Lost Quilts

First a public service announcement. Check out the posting at sewcalgal.blogspot.com on Missing quilts. Three quilts went missing at Spring Market and they are trying to spread the word. One of those quilts is in the photo below.
I saw a couple of her quilts at Paducha and they are really beautiful. Hopefully this one will find its way back to her.

If you are going to ship or show your quilt you should get an appraisal. If you don't want to do that at a minimum make sure you have a label on the quilt with enough information that if is is found they can find you. Finally, take a good quality photo of the quilt...even better keep the photo with samples of the fabric and measurements of the quilt.
When I lived in Baltimore my house was broken into. They took a quilt..most likely to help carry some of the other things they stole. Anyway, I had a photo of the quilt along with sample of the fabric and all the measurements. The police officer looked at me like I was a bit crazy...I wanted him to take the photo and all he wanted to do was list "quilt" on the sheet. Anyway it must have made an impression because late that evening I got a phone call from one of the crime scene techs who had overheard the conversation - he was in a bar not far from my house and there had just been a man there trying to sell some CD's and inside the bag the tech noticed a quilt! The tech offered him $5 for it. I was so happy to get my quilt back! (Later they did arrest the man who broke in my house but that is a long story.....)

So morale of the story...document, document, document. (And if you ever are broken into make sure and be nice to the crime scene folks...he also remembered I gave them chocolate chip cookies and coffee!)

Some other quilt-y stuff...yesterday I went out to a quilt bee off the backroads of South Carolina. Really nice quilters, really nice quilts, and a really, really hot church. The first convenience store I stopped and bought a T-shirt so I could get out of the soaking wet one I was shivering in! The purpose of the trip was to find vintage quilts made from scraps from the local textile mills or "salesman samples."

Of course since this was the first time they met me they all brought their best quilts (for that read several wedding rings, a couple of sunbonnet sues, several around the world and a poppy kit quilts)...now that we have talked about the old mills and drank lots of very sweet tea I hope they will show me the others....I think of these old scrap or utility quilts as a type of lost quilt too - people only want to show their "best."

I did learn a new southern phrase the other day..."moonshine kin." It is someone you are related to by marriage. The photo below is from a cell phone so not that clear but it is a great old quilt. It has wool bat and lots of woven plaids. There are at least 6-8 different double-pinks in the corners. The maker may not have had fancy fabrics to work with but she pieced perfectly!