Too funny and too true

This one's dedicated to all my long arm friends.



Till next time....Happy Quilting!

Textile Conservation

Restoring the Palampore


Working at a museum with a large quilt collection, I frequently get questions about quilt care and I give good advice about basic home care. At the museum we store our quilts in archival tissue and breathable nylon. We do minor stabilization and cleaning (with a low suction vacuum where the quilt stays dry). However, when a quilt needs major work, we send our quilts out to someone qualified, as we don't have a conservation lab or a conservator at our museum. Watch this excellent video on a palampore from the Royal Ontario Museum that has been conserved by a team led by Shirley Ellis, Senior Textile Conservator at the ROM. From the video you can see how expensive it is to properly treat an old textile and why it costs so much money to conserve and clean a museum quilt.

Till next time....Happy Quilting!

A Quick History of Colonial Womens' Art

Preview of "Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands"
- an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum

Check out this cool video from the curator. It's about womens' art history.



Till next time....Happy Quilting!

Sad news

I just heard that Bonnie Leman has passed away. For those of you who don't recognize the name, she was the founder of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine. For those who do know her, a booklet is being compiled by Xenia Cord. To contribute a message to the family email it to teresad@quilts.com with Bonnie Leman in the message line.

For over 30 years, Quilter's Newsletter has been my bible and favorite quilt magazine.

To learn more about Bonnie you can find a biography of her at the Quilter's Hall of Fame and an interview with her at the Alliance for American Quilts.

Quilt Exhibit in NYC

The American Folk Art Museum in New York City has a wonderful collection of quilts. They'll be on exhibit in two parts. Part 1 starts in October. They'll be switching to part 2 in April. There is also a catalog of the exhibit that will be available in their gift shop. If I can't make it to the exhibit, I'm surely going to get the catalog. Click on the picture to get more information.

Till next time.....Happy Quilting!

Cuesta Benberry Symposium

Check out this great symposium this fall at the MSU Museum.
You can get the full brochure or sign up by clicking here.

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Great Lakes Folk Festival

This weekend is the Great Lakes Folk Festival. If you're anywhere near East Lansing, stop by. Music, food, stuff for the kids, arts and craft show, author book signings, etc., etc. Lots of fun stuff and all for free. My favorite is the dance tent. I love to watch everyone dance to all the different styles of music. Make sure and get a root beer float, too! This year's theme is Green. Everyone here at the MSU Museum has been busy putting together a great event. So come downtown and remember to give generously to the bucket brigade when they swing by.

Till next time.....Happy Quilting!

Major Grant for the Quilt Index

IMLS AWARDS NATIONAL LEADERSHIP PLANNING GRANTS TO 13 INSTITUTIONS,TOTALING MORE THAN $750,000

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the primary source of federal support for the nation's museums and libraries, announces that 13 institutions are receiving National Leadership Collaborative Planning Grants (NLG) totaling $763,715. Grantees will contribute $491,995 in matching funds. There were 62 applications to the program with requests totaling $3,752,309.

Michigan State University Museum is one of two organizations in Michigan to receive funding and the nearly $100,000 grant will be used to expand technology and access for its innovative online resource, the Quilt Index. (The other institution in Michigan to receive a grant is the Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum for a partnership concerning literacy in rural communities.)

The NLG program includes two types of collaborative planning grants, which enable multi-institution project teams to work together to either plan a single project or to produce a white paper that will encourage multiple projects; and project grants, including both research and implementation grants, for which that preliminary work has already been done.

The MSU Museum project encompasses:
Award Amount: $98,173; Matching: $54,136
Grant Category: Library-Museum Collaboration--Level II Collaborative Planning Grant

Project Title: "The Quilt Index: Collaborative Planning for Internationalization"
The Quilt Index is a popular online scholarly and cultural resource that is growing increasingly global in its content and the communities it serves. Internationalization is encouraging, but it presents new challenges, such as supporting multilingual indexing, searching, and retrieval of information. The Michigan State University Museum, partnering with the MATRIX Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online, the Alliance for American Quilts, and the International Quilt Study Center will identify key challenges for globally constructed and shared online resources, and develop a model plan that responds to those challenges.

