 The National Quilt Museum, Paducah, KY December 8, 2011
On my way back home to Missouri I took the southern route for a couple of reasons. One, it was winter time and I was hoping to avoid weather. Two, there are different things to see. Three, I would pass through Paducah, Kentucky, home of the National Quilt Museum! The drive was pretty uneventful all things considered. West Virginia was windy and beautiful! I was within 100 miles of Gettysburg but decided not to take the side trip. I knew if I did, I would want to stay at least a day, probably two. I didn't have the time!
 Flight 93 Memorial, Stoystown, Pennsylvania I did take a few hours to visit the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania however. It was out in the middle of nowhere, a dusting of snow was on the ground. It was very quiet and peaceful. It seemed quite a fitting place to honor the Americans who rest here. If it were not for their selfless acts of heroism on that fateful September day, the course of our nation's future could have very well been very different. I'm glad I went. It was a very emotional visit. I think as Americans we take so much for granted. The visit here reminded me of the wonderful country I am blessed to live in. It reminded me to appreciate those I love and tell them so every day!
I arrived home after three days drive. I was happy to be home, but very grateful for the invaluable experiences I enjoyed in the East. I am so appreciative of the wonderful opportunities that Connie Barlow at the New England Quilt Museum gave me. I appreciate the faith she showed in me when she invited me to be part of her team. I am also grateful to Pam Weeks,Curator, and Maureen Smith, Public Relations Director. They were both great to work with, always supportive and forever there when I had a question or needed guidance. I consider them all friends and colleagues I know we will be in touch with for many years to come.
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 Colts & Quilts: The Civil War Remembered Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Last week, I called my brother, Ed, to ask his advice about my trip west. He is a pilot for Federal Express and knows about weather patterns and of course, maps, which in his line of work is called navigation. Up until now, he has just said head west! This morning, I got a text message from him. It said "the weather is starting to move it. It's warm now, but the air moving in is cold and may hold some snow." I called him and his advice was "get in the car and start driving west NOW!" Just yesterday, New Mexico was hit was a giant snow storm and it was headed my way. Luckily, I was pretty much packed and ready to go.
So I left and headed for Hartford, Connecticut where Pam and I were meeting at the Wadsworth Antheneum. When I left it was raining, and it rained all the way. At one point, the fog was really bad, and visibility was terrible. Luckily, that didn't last long and I made it to the museum just fine. The purpose of this visit was to see the exhibit Colts and Quilts: The Civil War Remembered. A civil war era quilt was on exhibit along with a number of women's dresses. Also there was an original letter written by Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley and a bronze miniature stature of Lincoln.
 Giddap the Democratic Donkey, Martha Supnik, 2008 Tuesday, December 5, 2011
My last day at the museum was spent in the library going through 40 years of Quilter's Newsletter Magazines looking at the articles about political quilts and patterns that I found in their indexes. It was a bit time consuming, yet fun too. I ran across an advertisement from the NEQM asking for political quilts the last time they did an exhibition like this one. It was in the early 1990s. Then about one o'clock, I said my farewells and left for the last time. I was sad! Having a few extra hours today, I decided to go by the Lowell National Historic Park one more time. I didn't take the time to watch the movie again, although I wish I would have. It was just fun to see the exhibits one more time. Then, I went home to start packing to go home. It is bittersweet. This has been a wonderful experience, but I am ready to go home!
 Ararat the Elephant, Martha McCarthy, 2008 Monday, December 5, 2011
Today I met Maureen at the museum. We had some wrapping up to do with the website, and since the museum is closed on Mondays it was a good opportunity to get things done without interruptions. I made sure Maureen had copies of all the images, and parts of images, backgrounds, etc. that I used to style to website. Now I feel she is all set and my involvement is over. Maureen is up to the task and I am sure will do a great job managing the NEQM's on-line presence.
