National Quilt Museum

Paducah, Kentucky              High 93 Low 75

We went to the National Quilt Museum today, but first we went to Elinore Burns’ store, Quilt in a Day. They had a lot of quilts on display and Cindy has been really good about not buying any material, but they had a kids quilt kit on display and since she had a 25% off coupon, she succumbed and had to buy it.

Cindy just couldn't resist.

While we in the store, the clerk told us they had a quilt retreat area in the upstairs of the building and had a lot of quilts hanging there, and that we were welcome to go upstairs and take pictures. There are 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and sort of a living room. It looked like a nice place to have a quilt retreat.

We then went across the street to the National Quilt Museum. Like I explained yesterday, no pictures were allowed in the display area. We both liked the quilting on two of the quilts well enough, that we bought the book they were selling with pictures of the quilts. One that we liked the quilting was not in the book, but they had a separate card with it. I took pictures of the pictures, but they really don’t do justice to the quilting. The pictures I bought show it a lot better.

These last two pictures were for the quilting more than the quilt itself.

One of the display areas had quilts from one of the islands near the Philippines, called Caohagan. It is a thirteen acre island with about 600 permanent residents. About 100 of them are quilters. We were told how they were the hand stitched and hand quilted finished products in the ocean, where the salt water set the colors. They are then washed in clean water and hung to dry by the hot sun. The income from the sale of the quilts is about one third of all the revenue for the island. They definitely weren’t machine made, but were striking in the depiction of the Island.

We spent well over two hours in the Museum and the only disappointment was that we weren’t able to get pictures.

Thanks for visiting.