Monday, April 8, 2013

on the quilt trail

Hands All Around


National Civil War Quilt Trail, Stewart County, Tennessee

Snow Crystals

Letitia's Medallion Sampler
This sampler was the largest and most impressive at 16' x 16'!

Delectable Mountains

What a pleasant surprise yesterday driving through Dover, Tennessee to find all the quilt squares! We stopped and got pictures of most of the ones we saw, and then later found a list and map of quilt squares in the area - 91 total! So you know I will be back over there to find some more.

The map was found at the Land Between the Lakes visitor's center, where they also had a quilt block:

Crossroads


More about the National Civil War Quilt Trail in this news story: HERE



NOTE: I contacted Carolyn Darke, artist and president of the Stewart County Arts and Heritage Council, who created the beautiful sampler quilt above. I wanted to tell her how much I loved seeing all the quilt squares and ask about the construction materials (as the ones we made out of plywood are deteriorating quickly). She graciously responded:

Thank you so much for admiring our quilt blocks....hope you were able to visit our Visitors Center, there are some there also. About ours, they are painted on "sign board" a light weight material that sign painters use, it comes in 4x8 sheets and can be cut in half for 2 4x4 squares or two whole sheets for an 8x8 block. The board needs to be lightly sanded before painting it. We used Home Depot's best exterior paint, latex, it has primer and paint combined. After we finished painting our blocks we painted them with an ultraviolet protection clear paint called "frog juice" expensive stuff, not sure that step was too important, anyway they seem to be holding up just fine. About hanging the blocks, if on a flat wood surface we used screws that are used for metal roofs, on uneven surfaces and masonry we made a wood frame out or 1 by 2s, used masonry screws to put up frame then screwed the painted block to the frame.

spring