 2016, I published research and debuted the exhibition
"Kalakoa, Discovering the Hawaiian Scrap Quilt"

Fortunately, it is much more likely the quiltmakers got their scraps from the factories. In fact, if you travel to Hawaii today, you can find bags of Hawaiian scraps at many of the fabric shops.