Black Community Quilts at Toronto's Textile Museum

If you are in or near Toronto, make some time to get to the Textile Museum this month! There is a beautiful exhibit on until April 28, called The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts, curated by David Woods. There are some gorgeous historical pieces as well as modern quilts, all with lots of context to learn from. 

I stopped in when I was in Toronto recently and really enjoyed it. There was a variety of styles and techniques in the more than 35 quilts on display, and there is always lots more to check out in the Museum shop and textile reuse centre. 

I was drawn in by so many details - stitches, quilting, colour choices, stories - and I love that the exhibit is big enough to have breadth but not so big that you feel overwhelmed. It's a great visit. 

One of my favourites was this one, called Amelda's Prayer. So beautiful! 

But there were so many to enjoy.

This traditional quilt was really interesting to me for the details. All that black edging on the stars is blanket stitch. I don't remember seeing this kind of accent before and love it. 

This was the only real abstract of the show and I thought it was great. 

So many representational quilts as well. All fabulous. 

I really enjoyed this show and wish I could have made it to one of the special events they had in conjunction with it. Oh well -- I did get to enjoy it! Try to get there if you can. 

Costumes & Quilts to beat the heat

What do you do when you're not sewing? Well, I end up visiting places that always include sewing!

A few weeks ago there was an event at my local history museum, a Sunday picnic/craft beer tasting on their expansive grounds, which included entrance into the museum exhibits. Since it was a super hot day and I had been intending to go to the Art Quilts exhibit, we took the afternoon and headed over. So fun. Lots of tasty beer, hot weather, and the blessed air conditioning when we went inside ;)

The main exhibits were the Art Quilts, a Narnia themed one in conjunction with the Stratford Festival's showing of The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe this year, and an exhibit of some of the Festival Archives' costumes and accessories. All were a lot of fun to see.

**Edited to Add: a new 360 Tour of the museum has just been added to their content. You can see one hall of the quilts plus the costumes & Narnia! 

I forgot to take photos of the attributions for many of the quilts, so don't feel that I can post them without. But I did get a couple! One of my favourites has the clearest writeup, the rest you should be able to kind of see if you embiggen the photos.

 We also enjoyed seeing the masterful work on the stage costumes - even though they are seen from afar, the Festival wardrobe is amazing at the detailing and finishes.

 

We also liked the Narnia show - including the hilarious family photos in Mr. Tumnus' parlour:

Plus we had to play Peter & Susan in the throne room...

What do you do when you're not sewing?

Museums & Craft Shows & Thrift Stores, Oh my

I was lucky enough to get into the Big City a couple of times recently for some exciting crafty adventures. Living large... :)

My first trip was to Toronto's Textile Museum. This was a small, easily visited museum in the short time I had to pop over to it after meetings all day. I was most intrigued by the Eutopia exhibit. Unlike a utopia, a eutopia is an ideal but achievable future: the textiles shown were often activist projects or community building ones.

It was so interesting to see textiles used as activist material - craftivism is something I am very, very fascinated by so this was a great show to see. There was a neat interactive bit in which museum goers were invited to fill out a postcard stating their own ideal of eutopia. It looked like cross-stitch but is just a printed card; I like it.

One real highlight for me is that I got to see a real-life painting by Christi Belcourt in this exhibit. She's a wonderful Métis artist whom I recently found as a result of her collaboration with Valentino for their Resort 2016 line. I just love her work, which is inspired by the beadwork and culture of her Métis heritage. (if you are interested in this kind of beadwork, she's also written a book on the subject).   I recommend visiting this museum - they have a wonderful gift shop as well.

The next big adventure that I had came thanks to friends who were attending the Creativ Festival in Mississauga and invited me to join them. Thank goodness it just happened to be my day off. I spent a day at this fun event, becoming saturated with colour and fabric and IDEAS! No, I don't need to take on one more crafting habit, but it sure is hard to say no to some of the wonderful things I saw.

I ended up focusing on my latest obsession, and this was the result:

I picked up one or two items at many of the booths I visited and now have a lot of new-to-me threads to experiment with. I was particularly thrilled at the wide choices in cotton perle, and the discovery of some glow-in-the-dark thread! Fun times.

The Creativ Festival also has free sessions you can attend throughout the day, and I was so pleased to meet Sherri of Thread Riding Hood, who was doing one of the presentations. If you haven't visited her blog, you've got to check it out. Tons of fun tutorials and great posts too.

One of the things I was excited about was meeting Maria Rypan of Rypan Designs. She's a Ukrainian beading expert who I've followed online for a long time, despite the fact that I don't do beading (my dad does a lot of it, though). I've always been impressed by her Ukrainian patterns and it was a real honour to meet her and chat with her for 15 minutes about her beading and about Ukraine. I was thrilled to meet her; she's like a beading rock star to little old Ukrainian Canadian me!

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And then closer to home this week, I picked up this interesting little bundle at a local thrift store for only $2. It was folded into a small bag, with a tangle of threads on one side. When I opened it up, I was very pleased.

I think I'll finish it. Though I don't have a long dresser to lay it on, I'll find a way to use it. And not only does it come with all the remaining threads to finish the pattern, for some reason, there are 2 cards of ecru floche tucked in as well, one holding the needles that this embroiderer was using to work on this project. Love this.

And speaking of embroidery, I've been neglecting my big project which I started months ago - but finally have made some progress on it. Here's where I am now:

What creative adventures have you taken lately? Share any links or stories in the comments!

Retro Montreal Museum Visits

Hey all! I've been doing a spot of spring cleaning, digital and otherwise, and have just discovered a stash of great photos that I took last August in Montreal, thinking of all my sewing friends -- but then forgot to share here. Let me remedy that! Please join me for a retroactive tour of the Museum of Costumes & Textiles of Montreal.

On my summer getaway, I made sure to schedule in a trip to this small museum in the basement level of the Marche Bonsecours, conveniently right in Old Montreal. It really is small, and only takes a short visit to see everything - which is great when you're holidaying and trying to fit everything in! The exhibits are always changing, and it's so worth a stop if you're in Montreal.

Anyhow, when I was there, the exhibit was "Leitmotifs", about pattern. You've got to click over to see the image of the "tie chandelier" at the begining;  I didn't get a picture of it myself, but it was visually stunning.  I really enjoyed it - the writeups for some of the pieces were informative and quite fascinating too.

Without further ado, here are some of the dresses I just had to record for posterity.

Just so pretty

Front of a modern-looking dress

And the back - this shows the more 50s details

I finally saw a real live DVF wrap dress!

Pretty in pink...well, more coral-ish

Love the sleeve ruching & look at that bust dart

Great use of the stripe in this full skirt

This sleeve detail was interesting - gathered drape at the underarm!

Cute ruffle!

And interesting story behind this polka dotted dress

Like the use of lace and gingham, but hard to photograph

Lovely 40s silhouette & fabric

Fantastic shirtdress

A closer look

And look -- novelty fabrics were a hit then, too!

One of my favourites - so elegant

All those self-fabric belts. And this charming fabric

I love this 'cape' effect. Couldn't get close enough to figure out how it was done

Thought this funky 60s tunic & pant was great!

I hope you've enjoyed the tour -- be sure to visit this cute little museum yourself if you're in Montreal. The Marche Bonsecours is also a centre for Quebec designers so you may see some of their new fashions in the boutiques there too.