Over the weekend I heard about a quilt show. It was only open for 6 days and ending the following Wednesday. I knew I had to see it. I had an appointment with my knee doc in the city on Tuesday morning, so thought Jane & I could head over there afterwards.
It was spectacular!
These quilts are the personal collection of Joanna S. Rose. The story I heard is - it was her birthday (I believe her 80th) and she told her kids that she had never seen them all in one place & would love that as her birthday gift. Also to celebrate her birthday she wanted to give a gift to the city of New York and made admission to this exhibit free! There are over 650 quilts. It was truly amazing to see.
They handed out little white booklets (spiral bound in red) and red pencils to kids as they walked in, so they could sketch the quilts. Jane loved it and happily sketched away while I walked around in awe deciding that I absolutely MUST make a red and white quilt!
This alphabet one with animals was Jane's favorite.
The way they had them displayed was also wonderful. It really was spectacular to see them in contrast with each other - yet with all that red & white.
When we left I was kicking myself for not taking the other kids. Having seen it I realized what a unique opportunity it was to see all those red and white quilts, that were part of a private collection, no less and that they may never all be on display again ... Man, I was mad at myself. Enough that today (the last day of the show), I picked up Emily & Jacob a little early from school and we went back down to the city (Bek had rehearsal and didn't want to come). It was meant to be because I got a great parking spot on a meter 2 blocks away!
We ran into friends and Jake, Jane, Eve & Ruth all happily sketched away while I just soaked up the beauty of those quilts again!
Some of them just had the most incredible work in them - like this one that had names embroidered around each star.
Emily loved sketching them too and tried to draw as many as she could, especially of her favorites.
I loved that she was also impressed with the workmanship and detail and looked for the makers names, or sometimes just the year embroidered into the corner.
This as one of my favorites. I think it would be beautiful on Jacob's bed and have every intention of copying it!
Jacob loved the airplane one.
This was one of the oldest quilts there and the collectors personal favorite.
Jane's favorite again.
I am so glad I seized the moment with these guys and took them to see it. Maybe we didn't get to homework or piano practice and they went to bed late, but they will hopefully remember this great exhibition (and that we went down to Rick's office to meet him for dinner afterwards!)
