Crazy for Chintz: A New Addition to the Sheraton Room

Bedspread, English roller-printed chintz, ca. 1820

This winter’s renovation project focused on the second-floor bedroom, also known as the Sheraton Room. A coat of paint, some rearrangement of furniture, and a few new highlighted pieces have made this room an even more inviting space. The beautiful Sheraton-style four poster bed has been the perfect way to showcase the wide variety of textiles in the Alice’s collection, such as the “Apotheosis of Franklin and Washington” quilt made by Anna Moore Hubbell, Lena Olena Blow’s early-20th century silk crazy quilt, and the woven coverlet donated by Anna Ernberg. 

The bedspread currently on the bed is one that, as far as I can tell, has never been displayed before. It is made of a single layer of cotton chintz printed in a pattern that combines a variety of floral motifs in brown, pinks, blue, and green. The material is only twenty-six inches wide, and the lengths are sewn together with very narrow seams of less than a quarter inch. The top hem is faced with a strip of cotton in another print. The material was most likely made in England around 1820 using the roller-printing process.

An example of an Indian chintz made for the
European market, ca. 1750-1775

When British, Dutch, and French trading companies began importing textiles from India in the 17th century, Europeans were immediately captivated by the floral printed and painted cottons they called indiennes (in France) and chintzes (in England). These lightweight, washable, and colorful fabrics were much in demand both for household furnishings and for apparel, and European manufacturers soon began working to develop the technology to make their own versions. They were so popular, in fact, that French and English silk and wool manufacturers feared the competition and successfully agitated to restrict the manufacture and import of printed textiles. Despite these laws, the popularity of printed textiles only grew during the 18th century.

Block printer at work.
“Calico” was another general
term for a printed textile.

There were three basic ways to transfer a pattern to fabric: block printing, copperplate printing, and roller printing. Block printing uses carved wooden blocks, one for each color in the design, to which colorant is applied before being placed on the fabric and struck with a mallet to impress the pattern. Though the basic idea behind block printing is simple, it required great skill to precisely align the blocks to create the pattern, and the more colors used, the more difficult it was. Nonetheless, even as new technologies for printing were introduced, block printing remained the most common technique until the early 19th century.

In the 1750s, copperplate printing was introduced in Ireland. This form of printing fabric uses the same principles as printing on paper—a metal plate is engraved with the design and ink (or dye) is applied to the plate. Copperplate printing had some advantages over block printing: patterns could be much bigger (because the printing was done with a press in which the fabric was laid on top of the plate) and images could be much more detailed and realistic. Copperplate printing was used to produce the famous toiles de jouy, but was also used for chintzes.

A major revolution in printed textiles came at the end of the 18th century with the invention of roller printing. This uses an engraved plate fixed to a continuously rolling cylinder, which is refreshed with new coloring medium on each turn and prints the fabric in one pass from end to end. Roller printing eliminated the need to reposition the block or plate, as well as the fabric, after each impression. The advantages were immediately apparent—printing was much faster and thus, cheaper. For the first time, printed textiles could be produced on a large scale. This, combined with new developments in chemical dyes, meant that by the 1830s, they were no longer luxury goods exclusively for the middle and upper class, but were widely available (they lost much of their prestige among the well-to-do at this point—hence the term “chintzy” for something cheap or gaudy).

Detail of bedspread. Note that the pattern runs all
the way to the selvedge.

The narrow width of the material in the bedspread, combined with the crisp, detailed printing and use of multiple colors, suggests that this fabric was roller-printed. The muted color scheme, and the use of blue overprinting on yellow to produce green, suggests a date prior to the 1830s. The dark background is also more common in later printed textiles. This material still has its original glazing, produced through the application of friction to create a crisp, glossy finish. Normally glazing would wear off through use and washing, but a purely decorative bedcover like this one would not need much washing.

As is unfortunately the case with many of the items in the collection, we don’t know how Alice acquired this bedspread or what its history might be. But it certainly makes a fine addition to the Sheraton Room!

Sources:

Printed Textiles 1760-1860 in the Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum (Smithsonian Institution, 1987).

Eileen Jahnke Trestain, Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide, 1800-1960 (Paducah, KY: American Quilter’s Society, 1998).

