Taking good care of antique and vintage quilts is taking good care of family, textile, and social history. It’s a wonderful journey!
My
next workshop will be held January 27 - February 24 2024, on 5
consecutive Saturdays. All the details and registration are on my website. If you have questions, contact me here or at annquilts@comcast.net.
Restoration
Conservation
Preservation
Philosophy
Techniques
Supplies
Each student can present one (or two if time allows) quilts for discussion of how, when, and why to use the various supplies and techniques. All eras and styles are welcome. This will be our ...
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Taking good care of antique and vintage quilts is taking good care of family, textile, and social history. It’s a wonderful journey!
Preserving Our Quilt Legacy Virtual Workshop
My next workshop will be held January 27 - February 24 2024, on 5 consecutive Saturdays. All the details and registration are on my website.
We will cover many aspects of the process. Restoration, conservation, and preservation. Finding patching fabrics, which includes gaining knowledge of the history of fabric printing and dyeing. Learning about needles, threads, and other tools of the trade. Learning stitches and tips for well-sewn patches. Learning how to ...
Quilt Repair Tidbits. The next (somewhat) weekly installment of quilt repair tidbits and photos.
This week’s tidbit: A hand-me-down set of vintage/antique Mosaic/Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks.
I’ll be teaching a virtual quilt care and repair workshop in winter 2024. One thing I’ll be talking about is learning how to tell the age of the fabrics in old quilts. These blocks have a secret key to their age.
All the info about the workshop is on my website. And you can email me to be added to the interest list for notification when registration opens ...
read moreThe second installment of weekly quilt repair tidbits and photos.
Schoolhouse quilt, c. 1915-20
This week: a wonderful schoolhouse quilt, a lovely and unusual rendition of a favorite traditional block. One of the benefits of working with antique and vintage quilts is that it’s like having your own up close and personal quilt show!
I hope I can inspire you to join the virtual quilt repair and care workshop I’m planning for winter 2024. All the info is on my website. Email me to be added to the mailing list for notification when registration opens.
The workshop will ...
Here comes some thinking and wondering that I've been doing lately.
Over the last few years, people have been asking me to repair soooo many really seriously damaged quilts from the 1960s-70s and onwards. For the most part, these are family heirlooms, made by beloved grandmas and great-grandmas.
I'm thinking that what I'm seeing are the quilts that have been used and loved and "used up" in the old-fashioned terminology.
Many are not fancy in pattern or workwomanship. Part of this is that in the 1950s-70s era, the making of super intricate quilts kind of drifted off ...
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The owner sent me these photos of her gorgeous crazy quilt for an initial assessment. She and I decided not to do any repairs at this time. However, it's such a beautiful quilt that I wanted to share it, and I am grateful that she has allowed me to share her photos.
It was made for my great great grandfather John Davis Cassada when he was born by his mother Lucy and his aunts. Many were single or widowed from the Civil War. All the initials are attributable to family members. They were very thrilled to have a male ...
Hi, everyone! I'm announcing a new video on my YouTube channel. It's a bit of a tour of my quilting studio and fabric stash.
You'll see fabrics, new art quilts, and loads of doo-dads.
Click here to access the video.
Please come visit!
(You can also find my channel and see the whole video collection, and my interview on the Just Wanna Quilt podcast, by searching in YouTube for my name - Ann Wasserman.)
Just a little while ago, I wrote about how exciting it is to find an exactly matching fabric when patching vintage and antique quilts. I told the stories of 6 times that has happened for me in nearly 40 years of repairing quilts.
And lo and behold, number 7 just happened!
The quilt in question is a 1930s Dresden Plate with what today is known as an ice cream cone border.
Not only is the fabric exact, but it is a piece taken out of an old quilt and very nearly the same shape as well.
And there is also ...
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Sometimes fabrics that blend perfectly into the existing set of fabrics seem to fall into my lap, but sometimes a lengthy search ends up with settling for the better of several options.
My restoration of this Lone Star quilt (1930s) serves as an example of the fabric search stage of quilt restoration. I ...
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Do you wish you knew more about repairing and caring for your quilts? There's another session of my Preserving Our Quilt Legacy virtual workshop coming up in a few weeks. Learn about techniques, supplies, fabric dating, etc., etc., and bring a quilt of your own for assessment for repair and future care. Full information on content and registration is on my website.
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I recently did some minimal repair work on this lovely Improved 9-Patch quilt. Well, it was just a few small places, but there was lots of thought and several important decisions. It makes a good story of ...
I recently had the pleasure of repairing three heirloom quilts made by three generations of quilters. Two are heavy, wool and flannel crazy quilts, and the third is a cotton log cabin. (You can read about the repairs at Three Quilts, Three Generations - The Repairs.)
Here's how the owner describes the quilts:
The “Greta” crazy quilt, with a date of 1948 sewn in white on a pink panel, is so named for the owner’s mother, whose name is stitched in cursive on another panel. The quilt has many detailed and individualistic flourishes sewn between and on the panels ...
The family story of these three quilts is at Three Quilts, Three Generations - The Story. Here, I will descirbe the repairs that I made to them.
The two crazy quilts were made primarily of wool and flannel fabrics. One of the crazy quilts has an embroidered date and name, as well as more and more varied embroidered details. The crazy quilts have some fabrics in common, so it's likely that they were both made around the same time. The log cabin is cotton and significantly older.
The repair techniques chosen for each quilt were chosen according to the kinds ...
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Insect pins?
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I'm offering a virtual workshop this fall that covers quilt restoration, conservation, and preservation.
There will be lectures, triage sessions for participants' quilts, how-to videos, samples of repair supplies, etc., etc.
You can attend the whole workshop - five Saturdays October 16 - November 13 - 3 hours per day.
Or you can attend selected lectures alá ...
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Might I suggest a new quilt adventure for your fall? I am teaching an in-depth workshop focusing on repairing and caring for quilts. Here's the scoop:
The workshop covers:
• restoration
• conservation
• preservation
• identification and dating
------
• philosophies
• supplies
• techniques
We will start with the basic information in my book, Preserving Our Quilt Legacy, and explore the topics in more detail and with hands-on experience:
• lectures
• discussions
• "triage" sessions for students' quilts
• a library of how-to videos teaching stitches and repair processes
• specialty sessions (including how to run a quilt repair business and yoga for tired hands and shoulders)
Sewists, appraisers ...
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