Galveston, TX – Catch-up, Part 1

Galveston is a city rich with opportunities of sights to see and things to experience. Galveston was an early stop in our trip, and one of the richest in terms of varied experiences; also one that we have barely mentioned to date because while there we were too busy ‘doing’ to write about it. Today therefore is catch-up day on the blog, presenting the first of three belated blog entries to be posted in the next couple of days: 1) a beautiful quilt exhibit, 2) the Galveston Mardi Gras celebration, and 3) Oil Platform Museum.  

Remarkable Quilt exhibit of historical reproduction quilts: 

Galveston Historical Foundation’s U.S. Custom House is home to a rotating exhibit of quilts; while we were there, the exhibit focused on reproduction Civil War era quilts, in which modern quilters either reproduced quilts known to have existed in that era or used materials of a pattern known to have existed in that era.  These colorful and beautifully executed quilts were displayed in the high-ceilinged and lovely old U.S. Custom house. 

Large posters featuring the exhibiting quilters were placed near quilt groupings to more fully tell the story of the quilts, both their historical significance and their modern makers.   The biographies of the quilters were as varied and amazing as the quilts themselves; some were homemakers, others physicians, some historians and others teachers.  Each spoke of the importance of the study and creation of quilts to their particular life circumstances.

Many of the quilts were machine pieced and hand quilted, some both machine pieced and machine quilted, but several of amazing complexity were – remarkably – hand pieced and hand quilted, in tribute to the women who created them in exactly that way while waiting for their men to return from war.  

Few quilters today have the patience for that degree of handwork when visually similar results can be obtained more quickly and easily through machine sewing, paper-piecing, or modern quilting techniques that were not available in the Civil War era.  

For more detailed information about this quilt exhibit, see this Galveston blog from February. 

1863 Jane A. Stickle Quilt Reproduction - contains 225 individual blocks, most 6" square, the remainder comprise the triangles that make up the border, each of which is a unique pattern.  The exhibit included several examples of this reproduction quilt; this one was pieced, appliquéd, and quilted totally by hand - a total of 5602 individual tiny pieces of cloth. 

Close-up of one of the blocks and it's surrounding blocks from the 1863 Jane A. Stickle Quilt Reproduction quilt in photo above.

Entrance to this rich display of quilts was free, and I left inspired to work on my own quilting while on the road.  Though modern in design and no where near the complexity of the quilts we saw in Galveston, this quilt begun last fall during an airstream trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is now completed; I finished the hand-quilting using a new-to-me large-stitch method, just two days ago.