Showing posts with label crazy quilt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crazy quilt. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Blended Embroidery: Combining Old & New Textiles, Ephemera & Embroidery

I love the idea behind Blended Embroidery by Brian Haggard. His art is a collage of textiles, vintage images, and ephemera printed on textiles, embroidery, and embellishments.

The Lacemaker by Brian Haggard
Haggard loves finding old pieces and repurposing them. His studio is filled with buttons, beads, laces, trims, threads, and textile pieces--even imperfect pieces.

Haggard shows how to make free form embroidered leaves and embroidered felt flowers, soft bows, walnut stained fabrics, photo imaging, attaching doilies and printed images.
Pincushions and sachets made of vintage images scanned on fabric
Chapters include

  • Where to Look for Blended Embroidery Inspiration
  • But It Looks Like Trash
  • Materials, Fabrics, and Supplies
  • Basic Stitches 


Projects include

  • The Lace Maker
  • Paisley Proper
  • Scissor Sheath and Scissors Holder
  • Pincushion
  • Travel Bag
  • Renaissance Revival
  • Friendship Pincushions and Sachets
  • Sewing Butler 


A Galley and About the Author is included.
Scissors holder and pincushion
Many of the Galley projects are a form of crazy quilting. The creativity is inspiring! I especially love the quilts that include antique family portraits printed on fabric!

Haggard's previous books included Crazy Quilted Memoires and Embroidered Memories. Visit Haggard's website at http://www.brianhaggard.com/

I received access to a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Blended Embroidery: Combining Old & New Textiles, Ephemera & Embroidery
Brian Haggard
Book ( $27.95  ) eBook ( $22.99 )
SBN: 978-1-61745-809-5
UPC: 734817-113393
(eISBN: 978-1-61745-810-1)

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Pentwater Quilt Display a Success

On Saturday, July 13 the Centenary United Methodist Church of Pentwater, MI offered a quilt display in conjunction with the city's annual Art Fair. Quilts were brought out of closets and taken off beds, representing 19th through 21st century quilt making. About sixty quilts were arranged on the church pews in the sanctuary. The church building was erected in 1875, although the Methodist church in Pentwater was the earliest church in the area, back in the hey day of  lumbering in Michigan.


Pentwater is a resort town these days, with many retirees from all over. In summer the village blossoms with cottagers, summer folk, campers and the marina filled with Lake Michigan boaters. So it was not surprising that 19th c quilts showed up, like the two crazy quilts featured above. Three 1890s crazy quilts were brought to the show! The embroidery on these quilts was spectacular! 




One quilt even featured a photograph of the maker printed on fabric.


Many well loved Depression era quilts were on display. A Kit Quilt Trip Around the World was purchased for $5; it is on the left in the photo below. Later it's clone arrived!


Lots of strips and gingham in this Drunkard's Path! Perhaps shirts, aprons and dress materials?


 This faded Dresden Plate on a pale yellow ground has particularly fine quilting, noted by attendee Jeffrey Cunningham (originator of the Coppersville Farm Museum quilt show, "Quilts and Their Stories.")



This quilt interested me; the blue fabric predates the Depression Era pieced fabrics around it by quite a bit. But quilters have always hoarded fabric, and during the hard times anything was fair game.


Two Sunbonnet Sues came in. The pink sashed quilt was discovered under a bed mattress! The second Sue was made by the owner's mother and incorporated fabrics from the girls dresses.



This Carolina Lily variation is unusual as the flowers are green and the vases red. The stems are also unusual, going to one flower instead of one to each flower. 


A Gees Bend area quilt purchased in the early 1970s was also shared.



I will post more photos from the show next time!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Helen Korngold Quilt


Helen Korngold Quilt

Close to 10 years ago I found a 1919 diary in a little flea market shop in south Lansing. It was a pricey $15, but it was completely filled and the first entry compelled me to read more.