For the rest of the day I worked on labels and just making sure I had all the bases covered with research documentation I will need to take with me. It's so great to be able to scan documents, images, and articles so I can save them electronically.
 Sunday, December 4, 2011 Having spent nine weeks in Lowell, I have only managed to get to the American Textile History Museum once. So this afternoon it was a beautiful day and I decided to go on over. When I arrived, I asked the staff person if they happened to have a Jacquard Loom. To my surprise she said yes, and that it had been out a few days before during a donor event. She took me up to the third floor and showed me the loom. It was great because it was in miniature form so you could really see what was happening. I really appreciated seeing it because I understand the basic concept of the loom, but just have a little difficulty understanding how it really works. Now I was able to see how the mechanism works. It makes sense to me now. Not total and complete sense, but more than it did before. It's a little complicated and the details need to sink in. I wish UNL had one of these that I could tinker with. Although I spent a little while in the museum in October, it was nice to come back again. They have great exhibits about fibers and their production from gathering the flax, cotton, wool, or silk, and taking it all the way to woven cloth. They also have quite a bit of cotton processing and weaving/looming equipment. I saw a short electronic label about immigrants that was quite interesting. It said said "all hands and all nations" participated in the textile industry that gave birth to the industrial revolution. $12 would buy a trip to the New World which took between 12 and 16 days. The passengers brought their own food and $25. By 1900, immigrants from 52 different nations resided here in Lowell. Wow! I just think the whole story is so interesting. And child labor? The children had to work for the family to survive. To these immigrants who came from countries where only the elite were educated, sending children to school seemed unimportant. They lied about their age and sent them to the mills and factories instead. In addition to the permanent textile exhibits, the museum had a Kite Exhibit. These were not ordinary kites you might fly with your children in the park on Sunday afternoon. Nooooo....they are huge kites that people suspended themselves from to make themselves fly! The kites featured took me from those designed my Michelangeo to the Wright Brothers making their first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Very fascinating stuff! I enjoyed this exhibit very much and wish I had time to read every single label, especially now that I have a new appreciation of labels! And, although I should have continued my work on labels today I took the day off. I only did some organization of my research materials. Tomorrow Maureen is going in to the museum, so I will meet her over there and maybe go through the Quilter's Newsletters I need to look at.
 Centennial Commemorative Handkerchief Saturday, December 3, 2011 The plan was that today would be my last day at the museum. I was planning to work until one o'clock or so and then go back to Jim and Mariette's condo and pack up, then leave early tomorrow morning. However, Pam is planning to go to Hartford to pick up three quilts that will be in the exhibit. These three were made by Sally Palmer Field and have center medallions of commemorative handkerchiefs from the presidential campaigns of presidents Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. I would love to see these. So Pam and I have decided to stay until Wednesday when we will drive to Hartford, get the quilts, and go to the Wadsworth Antheneum to see their new exhibit, Colts & Quilts: The Civil War Remembered. We will take two cars and I will leave from there, hopefully driving another hundred miles or so before stopping for the night. So, now I have a little more time to work on labels. Yesterday, I asked Martha, the Library Volunteer, if she could drum up any research information about the three quilt patterns in the exhibit that relate to presidents: Washington's Plume, Whig's Retreat, and Harrison's Rose. I have some information, but I'd like more. She said the only place she thought might be helpful, aside from the other sources she checked and found nothing, was the Quilter's Index. So, today I searched the index and found a lot of possible articles. I started pulling the articles from the complete set of QN (1969 to present) that the library has. Some are helpful, some are not. I will have to go through each of these myself, in the library, to see what I want and what I don't. There are more than just the quilt patterns. There are articles about political quilts, and quilts for presidents. This is going to take a while so I will do it on Tuesday. Meanwhile, I continued tracking down commemorative fabrics, and political handkerchiefs that are in quilts in the exhibit. The most challenging are the Florence Peto quilts. She used commemorative fabrics. The center medallions are easy to track down. The other fabrics are in small areas of the quilts and I can barely see them in the photographs that we have. I think it might be an almost impossible job given I can't even see them. Perhaps when the quilts arrive, Pam can send me photographs and I can do more. I have had a pretty easy time tracking down the handkerchiefs though. The President Grant campaign handkerchief is elusive, but perhaps it will turn up. Other than the Grant Handkerchief and more about presidential quilt patterns, I pretty much have all my research materials gathered. The Massachusetts Quilt Documentation book and the catalog from the 2000 exhibit at the Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania have both been very helpful. The Brandywine exhibit catalog is titled "The Fabric of Persuasion: Two Hundred Years of Political Quilts." Today I made sure I had everything scanned and printed so I could work on the labels over the weekend. I am hoping things will pull together pretty quickly. I won't have a final draft of the labels, but an initial draft should be complete.
