In my family, I have this little reputation of 'scoring' family pieces -- textiles, crystal, silver, furniture, you name it. If it is offered to me, I say 'yes' quickly and without much thought. This reputation has earned me a nickname from my Daddy - Frank. As in Frank James, Jesse James' older brother.
Over the years, I have collected stacks of quilts, afghans, bedspreads, linens, and other assorted textiles. Most of them aren't signed and certainly aren't dated. For me, that's okay because if it has taught me anything over the years, family history is more interesting to learn when you ask lots of questions and it's a nice parlor trick to show an Art Historian how I identify different people in my family from their quilting.
I thought over the course of 2012, I would share a few of these pieces.
This is one of my favourite pieces I have acquired in the past few years: Grandmommy's Cathedral Window Wallhanging.
Grandmommy is my daddy's momma's momma. Here we all are:
For my childhood, it hung in my grandparent's tv room and I adored it; all the colours, fabrics, and stitching in it.
When I received it, it required some minor repair work to stablize the piece (there is the art historian in me talking). Some of the seams were unraveling or pulling apart and I was concerned about the piece coming apart in certain places from the stress of being re-hung. In the end though, they required nothing more than a discrete ladder stitch here and there to tighten up the squares.
And I may have removed the tassels that hung from the bottom. Two of them were already missing and I prefer the way it looks now.
Which is over my bed.
Yes, I have no shame. It's just me being Frank.