“18th Century Printed Cotton Fabrics,” http://demodecouture.com/cotton/

From Kentucky to Chazy: Anna Ernberg and the Berea Fireside Industries

Advertisement from the Plattsburgh Sentinel

In August 1926, the Redpath Chautauqua arrived in Plattsburgh, bringing a variety of musicians, lecturers, and other entertainers to the North Country. The Redpath Chautauqua was a descendent of the original Chautauqua Assembly, established in 1874 in Lake Chautauqua, New York to combine recreation with religious instruction and informative lectures (if this sounds familiar, it’s because it was also the inspiration for the Catholic Summer School at Cliff Haven). In 1904, Keith Vawter started the first circuit or tent Chautauqua, in which a group of performers traveled together on a set route from town to town, staying a week in each location.

On the fifth day of Redpath’s stint in Plattsburgh, August 19, Anna Ernberg gave a lecture and demonstration of dyeing, weaving, and handcraft. The advertising in the Plattsburgh Sentinel gave no further information about Ernberg, perhaps assuming that audiences would be familiar with her. As the head of Fireside Industries at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, Anna Ernberg was one of the most visible proponents of the Appalachian weaving revival in the early 20th century.

Coverlet given to Alice Miner by Anna Ernberg

Having completed her lecture but with another day to go before heading to the next stop on the circuit, Ernberg and her son Axel spent the following day in Chazy, visiting Heart’s Delight Farm and taking a tour of the Alice T. Miner Museum conducted by Alice herself. As she later wrote of her visit, “It was more than delightful and we are both very grateful to you for your kindness and hospitality.” As someone who was working for “the revival of the Arts of our grandmothers,” Ernberg was impressed by Alice’s efforts in collecting examples of textile art “and arranging it all so true and beautiful.” To show her appreciation, she sent Alice a “kiver” for her collection—a coverlet in the Blooming Leaf pattern, made using the “Summer and Winter” weave, which differs from the overshot in that it produces a reversible fabric, light on one side (for summer) and dark on the other (for winter). The coverlet is made from three panels and is shaped to accommodate a four-poster bed.

Anna Ernberg weaving on the small counterbalance loom
she designed and introduced to Berea, 1912

Born in Christianstad, Sweden, in 1874, Anna Ernberg emigrated to the United States with her husband when she was in her twenties. She lived in New York and taught weaving at Pratt Institute and Teachers College. In 1911 (now a widow with two young sons) she was invited by Berea College president William Goodell Frost to run the school’s weaving program. In addition to the work she did as an instructor, supervisor, and designer, Ernberg was a tireless fundraiser who traveled to major cities throughout the northeast to sell the products of Fireside Industries. She was a popular speaker with women’s clubs, patriotic organizations like the Daughters of the American Revolution, church groups, and art organizations. By 1917, she had raised enough money to fund a new building called the Log House, which held the looms, spaces for finishing work, sales areas, and an apartment for Ernberg and her sons. In 1930, she was chosen by Ida Tarbell as one of the 50 outstanding women in America, a list that also included Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, Jane Addams, Mary McLeod Bethune, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Amelia Earhart.

Ernberg directed Fireside Industries for 25 years and turned it into a reliable source of income for the college. When William G. Frost became president in 1892, he introduced the free tuition policy that continues today. Students needed to work to contribute to their tuition as well as room and board expenses. He also had learned that coverlets were an excellent promotional tool and were much appreciated as gifts to donors. Selling woven textiles would make money for the school and would become central to the school’s public image.

From the Berea Quarterly, 1912

When Berea College was founded in 1855, it was both coeducational and interracial. However, in 1904 the Kentucky legislature passed a law prohibiting integrated education. Although the college challenged the law and took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, the school lost the case and from 1908 until 1950 (when the law was changed), Berea admitted only white students. In the 1910s and 20s, the supposed “pure Anglo-Saxon heritage” of Berea students became a selling point with potential donors. Many people believed that the isolated regions of the Appalachian Mountains were home to Americans who closely resembled the original 17th- and 18th-century English settlers. These mountain folk, it was hoped, would help to counterbalance the influence of African-Americans in the south and immigrants from southern and eastern Europe nationwide.

