The buzz from the Red & White Quilt Show at New York's Park Avenue Armory in March has not died down. Instead, the show has sparked a wave of inspiration among quilters on the East Coast, and around the country.
Those who attended will breathlessly recount the beauty and drama of the 650 quilts on loan from the collection of Joanna Rose… and those same quilters forlornly complain about the brevity of the exhibit. (6 Days) The American Folk Art Museum and curator Elizabeth Warren put together this exhibit, which seems to have had as much coverage here and abroad, as the Victoria & Albert Quilt exhibit had last year.
Why are quilters so excited about Red and White quilts….several months after the show closed? Well besides the obvious graphic visual impact of this gorgeously curated show, innovatively hung in an iconic space (I used to go to the used book shows there and score antique art and poetry books!) every true quilter gets a little shiver of deliciously dangerous pleasure when they look at a red and white quilt.
Why? Well if you have to ask, you've never thrown a quilt with adjacent red and white patches in the washing machine. Red is infamous for its bleeding (no pun intended!) and fugitive color. For all of you who are dedicated Pre-Washers, who have run red prints and batiks through the washer with Retayne (color fixative) multiple times, only to have them fail the bleeding test (can you spell P-I-N-K- S-O-C-K-S?)….we can only view this exhibit with a mix of dread and voyeuristic pleasure.
Me – I hate to pre-wash. I haven't mixed red and white in a quilt since a washing disaster back in 1991. But I might just have to break down and throw some reds in the washer with a splash of Retayne or a color magnet product. (available at your local grocery store's laundry detergent aisle)
Those Red and White Quilts are just too irresistible.
In the mean time I put together a Red and White print category, and I've added links in this newsletter to our red blenders and red batiks.
You know you want them.
(me too)
A group of us from Hampton Roads Virginia are working on a block swap of R&W blocks. Forty R&W blocks due by the biginning of August!! Twenty +/- people participating.
Thanks SO much for posting about this! I was absolutely STUNNED by those quilts, and I’m totally sad I didn’t get to see them in person. The pictures are great, though, and I am totally in love with the entire exhibit; the quilts, the color scheme, and the way they were displayed. It also helps that red is my absolute favorite color. 🙂 What an inspiring exhibit.
Thanks for all the wonderful posts on your blog!
I had to comment, as you have put it so succinctly. The love and awe of a beautiful red and white quilt. I have my own beautiful Hawaiian made in Canada in the 1920’s. I’ll never ever part with it. It’s my one heirloom.
Thanks for the lovely smiling bear photo too.