Tuesday, June 26, 2012

A Birthday Visit: new discoveries

    Joe and I drove to see the grandchildren and celebrate their mother's birthday this past weekend in NYC. I put the quilted portable sewing books (see my June 10 posting) in the children's hands and they got busy stitching.


(Click on photos to enlarge.)


     The card we picked out for Beth was from Papyrus, down the street from The City Quilter on 25th Street. I returned to buy four more cards to show my friends what fun it would be to make cards on which we sew fabric and bead. Check out these examples!

      The next day I hit some museums: Vuillard at the Jewish Museum on 92nd and the Met. Looking through books I realized that Paul Klee, the painter, made paintings that would be perfect for quilts. And Gustav Klimt has patterns in his paintings, in the landscapes and portraits, that fit in with our discussion of Zentangle at the last week's blog posting. I Googled the name of the artist and quilts and clicked on Images to find I was not the first person to find paintings a rich source for quilters.

      On the way home, I read the HILARIOUS book Help! I Married a Quilter by Mark Hyland. I wanted to share my finds with you.

6 comments:

  1. Love, Love, Love the pictures! What a great time was had by all!

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  2. Can you be an honorary grandmother to my as-yet unborn grandchildren? These kits are fantastic! Susan

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  3. love it. Wonderful weekend. You are having so much fun!

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  4. I love the pictures and I love Klimt. The pictures of the girls sewing are treasures. All beautiful, beautiful! Lucky grandkids!
    Wonderful weekend!

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  5. Your mention of Paul Klee in the latest Drawing Time reminded me of a program that I attended at the Quilt Museum several years ago, presented by Radka Donnell. Radka is one of the present-at-the-creation QC quilters who has a background in serious art history. The subject of her talk was her own research into the influence of quilt designs on the work of Paul Klee and perhaps others at the Bauhaus. She discovered that there was a textile piece hanging somewhere within Klee's orbit that was essentially a log cabin square, turned on point into a diamond. She then tracked down several instances in Klee's work of pen and ink drawings of that design, and maybe some colored versions as well -- I don't remember in detail. I have seen some of the uses of pen and ink log cabins in Klee's work myself. There is some interesting stuff online if you Google Radka's name, but it doesn't mention the Klee connection. SM

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  6. Great post, lovely pix, and I loved the comment just above from SM! Fascinating!

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