Beauty Secrets: On The Quilt Show Blog!

Click Here to visit The Quilt Show Daily Blog

I recently received an e-mail from Mary Kay Davis, editor of The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. Mary Kay had been in Oregon the previous week, and she visited my exhibit at the Benton County Museum. She asked if she could share pictures and spotlight the event on The Quilt Show Daily Blog. "Of course!" I was happy to know the exhibit made an impression.

Over the weekend, The Quilt Show Daily Blog featured the exhibit on their blog, and I want to thank The Quilt Show for including me. I'm especially honored because it's my first exhibit. It's wonderful to be able to share information about the exhibit, pictures of the quilts, and links to my web site and print catalog for anyone who may not be within reach of Philomath, Oregon.

They called it "a little gem of an exhibit that shouldn't be missed."

Photo by Mary Kay Davis, frame from Smilebox slide show

Wow! BIG Thank you to The Quilt Show!! To view the blog, click here. Beauty Secrets: 150 Years of History in One Quilt Pattern is currently on display at the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon through October 1st. The exhibit is part of Quilt County, a biennial, countywide celebration of quilts. An 80-page, full-color printed catalog is available in limited numbers at the museum, and online through Blurb. To preview or purchase the catalog, click here.

eBay End-of-Summer Clearance Sale!

Fabulous Wool Tumbling Blocks quilt, this week on eBay

It's time to get ready for back-to-school season, and I'm having another eBay sale! Several quilts are among the offerings, which also include sterling silver, Tommy Bahama silk camp shirts, swimming instruction DVDs, and other random collectibles. Here are a few of the items listed.

Signed Steuben crystal bouquet vase, George Thompson design

Henry Clifford Davis Sterling Fishing Trophy, Bermuda, 1936

Patriotic Airplanes quilt, c. 1940

Mecca trading card, U.S. Olympic Gold Medal Swimmer Charles Daniels

Pottery Barn two-sided blue and white pillow cover

Cotton Crazy Block quilt, c. 1900.

Gorham Sterling Silver Revere Bowl

Georgia Bars cotton utility quilt, c. 1910

Busy week, but a lot of fun sorting through things and deciding what to keep and what to let go. If you're interested in seeing what's for sale, click here!

Beauty Secrets: Mellow Beauty

In late October, 2009, I bought a quilt that came at the beginning of a flood of great quilts. It was this 1880s "mellow" beauty from Texas. The quilt was found by Julie Silber and Jean Demeter of The Quilt Complex. When I spotted it on their web site, I bought it on the spot. They called it a "mellow" beauty because it's the pattern most commonly known as New York Beauty, and the faded colors give it a wonderfully pleasant effect.

2011 NW Quilters Show, Portland Expo Center

If someone said the quilt design came from a published pattern, I'd believe them. It has structure, symmetry, and a head-turning combination of colors. The traditional Rocky Mountain Road or Crown of Thorns quilt was most often made with solid green and red on plain white - sometimes with touches of other color like cheddar orange. This Texas quilt also has solid fabrics, but the lush blue and ruddy, faded brown are uncommon. The yellowy cheddar orange adds to the handsome, earthy color scheme. 

Even though the colors are the result of time and fading, I feel like it's a happy accident. Condition is certainly an issue for a lot of people who collect, but my approach to collecting New York Beauties has been fairly inclusive. You don't see them often. For a while, I just bought every one I saw, and tried to make sense of it later. Chronologically ordering the collection for "Beauty Secrets" is how I've begun making heads or tails of the whole thing.

This quilt is currently on display at the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon, as part of "Beauty Secrets: 150 Years of History in One Quilt Pattern" through October 1st. The exhibit is part of Quilt County, a biennial, countywide celebration of quilts. An 80-page, full-color printed catalog is available in limited numbers at the museum, and online through Blurb. To preview or purchase the catalog, click here.

Beauty Secrets: Transitional Quilt

In the last two years I've purchased 26 New York Beauty quilts and tops, more than half of my "Beauty Secrets" collection. Just before that flurry of activity, I bought this 1950s blue and white quilt, made by Gertrude Barr of Nichols Hills, Oklahoma. It's an intriguing quilt, for more than one reason.

The quilt is the product of a published pattern, but I'm still seeking the source. By the time it was made, published patterns had become thoroughly homogenized in terms of aesthetics. Looking at this quilt, it is clearly well-planned and perfectly symmetrical. There are no extra rows of blocks or half-blocks, and there isn't a point out of place.

New York Beauty (detail), c. 1980, North Carolina

It's somewhere in between the Mountain Mist quilt from the 1930s and the published patterns of the 80s. Similar to the teal, red and white quilt from North Carolina made in the 1980s, the one I blogged about on August 9th, the quilt is representative of the calm before the storm - or more appropriately stated, the calm before Karen Stone! After the wave of very mechanical, homogeneous looking quilts, Stone and other artists gave the New York Beauty a major makeover in the 90s. Now, we're in a whole new place.

A Karen Stone inspired Lady Liberty Quilt by Marita Wallace.

Knowing what has transpired in the last 15 or 20 years, it's enlightening to look at the quilts on the bubble. Gertrude Barr's quilt is on the bubble. It represents rigid classicism before a period of aesthetic innovation, commercialism before a grass-roots, creative evolution. It's truly a transitional quilt.

This quilt is currently on display at the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon, as part of "Beauty Secrets: 150 Years of History in One Quilt Pattern" through October 1st. The exhibit is part of Quilt County, a biennial, countywide celebration of quilts. An 80-page, full-color printed catalog is available in limited numbers at the museum, and online through Blurb. To preview or purchase the catalog, click here.