“Rise 11:30 AM! Oh, such a spiffy time last night: a regular N.Y. Eve. All dolled up in stain clown suit. E.E. proposed—tough luck! Fellows came at 3 AM today—Sam, Dewey, Morris and Sumner Shapiro. Dewey’s Bostonian friend called. We had lots of fun. All good fellows. I’m sleepy—too much champagne!”

The diary was written by Helen Korngold of St Louis, MO.


Helen's photo as a teacher in a school yearbook

Helen was studying to be a teacher. Her history professor offered a Helen fellowship and a position as his private secretary. Helen was a student teacher at the Wellston School and at Maplewood High. She did not like teaching at Wellston. After teaching there as a substitute she regretted not accepting the position at Maplewood High. “Wells came out he said I made a successful teacher, said I understood children.” After graduation she taught at the Wellston School.

Helen wrote about WWI solders, including Dewey Pierre Flambert who won the Distinguished Cross and Legion of Honor, and in 1920 was listed on the census as a Private First Class in the U. S. Army General Hospital in Colorado. She was quite smitten with Dewey while he visited St. Louis, and sought after information about him after he left for Kansas City, then New Mexico, on his way to the coast. “Dewey certainly caused a sensation,” she wrote, “Beat it with $20 gloves and overcoat –I should worry. He was best company I ever had!”

Her special friend was Sumner Shapiro. “He’s lots of fun,” she wrote. She shared several favorite books with him, “Without Benefit of Clergy” (which he did not care for) and “Return of the Native”.  They visited the War Exposition. “He’s a nice fellow! A good teaser. He’s a Bostonian propagandist. I love St. Louis!”

Helen went to chop suey joints, ‘slummed it’ by visiting ‘low class cafes’ like Hop Alley, and danced at the Arcadia. She was up late, rose late, and took afternoon naps to keep up. One night found Helen ‘joy riding’ with Morris Block, her brother Karol, and Sumner, “Morris with his feet hanging out of the machine once or twice & Sumner behaving like a postman and Karol speeding.” 

Along with her music studies and band participation, Helen enjoyed basketball, swimming and canoeing—but most of all loved to dance. She enjoyed going to the amusement park at Forest Park Highlands, once home to the largest roller coaster, The Comet.

Clothes were important. At the Union Masked Ball with Sumner, Helen dressed as Cleopatra in a ‘wicked’ beaded dress in lavender and yellow with black and white. She describes buying a dark blue beaded georgette dress, a peach blow evening dress, black jersey silk petticoats, silk stockings, a green silk dress with silver lace, a blue suit trimmed in fur, suede pumps, dresses in black tricolate and blue velvet, and white georgette plainly embroidered.

On December 31 she climbed the Statue of Liberty That evening she heard ‘La Forza del Destino’ performed by Enrico Caruso and Rosa Ponselle. She had to visit "Lord & Taylor, Altman’s, Macys, etc.” and bought a seal ‘cootie’ hat.

“This certainly has been a most exciting and pleasant year for me. If grandpa had only lived it would have been perfect. Wishing myself and all those I love happiness—Helen Korngold


I researched about Helen's life, using ancestry.com and St. Louis genealogy website. In 1920 Helen was living in St. Louis, MO with her family. Jacob B. Korngold was 56 and a manufacturer who was born in Austria. His work took him on many travels. Helen's beloved brother was Karol Abraham, who became a lawyer after his service in WWI.




I decided to make a make a quilt for Helen. I scanned diary pages and printed them on fabric. The quilt is made to look like pages of a book. The diary page scans are surrounded by a crazy quilt border incorporating old handkerchiefs, lace, old buttons, and scans of postcards of Helen's Alma Mater,  Central High, and other St. Louis scenes. The pages are hung together by strips of lace. And empty ‘frame’ is missing Helen’s picture as I did not find one until recently.

The quilt appeared at the Women’s Historical Museum in Lansing, MI as part of a juried show created by the Capital City Quit Guild.