An example of the way Berea emphasized the links between
“southern highlanders” and early colonists

Because weaving was so closely associated in the popular imagination with the colonial era, Fireside Industries and other Appalachian weaving programs strengthened the perception that mountain residents represented (as Woodrow Wilson put it) “an unspoiled stock...of the original stuff of which America was made.” These images of the noble mountaineers existed side-by-side with stereotypes of Appalachians as feuders and moonshine-makers, which educators like Frost worked hard to dispel. Mountain folk were only “backward” because of their isolation, he argued; education and economic opportunity would “uplift” them and allow them to take their rightful places as useful citizens.

In an article on coverlet weaving in the south that appeared in House Beautiful, author Mabel Tuke Priestman praised the domestic weaving revival for being “a very important step in the labor movement, as it gives employment to those living in rural districts, who have few interests in their monotonous lives, and saves from oblivion a beautiful craft, distinctly American in its conception.” Anna Ernberg and Alice Miner certainly would have agreed with this sentiment (whether weavers themselves had the same ideas about their “monotonous” lives is another question). Woven coverlets represented all that was good about the past—diligent work, self-sufficiency, thrift—in a form that was aesthetically pleasing. By bringing these pieces into the modern home, collectors hoped to transmit some of the values associated with them into the present day.

Sources:

If you are interested in learning more about the Appalachian weaving revival, Weavers of the Southern Highlands by Philis Alvic is an excellent place to start. For an earlier assessment of the craft revival, try Allen H. Eaton’s Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, originally published in 1937. Appalachia on Our Mind by Henry D. Shapiro is the classic work on the place of the mountain South in American consciousness. In All That Is Native and Fine, David E. Whisnant examines how the “cultural missionaries” who came to Appalachia created their own version of folk culture.

The Revival of Weaving in the 20th Century

In the same year that the Alice T. Miner Museum opened its doors, a new organization was founded in Chicago by a group of women interested in the study and collection of woven coverlets. While Alice herself doesn’t seem to have been a guild member, she knew at least one of its organizers: Georgiana Long Gunsaulus, the widow of Frank W. Gunsaulus, who shared with her late husband and with Alice an interest in collecting and preserving examples of early textile art.

The founding of the Coverlet Guild in 1924 was perhaps the logical outcome of an interest in the art and history of weaving that had been developing since the early 1900s, and which intersected with a number of other contemporary movements. Alice’s coverlet collection might be seen as an outgrowth of her interest in the Arts and Crafts Movement (evident in the scrapbook articles she saved from the 1890s) as well as her connections to the Colonial Revival. It also brought her into contact with individuals who were attempting to revive or preserve weaving in Appalachia in an effort to “uplift” mountain women—a project that was itself influenced by the Progressive movement and the settlement houses of Chicago.

Tools of textile production on display
at the Hull-House Labor Museum

Proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement, the Appalachian craft revival, and Progressivism all believed in the ability of handicraft to improve people’s lives. Handwork provided a creative outlet and a vehicle for self-expression; it could be a way to counteract the homogenizing forces of industrialization and mass production; and on a more practical level, it might provide income for people (women, especially) whose economic opportunities were limited. Many different crafts were promoted (metalwork, pottery, bookbinding), but weaving was especially beloved by all three groups. It was fairly easy to learn and produced useful goods; it had connections to early American history but also was an important part of many of the cultures from which immigrants came; and it was a craft traditionally performed by women in their own homes.

In his 1904 report for the Bureau of Labor, “The Revival of Handicrafts in America,” Max West recorded the activities of dozens of organizations dedicated to reviving hand weaving (mostly in the southern mountains) and rug making (in New England). All were founded by educated, middle- to upper-class women (many of whom had spent time at Hull House or another settlement house) who came to rural communities and worked with local women to revive their craft traditions. 

Women preparing to warp a loom using traditional
methods, North Carolina, ca. 1910

The Appalachian region was the obvious target for this kind of reform work. Communities tended to be economically depressed and isolated, and life was considered especially hard for women, who lived largely without modern conveniences. But because these areas had been “left behind” in the race toward modernization (as reformers saw it) textile production and other handicrafts had never died out completely. There were still plenty of women in the Appalachian south who knew how to spin and weave, using knowledge and patterns that had been passed down from the early nineteenth century.