 Declaration of Independence Comm. Handkerchief Friday, December 2, 2011
Not long after arriving at the museum this morning, I heard whining about email. Yes, it could be received, but it could not go out! Error messages were rampant! It's never a good thing when the entire staff is lined up at your desk with the same complaint :( When Maureen and I left yesterday, and yes, celebrated the birth of our new website, we thought all the email accounts were set and worked fine. She even tested it. But apparently it wasn't so! Yesterday I had to rescue the email of the one person in the museum who had a different email manager than everyone else. So I went back to her office and tracked down the outgoing port number I used. Then I changed the outgoing port of everyone's email manager to match. Luckily it worked. If it hadn't I am sure I would have had a BIG headache!
After that I spent some more time in the library tracking down information on some of the historical fabrics that will be in quilts in the presidents exhibit. Martha had circulating copies of two exhibition catalogs on political quilts so I got those from her.
 Kansas City Star pattern 1931 "Giddap" Giddap the Very Democratic Donkey
We have a donkey quilt coming from St. Louis for the exhibit. It was made to celebrate FDR's election to a third term. In researching this donkey pattern, I found that the quilt seems to be a very similar pattern to one printed in the Kansas City Star newspaper in 1931. I emailed Merikay Waldvogel about it thinking she would have the pattern in her clipping collection. Yup, sure enough she had it and graciously sent me a scan of it. Until the quilt is received, we can't tell if it is a variation of the pattern because the donkeys are all in one color. It might be applique donkeys in the shape of the Giddap quilt block. But if it is a variation of the KC Star pattern -- oh I see some fun things to do for the exhibit. For one thing, since it is a variation we can invite our visitors to see if they can spot the differences between the pattern and the quilt. Also, I think it would be fun to offer our visitors a copy of the pattern. We must have permission of the KC Star to do that I'm sure. But it would be a fun thing to do. Maybe donkey and elephant blocks can tie into a community outreach program related to the exhibition. The Star actually printed an elephant pattern first, and it wasn't related to politics, but to an elephant at the Kansas City zoo. The public outcry for a donkey led them to publish Giddap, just a few weeks later.
 Thursday, December 1, 2011
Okay folks, seriously it's PARTY TIME! Maureen and I let it rip -- the new website is Live! You can see it at http://nequiltmuseum.org. Of course, as always, there are a couple of glitches. The favicon isn't always showing up, the logo at the top of the page shows up in Firefox and Chrome, but not Internet Explorer -- so don't look at it there. Also in I.E. the calendar isn't coming through for some reason. We had a few things to do to get the email flowing properly with the new email provider. But, all in all, things went well. Other than this, you guessed it, I worked on the labels for the President's exhibit today. I found a great book in the library called Threads of History. It's about 300+ pages long and has photos of many political commemorative fabrics, handkerchiefs, and other textiles. It's a good resource for many of our quilts in the exhibit. Tonight after work, a group of us went out for dinner and a glass of wine. This celebration was well deserved!
