Irish Circles

Irish Circles
Last years block of the month

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Home.

Hi Everyone, I am only now feeling back to normal, it is so hard to get your sleeping habits back on track only the last few days I have been able to stay awake all day.
Anyway I am going steadily through my emails and requests for patterns so please be patient if I haven't  got back to you all.
The correspondence school will be a little late my daughter did a great job of keeping track of payments I just need to have a day to get it all straight in my head.
The trip was fantastic a combination of good company great weather and amazing days of sight seeing and textiles galore.
The quilts we saw in the museums: DAR, Smithsonian, Winterthur and The folk art Museum were outstanding one of my favourites was the Harriet Powers Bible Quilt I have loved that quilt for so long to see it was amazing. of course I can't show photo's of these quilts we were lucky we could take photos with the flash off but as with most museums these are for personal use only, all the girls in class can have a look at my photos.
So let us start at the beginning of the tour at Paducah my favourite show to date.
The whole town welcomes the quilters with stores set up all over town with fabrics and antique quilts.
The National Quilt Museum had a lovely display of quilts some basket quilts I would love to make one had baskets only 3 inches so adorable.
And the show was beautiful so many lovely quilts I bought the disc so I can sit and look at them close up whenever I like. So many great vendors just wonderful to see how creative the stalls were.
I am so glad we did all five days we were busy every day the shuttles dropped you off at Hancocks or any stop you liked and were back in an hour to take you to the next stop fantastic would love to go to this show again!
A few in my group visited The Metropolitan Hotel in Paducah which used to be the only hotel African Americans could stay in so a lot of very famous musicians stayed there. We had a fish fry, cat fish, white beans, slaw and corn bread very delicious and viewed quilts by the late Pearl Smith.
At three we attended a lecture by Dr Pearlie Johnson the topic:The intra-diasporic connections between African and African American quilts and the ways in which African American quilters reinterpret African cultural features in their works of art.
Such a great talk one of the highlights of my trip, you know how I love birds in my quilts and my favourite colour is blue well Dr Pearlie told us that the colour blue is a symbol of birds.

Dr Pearlie Johnson in the middle.
We did a walking tour of the lovely historic homes.
Here are a few of the shops.

There was an antique quilt with my name on it in Finkel's pity the bank account disagreed.


We thought we would try the local roadhouse it said welcome and it was half price Margarita  night.


Didn't know they came in a bowl.


I did have a few more photos to download but my computer will not do it something about space left so I will have to do some work on that.
Next time we will move on to The Shaker Village and some show and tell from class as I return tomorrow.
Thank you to all the quilters in the U.S for being so friendly I hope some of you come to Australia so we can reciprocate your hospitality.
See you all in class,
Karen x