What 12-year-old sends his classic piano teacher of five years packing after he hears Fats Waller’s boogie style? And later goes on to collaborate on the Broadway musical tribute to Waller, “Ain’t Misbehavin’ “? That would be Quilters Hall of Fame Honoree and Renaissance Man, Jeffrey Gutcheon. Jeff was one of the pioneers of then-modern…
I’ve just come back from a work day in the Collections “Department” at the Hall of Fame. On a break from our cataloging, we talked about how the Quilters Hall of Fame has evolved since that first induction of six Honorees at the 1979 Continental Quilting Congress. (Shout out to our Founder, Hazel Carter!). So,…
Before I get to Sally Garoutte, I have a follow-up to do. I promised to keep you posted on the International Quilt Museum’s retrospective of the 1971 Whitney Museum “Abstract Design in American Quilts” show. You’ll remember that the original show was mounted by Hall of Fame Honorees Jonathan Holstein and Gail van der Hoof,…
I’ve read that the French have no good expression to say “I’m excited about….” A direct translation “Je suis excitée” would more often be understood as talking about physical arousal—not appropriate. This vocabulary gap is most unfortunate because they would have no way to tell you about how happy I am that there will be…
I have a small follow-up before I get to this week’s Honoree. You may remember that when I wrote about Honoree Cuesta Benberry, I invited those who knew her to share information. There’s only so much you can learn from the internet, and I hoped to take advantage of personal knowledge while it’s still available….
I’m writing on Saturday, but you won’t read this until after all the eggs have been found. I hope you had a happy Easter. And I hope you will enjoy this quick look at some of our Honoree’s Easter quilts. Since Ruby McKim was last week’s topic, I’ll start with her. Here are the rabbits…
This past Saturday was National Quilting Day, and marked one year since I started writing this blog. My original intention had been to introduce you to the Quilters Hall of Fame Collection because I had been working on the committee that is in charge of that. But the pandemic shelter-in-place policy put a quick end…
I was interested to read that this week’s Honoree, Carter Houck, was a sailor; I thought I could write about something we have in common. But she was a racer, and I was a cruiser (my husband and I crewed on the Schooner “Madeline” out of Traverse City, Michigan)—totally different experiences. Even so, it made…
This week’s Honoree, Averil Colby, would fit right in with the contemporary taste for English Paper Piecing. Yes, she herself was English, and little hexagons were her preferred method of creating, as we’ll see in a moment. But first, a short introduction; for a fuller bio, see the link below. Colby was Chairman of the…
One good thing about writing this blog is that I learn a lot of new things about some pretty extraordinary people. An even better thing is that I learn when I’ve been wrong about one of them. Case in point: Michael James. There’s bio information about him in the link below, but if you’re like…