Saturday Arts field trip to DAR

Saturday I was lucky to be on a DC Modern Quilt Guild field trip with a few of my many quilting friends to the Daughters of the American Revolution or DAR museum. We went to see the current exhibition titled Eye on Elegance Early Quilts of Virginia and Maryland. The weather was perfect for a museum day too gray to feel bad about being inside and just warm and dry enough to make getting out easy. 

 The quilts are fantastic intricate works of art which retain their vibrant colors in many cases. They are all shown in amazing detail on the web gallery where you can learn lots of details about each quilt and the maker and zoom in to look at the details from the comfort of your home desk or lap top computers. Note you need to let the images load up fully to see the details on your computer screen but it doesn't take long.  

This is a copy that Jane is working on and she brought it along to compare the results of her work to the original. We love the results and are encouraging her to keep going. Only 6 more rows to go it looks like to me to finish the whole top. 

An Ohio Star quilt pattern one of the few quilts that had a design we see still in quilting but this one was remarkable for the fine quilting details. In the top and bottom hourglasses they used a double line of tiny stitches to create that interesting visual texture to contrast the diamonds in the four solid white blocks. Detail shot below.  

This was one that I really got a kick out of and it turns out not only is it made of wools and corduroy but it is made from Men's clothing scraps by the wife of a descendant  German trained tailor using a German technique called inlaid patchwork. No quilting  stitching in this quilt that I could see but the hand stitching of the pieces shows. Some top stitching adding details like hearts and flowers as felt appliqué. 1790-1810 are the dates given so a very old quilt to be made of wool we know that moths love to eat...

This block of fruits and watermelon with a blue knife and birds caught my eye. I love the blues and reds in these quilt blocks from the Album quilts of Maryland. 

Here if you blow it up is a fancy lady riding a white horse lower left of the image and these flowers in the cornucopia vase are embellished with top stitched embroidery. 

This is a screen shot from the museum showing the entire quilt I couldn't get in the museum. White and a rich pink printed fabric and a center medallion appliqued... 

The part that I loved in this quilt was the actual quilting which was very fine shown in my detail shot below. 

 The second screen capture image of this center medallion quilt with the vine and these great applique grass blades surrounding the edges. It also had very fine quilting all over the top.

 After we enjoyed talking about our favorite quilts and investigating them we went to lunch all 18 of us got individual lunch treats at Cozi on 17th St. NW which was about all that is open on Saturdays in that area around the White-house. The usual places there are crowded during the week with government workers so Sat. is a good time to go see the show and metered parking right around the museum was plentiful believe it or not.

I enjoyed this field trip with my quilting friends and I wouldn't mind going back to look again. Maybe I should undertake a copy quilt top like Jane so I have a good reason to keep going back, it's open through September 5th 2015.
More information:
http://www.dar.org/museum