"National Leadership Collaborative Planning Grants provide opportunities to conduct research and develop the framework to support future projects that have the potential to generate new tools, research, models, services, practices, or alliances that will positively impact museums, libraries, and the communities they serve," said IMLS Acting Director Marsha L. Semmel. "These projects encourage partnerships that address national issues of importance impacting education, scholarship, and public service and encourage the broad application of standards and models to improve professional practice."

IMLS National Leadership Collaborative Planning Grants position museums and libraries as partners with other community institutions -- from medical centers to gardens and nature centers -- in ways that explore assess community needs, solve problems and share data more widely. For a state-by-state list of grant recipients, see: http://www.imls.gov/news/2010/073010b_list.shtm#MI .

About the Quilt Index

The Quilt Index (http://www.quiltindex.org) launched seven years ago, and was developed at Michigan State University by the MSU Museum and MATRIX, the Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online. The third primary partner is the Alliance for American Quilts, based in Asheville, N.C., a non-profit organization comprised of a broad range of key scholars, curators, librarians, and quilt artists in the U.S. dedicated to the study, preservation, and sharing of American quilt history. Over the years, the Quilt Index's growth and expansion has been supported by grants from IMLS and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Quilt Index merges tradition with technology and springs from the work of a uniquely-specialized team of researchers and experts who are committed to making significant quilt-related data accessible for research and teaching as well as developing replicable applications of technology in the humanities.

The online resource extends understanding and use of the museum's textile collections. The MSU Museum's Great Lakes Quilt Center has evolved from the sustained and significant quilt-related activities and resources at the Michigan State University Museum and the museum's long-standing interest in and commitment to preserving and presenting traditional arts history. More than 700 historic and contemporary textiles in the MSU Museum's collections are used for exhibition and research, and the Quilt Index, in part, helps make these collections - and others -- more connected to repositories and users worldwide.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services, Washington, D.C., is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. To learn more about the Institute, please visit www.imls.gov.

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Sad News

I'm posting this quilt to commemorate the life of a quilting friend, Irene Pavlik. I knew Irene in the early 1990s when we both belonged to the Wednesday group, a small group of friends who met every Wednesday afternoon to stitch and chat. The Wednesday group made the blocks for this house quilt for Block by Block, a book I wrote in 1995. Irene's block is in the lower left corner. The Wednesday group still meets, but has gotten smaller. Irene lived 50 miles away and came less frequently to spend more time with her daughter Miah. I got a full time job and no longer had afternoons free. Irene was a wonderful quilter and was always fun. Recently, Irene's husband became very ill. She was flying to the Mayo Clinic with him when their plane went down in Lake Michigan. This is truly sad, as Irene was a great lady, fun to be around and fun to quilt with.

For more about Irene go to:
http://obits.mlive.com/obituaries/saginaw/obituary.aspx?n=irene-pavlik&pid=144350502
and
http://www.9and10news.com/Category/Story/?id=243786&cID=1

Till next time.......

Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild Show

Just a reminder to everyone in the area to check out the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild Show this weekend. It's always one of the best around.


Till next time....Happy Quilting!

Quilt Symposium at MSU Museum

JULY 19, 2010

PRESS RELEASE

CONTACT: Lora Helou (helou@msu.edu), Communications Manager, Michigan State University Museum, 517-432-3357

MSU MUSEUM SYMPOSIUM CONNECTS COLLECTIONS, RESEARCH AND QUILT HISTORY

MSU MUSEUM, EAST LANSING, MICH. -- Michigan State University Museum announces a major event this fall: "Unpacking Collections: The Legacy of Cuesta Benberry and a Symposium on Using Quilt History Collections," to explore the connections between using collections in making or studying quilts.

The symposium is set for Oct. 8-10, 2010 in East Lansing, Mich., and is planned in conjunction with an exhibition that showcases examples of materials from the Cuesta Benberry Quilt History Collections that were recently acquired by the MSU Museum.

Scholars and creative artists use private and public collections of objects and archival materials to inform their work. What do they collect? Where do they find collections and how exactly do they use them? What do they do with the collections when they are done? How have they been inspired by collections? What obstacles do they encounter when building or using collections? These questions and more will be explored in the MSU Museum symposium.