Blue Mountain Room, White House

Already in 1904, West reported, “There is a constant and apparently increasing demand for hand-woven fabrics, notwithstanding their expensiveness as compared with factory-made goods. Aside from the popularity of old-fashioned blue-and-white coverlets for decorative purposes, handmade linsey-woolsey and cottonades are coming into vogue for outing and golf skirts, and even to some extent for men’s clothing; and there is also a growing demand for hand-woven linen and other cloth to serve as the backgrounds for art embroidery, etc.” The Appalachian weaving revival got an important boost in 1913, when first lady Ellen Wilson redecorated the White House’s Blue Mountain Room using traditional textiles made by Emelda McHargue Walker, a Tennessee weaver who worked with Allanstand Industries, one of the major weaving centers in North Carolina.

Allanstand Industries product display, 1910s

Women living in rural areas of the Appalachian Mountains were receptive to the idea of producing coverlets and other textiles as a source of income. It was something that many of them already knew how to do, the materials were readily available, and the products could be shipped inexpensively. Perhaps most importantly, it was work they could do at home and was compatible with childrearing and other household duties. Whether women felt the kind of creative satisfaction that proponents of handicraft assumed they would is another story. Most of the time, weavers did not get to decide what they made. They were given patterns and materials by the managers of weaving centers, who designed products that would appeal to middle-class consumers. Weavers felt pride in their technical skills and doing a job well, but it was not necessarily an uplifting, aesthetic experience. Still, in a region where currency was in short supply, weaving provided a reliable source of cash income. 

The founders and managers of weaving centers also hoped that their work would preserve the traditions of weaving. However, the pattens, tools, and materials they used were modern ones, suited for the production of large quantities of textiles for sale in urban markets. Over time, weaving centers tended to shift production from coverlets and other large items to smaller pieces like towels and placemats that required less time and skill. But women did keep weaving (indeed, the Allanstand Craft Shop is still in operation), and the craft centers do seem to have encouraged a greater appreciation for antique textiles, which helped to preserve them and led to the creation of groups like the Colonial Coverlet Guild.

So where do Alice Miner and her coverlet collection fit into this story? We’ll get to that in the next post, when a visitor from the Kentucky mountains pays a visit to the North Country.

Gems from the Age of Homespun: Woven Coverlets and Their Makers

“Wheel of Fortune” coverlet from the
collection of the Metropolitan Museum

The term “homespun” encompasses many different kinds of fabric. When Martha Ballard wrote about of the cloth produced in her household, she sometimes recorded the kind of fiber used (cotton, linen, tow, wool, or a combination) and sometimes the pattern produced, like “check” or “diaper” (a fabric with a small, all-over pattern). Sometimes she noted what the fabric would be used for—handkerchiefs, shirts, towels—and sometimes who it was for (“Cyrus’s web”). It was rare for Martha to include all this information in a single entry. One occasion on which she did was November 21, 1792, when she noted, “Hannah wove a Bed Blankitt for her Self, Tow & wool.”

Hannah had been married on October 28 to Moses Pollard (brother of Dorcas, who had helped her learn to weave) but she was still living with her parents and continuing to produce the goods she would need in her new home. Between the end of October and December 12, when she and Moses officially “went into housekeeping,” Hannah made a quilt, the aforementioned blanket, and at least two “coverleds.” These bed coverings served a practical purpose, of course, but they also would provide an extra degree of comfort and beauty in the Pollard home, while demonstrating Hannah’s skill at the loom.

Detail of a woven coverlet

It was these woven bed coverings—variously called coverlets, coverlids, and “kivers”—that captured the imagination of collectors in the early 20th century. Unlike humble towels, sheets, and handkerchiefs, coverlets were likely to be treasured, preserved, and passed down through the generations. They used simple color combinations (usually white and indigo blue) and geometric patterns to produce striking effects that appealed to Americans who were tired of the ornate furnishings of the Victorian era. To many collectors, the coverlets were true works of art that demonstrated the innate aesthetic sense of early American women. They also served as tangible symbols of the industry and thrift associated with the “age of homespun.”

Overshot weave structure

Coverlets were made on the same four-harness loom that was used to produce other kinds of cloth. As I noted in the last blog post, in its most basic form weaving involves only two sets of elements—the warp and the weft. In plain weaving, the weft yarn goes over one warp yarn, then under the next, and so on. In float weaves, there are also two sets of elements, but the weft goes over or under more than one warp. (Twill and satin are examples of float weaves.) Coverlets use a type of weave called overshot, which also uses floats but adds a third set of yarns to create a compound weave. There is a warp and weft of white cotton or linen and then a supplementary weft of colored wool, which “floats” over and under the warp to create the pattern. Since the width of a loom was limited to the span of the weaver’s arms, coverlets were woven in two halves and then sewn together down the middle.