 Wednesday, November 30, 2011
This morning began with a staff meeting. Of course my plan today was to get more labels done. Maureen was in today and needed help/advice on the website. She is setting up a secondary website for the Lowell Quilt Festival. Now that she understands Weebly, and has a good working knowledge, she is off and running with a little help from me. However, I did nab her to give me some hints on the label design. I had something roughed out, but wanted her opinion about fonts, italics, bold, placement, etc. In this process, I have looked at many, many labels that I took pictures of while visiting museums this fall. They are all a little different. The only museum so far that has put dimensions on their labels is the IQSC. But, they are the only museum dedicated just to quilts that I have been to, besides the NEQM, of course. So, because our visitors have a similar demographic I decided it made sense to stick with that. Dimensions, technique, fiber content are in. I decided to try using the museum font, Rotis SemiSerif in the header which is quite nice. I also thought I would try adding their compass logo. I wasn't that crazy about it, but Maureen and Pam both loved it! Whew...good one, almost by accident! I will admit, it does jazz it up a little bit.
Pam and I spent the afternoon, you guess it -- working on the quilts for the President's exhibit. We were going through some quilts with commemorative handkerchiefs and Pam called a man who had a collection of them made by his mother, Sally Palmer Field. Pam has arranged with him to get the Roosevelt and Eisenhower quilts, but then she mentioned that she would really like to have the one with Grant's commemorative handkerchief in it, but it was a bit fragile and can't be hung. I suggested we put it on the slant board in one of the galleries. She thinks that's a great idea and we're adding it to the show. There are still several quilts we don't have images of or details like the size, etc. Pam and I went through those and identified them so she could request the lacking information from the owner. Pam got an additional fine arts shipping quote on two quilts that have to come from Texas. This quote was about 1/3 of the first one. So, yes we are getting the Kennedy Loan Star Memorial Quilt and the Historic USA Quilt for sure.
Having approval for my label design, I went home tonight and started the labels for all 25 of the quilts in the show. What a tedious, time-consuming job! But I feel much better now that it's underway. I am going to chip away at these the next two days in order of priority -- those with commemorative fabrics, and commemorative handkerchiefs come first. The museum library has great resources for those. The rest of them aren't so difficult, especially the contemporary ones that don't have historic fabrics, such as the Ed Larson quilts. I can write that label from home, although ideally all the labels would be done before I leave.
Do you get the idea I'm ready to head west? !!
On Tuesdays, the museum is busy busy because of volunteers coming in to work on various projects. They work right next to me. Because I have so much left to do yet on the labels, I worked from home. I worked very hard. I am just constructing the first few labels. A task I thought would be simple has turned out to much more complex than I initially anticipated. I have limited words to get across an idea. Having recently read a book about exhibit labels, I had much to keep in mind -- the big idea, who is the average visitor, what can the label do to engage the visitor, etc. At the end of the day, I had a few labels done, but I finally had a template and a PLAN which was holding me back before now. I am one of those people that has to do a lot of mulling over and thinking about a project before I actually begin. By the time I start, I have it all figured out and it goes together in a flash. Let's hope that's true of these labels!