"We were wonderfully surprised and honored that Cuesta Benberry's collections have come to the Michigan State University Museum," says Marsha MacDowell, MSU Museum curator and MSU professor of art and art history. "Research-based collections like hers are critical to still under-studied but important aspects of quilt history and of African American art and cultural history. We know that this collection of primary materials will enable scholars here on campus and around the world to benefit from Cuesta's trail-blazing work and to carry it forward. Her collections and others held at the MSU Museum allow us also to examine the importance of building and using collections in creative, scholarly, and educational ways," she adds.

To download the symposium brochure and to register by mail or online, go to: http://museum.msu.edu/Events/cbsymposium/

Noted individuals who have used collections in their scholarly and creative work and will speak at the symposium include Lauren Cross, Kyra Hicks, Carolyn Mazloomi, Patricia Turner,and Merikay Waldvogel. In addition there will be a showing of Cross's film The Skin Quilt Project film, book sales, author book signings, and an information session on using The Quilt Index; "Sit and Stitch" with quiltmakers and "Sit and Share Collections" with quilt history collectors; and a reunion of participants in the African American Quiltmaking in Michigan Project. Optional symposium package add-on activities include "Behind the Scenes" tours of the MSU Museum African American and African Quilt Collections and an opportunity to have your quilt documented for the Michigan Quilt Project/The Quilt Index.

Self-guided tours of the exhibition Unpacking Collections: The Legacy of Cuesta Benberry, An African American Quilt Scholar, and the concurrent Dear Mr. Mandela, Dear Mrs. Parks: Children's Letters, Global Lessons (an exhibition produced by the Nelson Mandela Museum and the Michigan State University Museum in collaboration with the Keeper of the Word Foundation) will also be available.

Members of the Great Lakes African American Quilt Network, the Lansing Sisters in Stitches, and Flint African American Quilt Guild will serve as volunteer hosts and will have information on their organizations.

The symposium is being organized by the Michigan State University Museum and has been supported by a major grant from the Salser Family Foundation with additional support from the MSU Museum Studies Program, MSU Department of Art and Art History, MSU Women's Resource Center, African and African American Studies Program, MSU Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, and the MSU Residential College of Art and Humanities.

For more information about the exhibition, visit http://museum.msu.edu/Exhibitions/Current/TheLegacyofCuestaBenberry

The Great Lakes Quilt Center at the Michigan State University Museum
Michigan State University Museum's Great Lakes Quilt Center continues the Michigan Quilt Project documentation project, initiated in 1985; has completed major documentation projects on Michigan African-American quiltmaking and North American Indian quiltmaking; is currently engaged in a documentation project on South African quiltmaking; has a collection of over 700 quilts, a strong collection of quiltmaking ephemera, and a library of over 2000 quilt-related publications; and regularly mounts and tours exhibitions of quilts. Michigan State University Museum partners with the Alliance for American Quilts and MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online to lead the development of The Quilt Index and Quilt Treasures. For more information about the collections and programs of the center, go to http://www.museum.msu.edu/glqc/.

The Michigan State University Museum
The MSU Museum is Michigan's natural science and culture museum and the state's first Smithsonian Institution affiliate. The MSU Museum -- accredited by the American Association of Museums -- collects, preserves, studies and interprets cultural artifacts and natural history specimens, with collections numbering more than 1 million in four buildings on the MSU campus. The MSU Museum is committed to education, exhibitions, research and the building and stewardship of collections that focus on Michigan and its relationship to the Great Lakes and the world beyond. Learn more at: http://museum.msu.edu .

Arts and culture at MSU
Arts and culture at MSU play a critical role in nurturing the human spirit while contributing to a richer quality of life. Museums, galleries, and gardens along with libraries, historic sites, and performance spaces provide a catalyst for cultural exchange of diverse ideas and inspirations. At the same time, audiences on campus and around the world take advantage of academic and research outreach programs such as public broadcasting, online resources, and publications. Find out more at http://artsandculture.msu.edu .

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Antique Quilt Exhibits

Here are links to two exhibits I'm hoping to visit this summer.

American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur
Milwaukee Art Museum has the exhibit from May 22-September 6, 2010.

Quilting Traditions: The Art of the Amish
at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio from May 28, September 6, 2010.

Till next time.....happy quilting.