Example of a weaving draft

Weavers shared overshot coverlet patterns with friends and family as drafts, a form of notation that recorded the way that threads were to be put through the heddles of the harnesses and the sequence of the treadles that controlled the harnesses. Drafts bear a certain resemblance to musical notation, with four horizontal lines representing the harnesses and numbers or other marks representing the threads. Each weaver had her own way of recording drafts which can seem quite mysterious to non-weavers. Like quilters, weavers also gave their coverlets fanciful names—Broken Snowballs, Lafayette’s Fancy, Wandering Vine—which varied by region. In a world of mass-produced goods, the individuality of coverlets and their makers was part of their charm to collectors.

The earliest American woven coverlet that can be definitively dated is from 1771, and women continued to make them into the 19th century, though by the 1820s professional weavers were also making more elaborate jacquard coverlets. As families moved west from New England into New York, Ohio, Indiana, and beyond, they brought the tradition of weaving coverlets with them. In certain parts of the south, particularly the mountain regions of Kentucky and Tennessee, domestic textile production remained an important part of the local economy well into the 1900s. In our next posts, we’ll look at early collectors of coverlets and their relationship with the movement to preserve hand weaving in Appalachia.

Made in New York: Figured and Fancy Coverlets

Our final stop on our tour of items made in New York takes us to the central region of the state, where four so-called “figured and fancy” woven coverlets were made. These bed coverings, with their elaborate patterns of flowers, birds, and patriotic motifs, were the work of professional weavers active in the 1830s and 1840s. 

Weaving on a Jacquard loom

Throughout the 18th century, women had woven coverlets of cotton and wool in geometric patterns on basic four-harness looms like the one in the Alice’s collection. Fancy coverlets, however, required more sophisticated weaving technology and were almost always made by men (only two female professional weavers have been identified). Looms were equipped with Jacquard attachments or other devices that allowed the weaver to produce complex patterns using punched cards. Most of these coverlets were double-woven—that is, they were made of two layers of cloth woven simultaneously and only connected at the points where the surfaces interchange to form the pattern. This creates a textile that is both extra-warm and reversible.

Most figured and fancy coverlets were made in the mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states from the 1820s through the 1850s. By that time, mechanized textile production was in full swing in New England, so hand weavers moved westward where they could still find a market for carpets, coverlets, and other figured textiles. Many of these men were first- or second-generation immigrants from Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, or France, and they moved frequently within the U.S. in search of new customers. Weavers advertised in their local papers, and the coverlets themselves—marked with the name of the weaver, location, and date—were their own form of advertising.

Coverlet by Jacob Impson, Cortland Village NY, 1835

The earliest dated coverlet in the collection is one made by Jacob Impson in 1835. This red and white coverlet features floral medallions and a border of grapevines. Impson marked the corners of the coverlet with his name, the date, the location—Cortland Village—and the name of the pattern, which he called “Lady’s Fancy.” Impson is also the maker of a second piece in the collection, this one a blue-and-white coverlet from 1841. It also features floral motifs and has added a patriotic border of eagles. Jacob Impson was born ca. 1802 and seems to have started his career as a weaver around 1824 in Ludlowville, which is north of Ithaca on Cayuga Lake. In that year, he advertised in the Ithaca Journal that he had opened a shop at the home of John Goodrich, “where all kinds of work in his line will be done on the shortest notice and cheap, very cheap, for cash.” He later worked in Cortland Village and West Cortlandville.

Coverlet by Archibald Davidson, Ithaca NY, 1848

Also working in Ithaca was Archibald Davidson, who was born in Scotland in 1771. Davidson advertised in the early 1830s in the Ithaca Journal and Daily Advertiser that he could weave coverlets equal to any of those produced in “Europe or America,” and furthermore informed his clients that he had “gone to great expense to procure a patent loom.” Davidson marked his coverlets as the products of the “Ithaca Carpet Factory,” but he and perhaps his sons and an apprentice were the only employees of the “factory.” Sometime in the 1850s, he left Ithaca for Warsaw, New York. Davidson’s coverlet, made in 1848, incorporates two different border patterns: a leaping stag and tree, and eagles with a building that looks like the Capitol dome but can’t be, as it predates that structure by many years.

