Friday was the first day of the Quilt Show our at one of our favorite places...the Aurora Colony Museum. This is an event that I wait for each year, but I was especially excited about this year's theme-
"Seeing Red". I like this show because they feature a lot of vintage quilts, most of which are hand quilted. As a quilter, I think it's wonderful that quilts can be quilted by long arms. If we had to hand quilt our quilts, most of us would probably give it up or be able to complete one quilt in our life. In my humble opinion, nothing can compare to a hand quilted quilt. I love the look and respect the hours of workmanship. Each year, the colony puts out a request for quilt blocks to go into a quilt with a particular theme. Someday....Anyway, the 12 best blocks are chosen, hand quilted by the volunteers and then raffled off. Here is this year's quilt.
Most of the quilts on display this year were red and white. I took lots of pictures so I hope you will enjoy looking at them.
My favorite author Jane Kirkpatrick, has written three novels about the Aurora Colony and Emma Wagner Giesy who was a member of the colony. Jane writes wonderful historical fiction and it helped me to really understand the life that the colony members lived in Aurora. Jane also wrote a non fiction book after the series called Aurora.
When I read the book, I found some photos of a delightful red work quilt. I found out that It was made by one of the volunteers at Aurora, Janus Childs. Her embroidery work is fabulous and I have been bugging them for years to put out some patterns. She does her work with a single strand of floss, so it's very fine and detailed. Her quilt was on display with the red and white quilts.
You can see how detailed her work is in these photos. She also had one on display in the children's room of Raggedy Ann and Andy.
About a year ago, I talked with some of the volunteers and sent them some examples of how embroidery patterns were sold. They got together a packet of 4 patterns to start off and give it a try.
They were having some trouble with the packaging, but I got to go upstairs to see the patterns and was able to buy one! I was soooo excited. Here's the patterns...ready for work now.
After viewing the quilts, Jim and I went over to the little log cabin where they have a little shoppe and refreshment. The rain was falling and the fire was going, so it felt good to be inside the cozy little building.
Of course, I had to buy a few fat quarters to support the colony, right? We also had a nice visit with some ladies from an herb group that tend an herb garden at the colony. They had published a little book on herbs, so we bought one to enjoy and to learn a bit more.
This summer, Jim bought a chair in Oregon City as a garage sale for $5. He thought it looked like an Aurora chair, so he asked the curator Patrick about it. He went and got a chair for Jim to look at and it is like his $5 special! Pretty exciting. Jim also spotted a small table and Patrick explained the design of it and what defined an Aurora piece. We were thinking about buying a table at one of the shoppe to keep be the home for our laptop. After seeing the little table we decided to purchase the one we had seen, especially since the shoppe owner had offered us a discount.
We stopped at an estate sale on the way home and then had dinner at Tad's on the Sandy River. A had a wonderful day!
