This Old Quilt: A Heartwarming Celebration of Quilts And Quilting Memories [Paperback] Review

THIS OLD QUILT is a delightful patchwork of quilts, stories, art illustrations and vintage photographs. I was fascinated from the first moment and didn't want to put the book down.
There are five chapters in THIS OLD QUILT and they offer stories about learning to quilt; the quilting traditions of the Amish, Hopi Indians and African Americans; the warmth and love that comes from homemade quilts; the camaraderie of quilting bees; and many lovely stories and poems concerning the American tradition of quilting.
I was so happy to see many of the paintings of Sandi Wickersham that were used to illustrate this book. Sandi lives close by and much of her work is indicative of my area of Virginia.I own a few of her prints and it was fun to find them featured in THIS OLD QUILT.Several other artists including Diane Phalen's work was also used in the book. Their colorful and detailed quilting scenes add an extra layer of depth and pleasure to the book.
I poured over the vintage photographs that are mostly black and white or color enhanced. The ladies from the past are shown displaying their work or sitting among friends and quilting together. One 1936 Depression Era photograph is so striking! It's of a lady standing on the porch of a wooden cabin and displaying her gorgeous quilt that was made in the Dresden Plate pattern. The viewer senses that inside that unpainted cabin, life was probably pretty difficult, but this lady was able to make a work of art out of scraps, and a picture of her beautiful quilt endures for all of us to admire.
There are many lovely stories to read and enjoy, of both fact and fiction.My favorites are: HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT by Whitney Otto, THE PERSIAN PICKLE CLUB by Sandra Dallas and HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW by Jacqueline Tobin. THIS OLD QUILT is a treasure trove of quilting, memories and lovely pictures. I'm so happy that I treated myself to this endearing book.

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Product Description:
Quilting has never been more popular. At last there is an exceptional and inviting book that celebrates this well-loved art form: "This Old Quilt." The first anthology to pay tribute to quilts and quilting memories, "This Old Quilt" is filled with memorable stories and artwork from many eras, capturing just what makes quilting so treasured.
"This Old Quilt" offers something for every quilter; stories are set in time periods from the turn of the 20th century to the modern day and range from the humorous to the historical to the heartwarming. Contributors include Alice Walker, Terry McMillan, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Whitney Otto, and Patricia J. Cooper and Norma Bradley Allen.
Whether you're someone who has quilted, or someone who simply has a love of quilts and what they represent, this collection will give you a new perspective on the enormous influence of this popular expression of our heritage.

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This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces (Kindle Edition) Review

A sensation from the moment it was first exhibited, since 1886 the Bible Quilt and its reprise, the Pictorial Quilt, made by Georgia native and former slave Harriet Powers has been featured in more than 150 news articles, books, poems and plays. It is thus both remarkable and embarrassing that not until Kyra Hicks's latest work has anyone bothered to verify the received wisdom about the woman who is arguably the world's best-known quilter.

Hicks's easy, conversational and very personal tone belies the painstaking care of her research. What apparently began as an annotated bibliography snowballed into an astonishingly detailed provenance which both documents the lives of key figures in the quilts' history and refutes commonly held, if perennially evolving, assumptions about Powers.

It soon becomes clear to the reader that from the first, everyone who saw Powers's Bible Quilt regarded it as not only unique, but a work of art - high praise given its abstract design, the status of quilts as homely craft, and the tenuous role of black women in turn-of-the-century rural Georgia. Among the visitors of both races crowding to see it at the 1886 Northeast Georgia Fair was Jennie Smith, a white art teacher at an Athens girls' school. Smith was so captivated she tracked down Powers and offered to buy the quilt. After three meetings in four years, she convinced Powers to sell, agreeing to supply the avid quilter with fabric scraps and granting her what can best be described as visitation rights to the quilt. Smith carefully recorded Powers's description of the quilt's subjects, and exhibited it at least once thereafter, identifying Powers as the maker. In 1969 Smith's executor donated the quilt to the Smithsonian, and again it became a sensation.

Other Powers admirers purchased or commissioned a variation now known as the Pictorial Quilt, presented to Charles Cuthbert Hall in 1898 probably when he became Union Theological Seminary's new president. For years Hall displayed it on the wall of his summer house, and even as a child, Hall's great-grandson knew the quilt was "a living thing, not meant to be on a bed, but meant to be art." Like the Bible Quilt, the Pictorial Quilt long remained in appreciative private hands; then in 1961, art collector Maxim Karolik acquired it on behalf of Boston's Museum of Fine Art, where it has been on display since 1975. (It is currently in storage while the MFA undergoes renovation.)

