Good Press!

An article about the Oregon Quilt Project appears in the May issue of Country Pleasures Magazine. The article, by Liz Windust, offers the perspective of a quilt owner participating in the recent Oregon Quilt Project documentation at the Willamette Heritage Center and Mission Mill Museum. Thank you, Liz, for the good press! To enlarge the article, just click on the image. 

Thank You, Martha

For those who haven't heard the news, Oregon Quilt Project Coordinator Martha Spark has moved to Oklahoma, where her husband, Don, recently took a new job. Martha has been a driving force behind our project during the first year. She conducted documentation training sessions for volunteers in Eugene, drafted documentation forms, organized documentation events, verified information about quilts following each documentation event, maintained project supplies, helped prepare mailings, and did a number of presentations to promote the project. 

Martha is a quilt restorer and Victorian costume and textiles specialist. Prior to moving to Oregon she was Collections Manager at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado, and Chair of the Historic Costume committee at the Avery House Historic District in Fort Collins, Colorado. Martha is a longtime member of the American Quilt Study Group and former member of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Study Group, and has conducted many workshops on preserving antique quilts and textiles. As facilitator of the Columbia-Willamette Quilt Study Group, Martha organized meetings at various locations around the state. Each meeting included a special presentation and show-and-tell. Following each meeting, Martha distributed e-newsletters to members with highlights and pictures from the meeting, and information about future events.

The Oregon Quilt Project and the Columbia-Willamette Quilt Study Group would like to thank Martha for all her efforts, and we wish her well in all her future endeavors.

Willamette Heritage Center Doc Day

The Oregon Quilt Project held a big documentation day yesterday at the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, and we saw dozens of wonderful quilts, old and new. Oregon Quilt Project would like to extand a big thank you to the Willamette Heritage Center and Mission Mill Museum, local volunteer coordinator Vickie Simpson, and all the local volunteers. While we're working on the new picture gallery, we thought you'd enjoy pictures of a few of the many outstanding quilts we saw yesterday.

The photos in this blog are for viewing purposes only, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without express written permission from the Oregon Quilt Project.

Red and Green Quilts

OQP# 2010.01.002, from our first day of documentation in Sisters.

'Tis the season for red and green quilts, so we thought We would share a few other favorite red and green quilts seen in the first few months of the Oregon Quilt Project statewide documentation. Today's blog is pictorial, so without further interruption, here are the quilts!

OQP# 2010.01.011, also seen in Sisters on out first documentation day.

OQP# 2010.002.008, from our third documentation day in Sisters.

OQP # 2010.02.013, also from our third documentation day in Sisters.

OQP# 2010.002.029, also from day three in Sisters.

Virtually Whole Again

This lovely old quilt is not what it appears to be. The quilt, OQP # 2010.02.066, appeared at the crack of dawn on June 27th, our third day of a three-day documentation event in Sisters. It was not in one piece, though. It was in three. Still is, as a matter of fact.

How are we looking at a picture of a one quilt, you may ask? We did a virtual restoration, digitally reconstructing the image of a whole quilt using a clever piece of software called Adobe Photoshop. We are pretty sure Photoshop wasn’t around when the earliest quilt documentation days were held back in 1981 in Kentucky, but we are sure glad we have it now! Too bad more people don't know how to use it.

There was one big piece, and two narrow strips with swag borders. One end of the big piece was finished with applied twill binding, where it had been cut. We photographed all three pieces, and talked to the owner about the quilt. She wasn’t sure what to do with it.

We talked about options, from restoration and conservation, to storage and where it could go in the future. Even though she seemed a little distressed about the quilt in three pieces and the conundrum of what to do with it, we reassured her. We told her about the quilts we have rescued, and how we feel they have definite cultural, educational, and artistic value despite condition.

While we were talking, Someone casually mentioned that great things were possible with Photoshop. If there was an opportunity, we could digitally recreate the image of a whole quilt. It was a side comment, and we are sure she didn’t really expect us to do anything about it, but we did. We hope she is pleasantly surprised when she receives the pictures of the quilt, virtually whole again.

Note: to all participants in the June documentation days, the packets are in the mail and should arrive shortly. All other information packets for July documentation days are still being processed.