I've been traveling a bit - to a wonderful quilt retreat with online friends and to a family event in Vermont, so the sewing I've been doing is mostly adding hanging sleeves and labels to the quilts I'm putting into our guild show.

I did take advantage of the trip to Vermont to go to the Shelburne Museum.  There were two quilt exhibits.  I spent a lot of time in the textile building with about 30 of the quilts from their permanent collection of about 800.  I loved the variety and was impressed by the strong documentation. 

This was the featured quilt.  It is a beauty, but I noticed that the border on the right is clearly farther from the quilt top than the right border.  If you look at the stems of the roses, you can see that they are carefully curved to form a symmetrical pattern - that falls apart with the top left rose!  Two pretty obvious mistakes, and yet this quilt stopped traffic as people walked through the textile display.  It's a good lesson.

I thought this was an interesting use of silk neckties.  I'm not usually a fan of necktie quilts, but this one is quite elegant.

The second exhibit was all star quilts - mostly Bethlehem stars - just donated as a group.

I was shocked that only two of the almost forty quilts were attributed to the maker.  All others were by "unknown."  For Pete's sake, label your quilts!

This one, by an unknown Odawa Indian woman was just amazing.  The applique was made to look like the porcupine quill work of her tribe.