Our featured artist at the Kitsap Quilters Guild show was Sharon Broom from Bainbridge Island. Sharon has been quilting for nearly 25 years after being persuaded to give quilting a go by a friend who was a quilter. Since retiring from secretarial work in the Bainbridge School District, she has more time for her quilting projects.

Here is Sharon in her display area featuring at least a dozen of her quilts. I’ve seen her quilts over the years at our quilt shows, but loved seeing them altogether as a collection and testimony of her outstanding work. She is a precision piecer and loves to applique. This lovely fans bed quilt combines her piecing and applique skills and is also beautifully hand quilted.

In the Schoolhouse blocks quilt, Sharon embellished the houses with embroidery and appliqued flowers in the windows giving each one its own special touch.

Sharon has a great sense of color and her quilts are vibrant with designs that pop. I love her sashing treatment of these stars. The Log Cabin combination with applique, and stars made from 1/2″ squares is stunning too. Her exhibit was inspiring and beautiful.

February is quilt show time for my local quilt guild, the Kitsap Quilters, and our show runs for two days, today and tomorrow at the Kitsap Fairgrounds in Silverdale. Yesterday, I spent five hours helping to hang the 200 quilts and took some pictures to share. It’s fun to see it progress from an empty hall to a beautiful exhibit.

Kitsap County covers quite a large area and we had several drop off places for the quilts. The drop-off people arrived early with the quilts that they had gathered. The quilts were sorted numerically in their categories and then placed on the appropriate spot on the floor which was labeled. The upright poles have slots in the top into which are inserted the hooks on the ends of the cross-pieces.

Each cross-piece has a white sheet with sleeve at the top. The pole is inserted through the sleeve. The quilts are required to have hanging sleeves and each has a metal dowel. The cross-pieces support two quilts, one on either side of the sheet and the metal dowels are leashed on using the plastic zip-ties. This is much easier than in former years, when the quilts had to be pinned onto the white sheets.

The show looks great – do come if you in the vicinity. We have some extremely talented quilters in the group and there is a wide variety of quilts made using different techniques. We also have several vendors as well as a boutique run by guild members and silent auction baskets containing all kinds of quilting supplies and goodies. I’m planning on returning today and will post another couple of blogs about it in the coming weeks.

On my recent trip to CO, I was fortunate to visit the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in the attractive town of Golden just northwest of Denver. This small museum is well worth a visit if you are in the vicinity. The museum was founded by Eugenia Mitchell who was born in Brazil in 1903, where her parents were missionaries. They returned to Iowa and Eugenia became interested in quilting seeing her mother make quilts for the family. She began purchasing quilts and quilt tops in second-hand and antique stores, many of which now reside at the museum. The museum was Eugenia’s dream. She wanted her collection to be both seen by the public and preserved for the future. In 1990, the museum opened and her dream became a reality.

In this blog I’ll highlight some quilts in the exhibit featuring quilts from the museum’s permanent collection of antique quilts. Here’s a Turkey Tracks from around 1927. In the nineteenth century, the turkey tracks pattern was a traditional one for “freedom quilts,” given to young men on their twenty-first birthday. Great care was taken not to call the block by its other name, Wandering Foot – the recipient might spend his life wandering and never settle down! I was amused to read this legend by the quilt – I never knew about the Wandering Foot!

This New York Beauty dates from 1896. The quilt shows the work of more than one hand. Some blocks show bumpy, uneven stitching and others are better made. Fine hand embroidery identifies the maker of each block: V.P., M.F.P. October 1, 1896, Mother L.D.G. 1888, and A.F.P October 1, 1896.

The Eight-Pointed Flower, c. 1855-1860 is cut at the corners for use on a four-poster bed. But four poster quilts are usually larger than 90″ and this quilt is only 73″ x 74″. Perhaps it was made for a child’s bed. This Crown of Thorns with wide blue sashing is documented as being from Clarksville, Officer’s family, 1880. The fabrics used were popular from 1880 through 1895, suggesting the quilt could have been made five or ten years earlier.

Mildred Johnson of Bethel, Ohio made this lovely Nineteenth Century Tulip quilt, c.1897. Mildred was an experienced and expert quilt maker. The hand quilting is absolutely exquisite.