Hicks's tenacious pursuit of primary sources uncovered crucial details about Powers's life which future researchers cannot ignore. She also confirms suspicions that these were not Powers's only quilts. In fact, Powers appears to have been something of a competitor, winning at least one prize for another 1880s quilt. Powers herselfdescribes a fourth quilt's distinctive appearance; is it still hidden, unidentified, in some collection?
It is hard for any diligent researcher to resist sharing every tidbit we unearth; too often, every toy is our favorite. But this can distract rather than illuminate. The reader feels ungrateful complaining that Hicks sometimes provides *too much* information about peripheral characters; nevertheless it is hard not to wish that, for example, the thirteen pages on Karolik's life had instead been devoted to Powers's early years (rarely discussed in other sources) and careful descriptions of the quilts' materials and techniques, both of which Hicks seems to have omitted. But this is praising with faint damns. Hicks's main fault is modesty: she seems to view her book as supplemental when it should be the axis on which any reading on Powers revolves.

The author does yeoman's work viewing her subjects in historical context. A self-identified Christian familiar with Biblical iconography, she avoids the common pitfall of treating Powers's imagery as inscrutable and exotic, and she refrains from Rorschach-test psychologizing. While frankly confronting the patronizing racism of another era, she is also heroically "slow to wrath" (although the reader is baffled by her observation that "no African-American made quilts [were] included" in the groundbreaking 1971 Whitney quilt exhibition, as none of those quilts' makers appear to have been identified.)

Hicks might be amused that white vaudevillian and "Negro mimic" Lucine Finch, fabricator in 1914 of a grotesquely stereotyped "interview" with Powers (who had died four years before), appears to have been no respecter of persons regardless of race - even when she knew them personally. One review sneered that as Mother Goose in her friend's operetta, Finch "unfortunately trusted to her own capacity for making up things on the spur of the moment in preference to adhering to the lines of the part." Hicks's careful work marks a break with this kind of poetic license, and our appreciation of Powers is better for it.

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Product Description:
The powerful quilts of Harriet Powers (1837-1910), a former Athens, Georgia slave, continue to capture our imagination today. Her two-known creations, the Bible Quilt and the Pictorial Quilt, have independently survived since stitched more than a century ago. Over the years, thousands of museum visitors to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have stood transfixed viewing her artwork.

Powers' two quilts are arguably the most well-known and cited coverings in American quilt history. But, until today, no one has told the entire, dramatic story of how these two quilts, one of which initially sold for $5, were coveted, cared for, and cherished for decades in private homes before emerging as priceless, national treasures.

This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces brings to light new, exciting facts - many never before published: complete exhibition history for both known quilts; proof Harriet Powers was a literate, award-winning quilter, who stitched at least five quilts and promoted her own artwork; profiles of the two nineteenth century women who sought to purchase the Bible Quilt; profiles of the three men who once owned the Pictorial Quilt; unveiling of a young artist who embellished the Pictorial Quilt; and the name of the person who first made the connection in the twentieth century that Harriet Powers stitched both quilts.

This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces is the most comprehensive resource guide on this influential African American quilter. The book includes nearly 200 bibliographic references, most annotative, including books, exhibition catalogs, newspapers, plays, poetry, interactive map and more. For the first time ever, readers are provided with clues and encouraged to search for Harriet Powers' lost 1882 Lord's Supper Quilt.

This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces is written by Kyra E. Hicks, a quilter whose story quilts have appeared in over forty group exhibitions in places such as the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY, the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the American Folk Art Museum in NY. Hicks is the author of Black Threads: An African American Quilting Sourcebook and Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria. She lives in Arlington, Virginia.

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The Christmas Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Series #8) [Hardcover] Review

After five decades away from Elm Creek Manor, the estranged Sylvia Compson returned home too late make any amends with her deceased Bergstrom relatives.Now Christmas is coming, but the septuagenarian does not feel like celebrating her first Yuletide in her family home in fifty years.

Her quilting camp partner Sarah McClure and the youngster's spouse orchards gardener Matt plan to celebrate Yuletide at Elm Creek.Sarah feels some guilt that she is not going to visit her family, but believes the fault lies with her mother who overtly displays her loathing of Matt.Sarah persuades a reluctant Sylvia to go into the attic to look at the holiday ornaments where they find an unfinished Christmas quilt and the memories of the joys in spite of the Depression; the depression of loved ones dying during World War II, and much more.Sylvia regrets her stubbornness that is too late to mend fences and pleads with Sarah to square things with her mother.

Though fans of the Elm Creek Quilt series might be a bit confused as to the timing as this entry occurs before Sylvia marries Andrew (see last year's THE MASTER QUILTER), long time readers will enjoy the latest tale.The somewhat sugary story line contains a deep message that there is no time in life to hold grudges.Sarah is terrific as the attic mementos have her looking back on the joys, tragedies, and mistakes in her life.Though suited for those in the audience who have read most of the previous novels (memories will mean much more) because some newcomers might have some problems with what happened to whom, Jennifer Chiaverini provides a warm holiday tale that adds to the Elm Creek manor saga.

Harriet Klausner

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The New Year's Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Series #11) [Hardcover] Review

Sylvia Compson, master quilter and senior owner of Elm Creek manor, has married beau Andrew Cooper at their Christmas Eve party, to the gleeful surprise of their friends and associates.But the occasion is a bittersweet one because Andrew's two grown children, Amy and Bob, chose not to make the trip to Pennsylvania and so were not in attendance.Sylvia is fairly certain that Bob and his family, out in California, will welcome her new role in the Cooper clan.She is less sure about Amy's reaction, for Andrew's daughter was adamantly against the engagement from the beginning.The newlyweds plan to drive from central Pennsylvania to Hartford, Connecticut, to share their news with Amy and Daniel and the three grands and to celebrate the start of the new year.Will Amy accept Sylvia as her father's wife?And will she even want the New Year's Resolution quilt that Sylvia is bringing her?

A long drive is the perfect time for reflective thinking; and as the miles pass, Sylvia remembers notable New Year's Eves of the past, while she diligently works to finish the quilt on time.Her memories are woven into the blocks themselves:the year her cousin Elizabeth announced she was marrying Henry and moving to California; the anticipation leading up to her brother Richard's birth; the first Christmas and New Year's after her mother's death; the events that led up to Sylvia's final argument with her sister Claudia and her abandonment of the Bergstrom farm; and the day she got the news that Claudia had died and the estate was hers.Throughout the decades, quilts were always a part of her life.Now Sylvia is ready to share her personal history, in fabric, with her new step-daughter.

Ms. Chiaverini has given us a heart-warming and thought-provoking read that's much more than mere holiday fluff.To Elm Creek fans, Sylvia's memories fill in some of gaps of backstory that heretofore have gone unexplored.To newcomers to the series, these colorful threads of history will surely lead them to seek out some of the earlier books.And we can all benefit from the advice given by one of the characters here:"Anyone can make promises.The challenge is in following through."A Happy New Year, indeed.

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Product Description:
At the close of THE QUILTER'S LEGACY, the Elm Creek Quilters were all in attendance on Christmas Eve, where they were surprised yet overjoyed to witness the wedding of Sylvia Bergstrom Compson, the Master Quilter, to her beloved Andrew Cooper.

THE NEW YEAR S QUILT tells the story of how the newlyweds celebrate their first holiday season as husband and wife. Not content to rest at home by the fire, they set out on a journey across the snow-covered fields of Pennsylvania.

Their destination is Connecticut, and the home of Andrew's daughter Amy. Unlike the Elm Creek Quilters, Amy has not offered her blessing to the union. Though her father has reminded her that marriage endures in sickness and in health, Amy fears that Andrew and Sylvia have passed the age where marriage remains a prudent choice.

Sylvia hopes to win over her new daughter-in-law through the lessons that quilting reveals about the bonds of love and family. As a gift for Amy, she undertakes a quilt titledNew Year s Reflections,whose blocks represent the holiday traditions of Elm Creek Manor. As she stitches the blocks, memories of a lifetime come flooding back, along with words of wisdom meant to celebrate the achievements of generations past and create hope for the future.

Just as Christmas and New Year's Day bookend the joys of the season, THE NEW YEAR S QUILT is the perfect holiday companion volume to THE CHRISTMAS QUILT.

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