Twelve Quilts of Christmas 2019 – #11

    One of the interesting things each year, in preparing the Twelve Quilts of Christmas, is tracking down current locations of many of these quilting treasures.  Some of them I find first as pictures in old state quilt documentation books or other wonderful tomes from the quilt revival in the 70’s and 80’s.  This is one of those quilts, whose current location evaded me until the final hour.   I knew I had seen it in my digital travels over the years … oh but where?  I found it in the end.  The quilt landed, thankfully, safely in the hands of the International Quilt Study Centre.   Which brings us around again to the issue of custodianship and supporting the museums that continue to preserve and protect our quilting heritage.  It is why I try as much as I can to give accurate and full information about these quilts and where they are located now, in the captions below the photo of the quilt.  Our quilting history is important.  I want to honour the quilts, their makers and the custodians.     The second quilt revival in the late 1970′ and 1980’s saw a generation of quilt collectors who sought out some of the finest quilt examples and helped preserve them so we can enjoy them today.  It is time now, as those collectors grow older, for another generation to grab the mantle and do whatever they can to help, big or small, continue to ensure that wonderful examples of quilts that are not currently in permanent collections make their way there.  If in some small way my presentation of these quilts each year sparks an interest for antique quilts among a younger generation of quilters, then my work has had a beneficial side effect.     This year’s quilts also are shining a light on a word … “modern”. So many have commented, with surprise, on how “modern’ these quilts look.  I think we have an opportunity here to examine the meaning of “modern” as we use it in the quilting world today.  Interestingly the word “modern”  has been used many times in history to define a particular period in quiltmaking where there has been a shift in style of quilting.  And then slowly that newness and freshness of style shifts to become a tradition and something else comes along and is “modern” and embodies the purest of sense of the word as it is defined, in being “of the present or recent times” (Oxford Dictionary).  At what point will what is happening in this “modern” quilting movement today become tradition?      Back when all that collecting was beginning, quilts such as this one may have been overlooked, because of it’s quirkiness, but someone did appreciate it.  And that is all it took; the courage of one person to see the beauty in the odd, the different, the unique, the truly beautiful.      When I look at this quilt, it is it’s graphic beauty that draws me in. The stark contrast between the red and the black.  The pounding rhythm created as those two colours march boldly around the “frames”.  It is the beautiful pulse that is created by the ripples of purple borders that echo out and define the engaging purple centre.  It is the freedom of the piecing and the caution thrown to the wind as the corners of each round resolve as they will, no concern to refinement and rules.  You can feel the quilt being made, pushed to completion creating a composition that is actually perfection itself.  Anyone who would dare to “straighten” out the measurements and line everything up would ruin it.  I am so glad the maker did not have a rotary cutter and ruler!   A number of years ago I coined the phrase “Quilting With Abandon”.  This quilt exemplifies this philosophy to it’s core.  It is bliss.  It exudes joy. And it just feels right that it is was the one that I was going to end this year’s Twelve Quilts of Christmas with.  However, there is one more quilt tomorrow to make up for the “Amish Quilt That Wasn’t” that happened on day 8!   I wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas! See you tomorrow.