Road Trip: Driving North along the Oregon Coast
September 21, 2016
The final stretch of our road trip took us along the Oregon Coast from Bandon to Astoria. Every Pacific coast beach seems unique in some way — different from its neighbors near or far away. Part of our drive took us through the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, giving us a taste of a landscape with high, wind-sculpted dunes.
Here are some photos from our drive along Highway 101 in Oregon:
A Day of Quilts in Bellingham and Samish Island
August 27, 2012
I made a day trip to Bellingham last week to see a quilt exhibit at the Whatcom Museum — American Quilts: The Democratic Art 1780 – 2007. The exhibit, which runs through October 28, 2012, displays about 30 quilts from Robert Shaw’s book of the same title. I wasn’t allowed to photograph the quilts in the exhibit, but you can see a few of them at this link.
The exhibit showcased mostly traditional pieced or appliqued quilts, such as the log cabin, grandmother’s flower garden, flying geese, whole cloth, Hawaiian quilts, etc. I was most struck by two things — first, how many of these cherished quilts were labelled “unknown quilter” — prized by collectors, but makers unknown. And second, the quality of the hand-stitching — so small and regular. These days, so many quilts are machine-quilted. I still do hand-quilting, but I don’t take the time to make my lines of quilting so close together. These quilts must have had five- or ten-times as many quilting stitches as any one of mine. Impressive!
I very much enjoyed my first visit to the Lightcatcher Museum, one of three buildings that comprise the Whatcom Museum. Its most striking feature is a curved translucent wall, which creates a radiant and luminous atmosphere in the building.
My day of quilts was just half over. One of my new friends, Bonnie, arranged for a small group to see some Joan Colvin quilts at the private home of Colvin’s son and daughter-in-law on Samish Island. Joan created “art” quilts. She had a painterly eye, using fabric to evoke a Northwest color palette in the scenes she created from Nature: “What is joyful, what delights me about fabric composition is that colored and textured fabrics have their own symbolism. Though they may speak in different contexts, they lie in wait for me to find their meaning and voice through juxtaposition.” — from Nature’s Studio by Joan Colvin
Here are the Joan Colvin quilts from her family’s private collection: