Antique Study Group

Last night I spoke at the Antique Study Group. It was a lot of fun. I took the pre 1920 quilts from my book along to show as well as pre 1900 blocks from my collection. I hope they got as much out of the experience as I did.

I am pretty much a self taught identifier of dates/eras of fabrics. I have a lot of books and I've done a lot of reading. I had some practical hands-on experience working in museums and historical societies.

I was very pleased to see that I actually do know what I'm talking about when I date fabrics. The group members were in agreement with me about the dates of the pieces that I showed. In a few cases, though, they thought perhaps the items in question could even be earlier!

I am fortunate to have a piece of early chintz which to me looks like perhaps circa 1830. I showed off this prized possesion last night and the retired quilt appraiser and the current quilt appraiser spent some time looking at it closely. They thought it could actually be earlier than 1830! WOW! Pauline, the current appraiser said that it was a hard piece to date because she hasn't seen enough of it to determine a date for sure. How cool is that? I feel quite honored to have this particular piece of fabric in my collection.

Well, it seems that I am close to being ready for Houston and International Quilt Market. Or at least as ready as I can get. I have a basic plan for my Schoolhouse lecture and then I will do a shortened version of the lecture for the booth demos. I've got the two quilts from the book that I am taking and also I've made five sample quilt top variations of the finished quilts. Sigh......wish me luck.