Coverlet by Samuel Butterfield, New Hartford NY, 1837

The final coverlet is the work of Samuel Butterfield of New Hartford, near Utica. Born in England in 1792, Butterfield for a time partnered with James Cunningham. By the late 1830s he was in business for himself, and in 1837—the year that our coverlet was made—he advertised in the Utica Observer that he could make “Damask & Drapes, Table Cloths, Ingrain, Venetian and Rag Carpets, Coverlets, etc.” Butterfield seems to have been particularly fond of the figure of George Washington on horseback, because he always used it on the corners of his coverlets, along with the slogan “United We Stand Divided We Fall.” Like Impson and Davidson, he also incorporated patriotic eagles into his borders, but he added the phrase “Under This We Prosper.”

The Civil War effectively brought the hand-woven coverlet industry to an end. Many weavers joined the army or went into other occupations for the duration of the war. By the time the war was over, almost all weaving was being done in factories. In the early 20th century, these coverlets became popular again with collectors, as examples of pre-industrial craftsmanship. There was also a movement to revive the lost arts of hand-weaving—which we’ll look at in more detail in future posts.

Information on coverlets and weavers is drawn from Clarita S. Anderson, American Coverlets and Their Weavers: Coverlets from the Collection of Foster and Muriel McCarl. And if you happen to be in western Pennsylvania, you can visit the McCarls’ collection at Saint Vincent College.

Lena's Crazy Quilt

Over the 87 years The Alice has operated as a museum there have been times when interesting objects and letters came into the collection as donations or bequests. In fact, a few weeks ago we happily accepted the personal correspondence and photographs from Dr. George W. Clark's estate here in Chazy. The museum has become a repository for genealogy and local history information as well as for some objects and textiles donated by local families. It is a wonderful textile I will focus on in this article.

In 1983 the Blow family lost their matriarch, Lena. Lena M. (O'Lena) Blow was born in Chazy, NY on November 12, 1896 - the daughter of Napoleon and Eliza O'Lena. She went to school in the little red school house that William Miner attended, and lived in the area her entire life. Around 1916 (the year her wedding dress was made) she married Edward Blow and started a family. She was an accomplished seamstress and made her and her six children's clothing as well as many beautiful quilts, employing sewing and needle craft skills she learned early in life.

On November 21, 1983 Lena passed away and soon after her children donated a few of her possessions to The Alice to be kept and enjoyed by future generations of visitors. The two objects donated in 1983 are Lena's wedding dress and slip. The garments joined two other textiles previously donated to the museum, both are blankets made by Lena Blow. One of these she started making when she was just nine years old, a diamond popcorn stitch bedspread. The other is a colorful crazy quilt with voluminous embroidery stitching and writing.

The crazy quilt is signed "LO" and "Apr. 10, 1908 Sciota, NY". Like most crazy quilts it consists of a quilt top mounted directly to backing with no batting in between. The backing in this case also serves as a ruffle on three sides of the quilt and is a solid rose colored cotton. The pieces consist of a wide variety of colors, shapes, sizes and patterns - and appear to be made up of mostly silk scraps. The scraps were pieced together into nine blocks of similar size and then sewn together along with a long narrow block running the width of the blanket at the bottom. This quilt top was then backed with the rose colored cotton.

Lena's crazy quilt is a striking piece and draws the eye as soon as you walk into the Sheraton Room where it is exhibited. But it's the detail in stitching that brings you in for a closer look. Lena used a large number of different embroidery stitches joining every piece. She also wrote a few messages, including "May You Be Happy" and embroidered flowers and birds. Perhaps her mother saved pieces from various sewing projects over the years and finally handed the scraps over to Lena to create something for her bed. My grandmother made quilts consisting of pieces that I could recognize from clothing she sewed for me and my siblings over the years. It's fun to look closely and see a familiar color and pattern that reminds you of the past. I imagine Lena lying in bed and tracing her family history through these bits of fabric.

This weekend is the Champlain Valley Quilter's Guild Show with hundreds of hand made quilts and wonderful craft items to enjoy. To experience a wide range of amazing fabric art made by local people, this is the show to see... Who knows, there may even be a few crazy quilts there! It's at Bailey Avenue School in Plattsburgh this Saturday and Sunday 10am - 4pm. If you want to see the true details in Lena Blow's quilt, come to The Alice for a tour soon.

And may you be happy!