{"id":214,"date":"2013-07-20T20:02:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T00:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/50.87.217.193\/blog\/dar-museum-quilts"},"modified":"2015-03-07T00:07:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T00:07:51","slug":"dar-museum-quilts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/dar-museum-quilts\/","title":{"rendered":"DAR Museum Quilts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"IMG_8911\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What a difference a week makes!<\/p>\n

Last week I was distributing quilts to tornado survivors, and visiting
\nneighborhoods that were wiped off the map by the big twister. <\/p>\n

This weekend I am in Washington DC, visiting the DAR Museum, and participating
\nin the Not
\nFade Away<\/a> conference in Herndon VA. (…and dripping from the heat and
\nhumidity!)<\/p>\n

Friday
\nI had a very special treat.<\/a> I had an invitation to have a private tour at
\nthe DAR (Daughters of the Revolution)
\nMuseum<\/a> which is about a block away from the White House. My tour guide was
\nthe curator of the Quilts and Textile department, and I felt very lucky to have
\na private session in the archives (temperature and humidity controlled room in
\nthe basement) to view several historic quilts that are being prepared for an
\nexhibit in 2014.<\/p>\n

Alden also took me upstairs to see the beautiful architecture of the huge library,
\nand the individual state rooms with special state quilts. She also gave me a
\nlengthy explanation of the process of preparing garments for the current
\ncostume exhibit "Fashioning
\nthe New Woman: 1890 – 1925"<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We had lunch next door in the Red Cross building, and talked some more about
\nhow to date garments and textiles. She cut her textile dating chops when she
\nwas an intern at the Smithsonian, and now she can look at a historic quilt or
\nvintage garment, and guess the year it was made. We discussed how every year or
\ntwo there would be a change in the fashions, that would make it easy to date
\nthe garment by the sleeve shape, bustle, draping, etc. What were trends 100-200
\nyears ago, have become history.<\/p>\n

I pointed out that the trends we are making today, will also be documented
\ntextile history some day in the future. We talked about how we should be
\ndocumenting quilts today, so they will be understood 100 years from now. She
\nalso told me that laser-printed labels and photos in quilts are already
\nstarting to fade, and it is such a shame that information is fast disappearing.
\nShe complained about quilts that had initials instead of full names sewn on the
\nback. She complained about quilts that said "Aunt Bessie's Quilt"
\ninstead of the full name.<\/p>\n

So my message for all of you is – make sure you sign your quilts with permanent
\nink or stitching so there will be no doubt as to the quilt's maker, and the
\nyear it was made. Someone in the future will treasure your quilt and be
\nfascinated with the history of the quilt you've constructed so lovingly and
\ncarefully.<\/p>\n

My mom and I hired a genealogy detective to research our distant ancestors, and
\nshe recently informed us that we'd be eligible to join the DAR. So the timing
\nof this museum visit was just perfect! We have the documentation of a
\n"patriot" ancestor who was in the army during the Revolution, which
\ncame as a surprise!<\/p>\nShare Post:<\/strong>
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What a difference a week makes! Last week I was distributing quilts to tornado survivors, and visiting neighborhoods that were wiped off the map by the big twister. This weekend I am in Washington DC, visiting the DAR Museum, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-museum","category-quilts","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1125,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}