 Margaret and her wonderful new gadget! Monday, November 28, 2011 Last summer, I took a class from Margaret Ordonez, a professor from the University of Rhode Island. We have kept in touch since then, and she invited me to come see her at URI. Since she arrived home from an archeological research trip in Honduras on Nov. 15, this was really the only chance to go see her. I drove down to Rhode Island -- a two hour drive, but well worth it! It was great to see Margaret and we spent all day in her conservation lab, the student classroom/lab and the two large collection rooms there. This was the coolest thing ever! In her conservation lab, Margaret showed me her new gadget. It's a microscope linked to a camera and a computer screen. She put some slides under it and WOW!!! is all I can say. You can really see the images clearly on the LARGE computer monitor she has! The neat thing about this is that you can take an image of a slide as it appears on the monitor. Then you can send the images! She was actually looking at fibers from a pair of socks she purchased last summer at the IQSC. The tag on the socks says "Bamboo Sox." In looking at a few fibers she was able to scavenge off the top of the socks, Margaret showed me how the microscope tells the story -- the fibers are straight and have a center canal. It is a fiber made of cellulose, i.e. like rayon. So, Margaret, and her graduate assistant, Mary Elizabeth, were surmising that the cellulose may have been derived from bamboo, but then was processed. Mary Elizabeth was saying that bamboo is difficult to extract fiber from because it takes so long that it mildews in the process. And the discussion goes on..... We also looked at slides that were sent from a fabric manufacturer. It showed consistent tears in the fibers. They need help in figuring out why so they can fix their equipment. From the slide, you can see that actually the fibers are being cut. Then, there were also the slides from an historic sampler. You could see where the black thread had disintegrated. Very cool stuff! Margaret showed me several items they have received "on contract" to conserve. One was a flag that was disintegrating. She showed me how a stabilizing fabric will be adhered to the underside. And how is it applied? I asked. She said with a substance similar to Elmer's Glue, except made for fabric. We went into the lab where students would be working later that day doing a unit on dyes. And there the dyes were, sitting there in glass containers waiting to be used! There was a lot of different equipment in there -- something to test the strength of fabric, washing machines that washed once, but equaled five washings from our home washing machines. There was also another fascinating piece of equipment I asked Margaret about. She said Dr. Bide was working with it and it was a spinneret (I think). Anyway, she said it was being used to develop some possible medical applications. A synthetic fiber is randomly wound on a copper cylinder. When it is removed, the fiber, let's say polyester, is shaped like a hollow tube. The tube may then have antibiotics applied to it, then sliced very thin and used for body parts such as heart valves. How neat is that?!!! URI bought a new digital fabric printer recently so Margaret excitedly showed off the various parts -- some still in boxes. The problem? Where to put it! Would I ever like to come back and play with that baby! Then, we spent a lot of time looking at the URI costume collection and the textile collection. Ohhh la la! It was wonderful to say the least. I got to see the quilts and fabrics she used in her images for class last summer. She also showed me all their quilts and some of their textiles. I even got to see turn of the century textiles from Egypt. Very cool! When we came across some crazy quilts with disintegrating silks, Margaret showed me how they were conserved. Now I can apply this technique to my own crazy quilt, made by my great grandmother! I could go on and on about this great visit with Margaret. She shared all her treasures with me. AND, she had her cell phone in her pocket the entire day because she was expecting news of a new granddaughter being born any minute! Lucky for me, by the time I left at 4:30 little Miss Mandy had not arrived yet, and Margaret took off straight for the hospital. I have to mention also that the URI campus is very, very pretty. The grounds are beautiful and some of the stone buildings are positively wonderful.
 All ready for the Hoiday Parade! Saturday, November 26
Today I worked again on the President's exhibit, focusing on the labels, pouring through exhibition catalogs, and more books. I also spent some time considering the exhibit layout, and where to hang each quilt. I actually took a floor plan of the museum and cut out tiny images of the quilts and placed them around. Paper dolls! It helped a lot in trying to figure out this puzzle!
Today was also Lowell's annual holiday celebration. They have activities, craft vendors, music, trolley rides, and a parade. This afternoon, a group of carolers came and sang to us in the museum. It was great, but made me homesick, especially with the holidays upon us.
And YES, the NEQM walked in the parade carrying their banner. Connie and some board members came through in their matching fleece ponchos, red hats, and mittens. Normally, they would need all this gear because of the cold weather usually here in New England by Thanksgiving weekend. Not so today! It was 65 degrees into the evening. Cheryl, a museum employee, and I stayed for the parade which didn't start until 4:30. No coat required! It was a beautiful evening with marching bands, floats, and yes, even Santa was there! I don't know how many thousands of peope were there, but the place was packed with families.
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