Fun at Moonlight Quilters

Last week I was in Santa Rosa at the Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County.

Before my lecture, I was so excited to see some antique tile quilt blocks.  Laura Bernstein is the lucky owner of this batch of blocks which also includes borders.  The blocks and borders are not finished blocks but all of the "tiles" have been selected and have been thread basted in place, waiting to be appliqued and turned into a quilt.  It was fascinating to see these blocks.  For the record, we have only been able to document about 25 actual antique tile quilts so to see these blocks was amazing.  Laura purchased the blocks from a dealer so unfortunately not much information is available as to their origin.  The fabrics in the "tiles" are obviously from the late 19th century which ties in to the timeframe for this style of quilt which is last third of the 19th century.

Laura was kind enough to allow me to take these quilts with me overnight so that I could photograph them.  I was staying with Judy Matheson and the next day we put them up on Judy's design wall.

 The blocks are mostly random shapes.  I didn't try to put them up in any sort of order, just to get an idea of what was there.  Some have a circle or square at the center.  And this isn't all of the blocks -- there are more.  I love the dabs of cheddar in the borders.

Here's a few of the blocks including a close up of the basting on the first one.

 

Judy, thanks for asking Laura to bring her blocks for me to see!

And then on Saturday came the Workshop with some of the Moonlight Quilters with all the wonderful fabric selections and designs.

This block is was drawn in class from the Macintosh Rose quilt in the gallery of Tile Quilt Revival.

 Great work everyone!

Nite Owl Quilters

I had a great time in Rancho Cucamonga last week at the Nite Owl Quilters Guild.

 Before I gave my lecture on Tile Quilts, Jan Raymond came up to show me her fabulous version of the Lotus quilt from our book. Here is the quilt and a picture of Jan looking proud -- as she should!

 

 

And, at the workshop on Saturday, Kerri showed me a beautiful Crazy Quilt she made.  There is a theory that the original antique tile quilts from the late 19th century were a precursor of the Crazy Quilt style.  Kerri thinks this is the case.  I say could be, could not be.  We'll never really know but it's fun to think about.   Here is Kerri and her beautiful quilt.  She incorporated some antique ribbons, images of some antique cards she had transferred to cloth, her own hand-dyed fabrics and her fancy decorative stitching, which was amazing.

 

And in the workshop we had a wonderful array of fabrics and choice of blocks including an original design.  I always love to see stars!  Again, you have to imagine the "grout" between the pieces with the exception of the second block.

Here are blocks from Lotus.

This block was fused and will be machine buttonhole stitched around the edges of the pieces so you get to see how it looks with the "grout" spaces.

And, finally, some Orange Peel blocks from Starry Orange Peel.