Return from Vacation

I have been on the most fabulous working vacation!  I had the privilege of attending the week long Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute where we explored American history from the colonization of Jamestown to the American Revolution and beyond.  After the marvelously informative week, my family joined me and we toured Washington DC, Mount Vernon, went back to the historic Triangle (Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, and Yorktown) and did a day at Busch Gardens Europe and a day at Virginia Beach.
You can guess that I have hundreds of things to share with you and if you are a history buff like me, you will not be bored by any of it.  So, for the next few days, be prepared to see posts of my adventures in Historic Virginia.

Now, I realize that this is a quilt blog and so, what you are interested in is the quilts that I saw.  There were a few...

This is a quilt that dates to the early 1800s.  It is located in the DeWitt Wallace Museum in Colonial Williamsburg.  This very resourceful quilter lived near a  place where they produced handkerchiefs and was able to get her hands on a large panel (bedsize) of hankies before they were cut.  She did what any of us would have done, made it into a quilt.  Here is a closer view of the quilting.

I leaned in close to get a view of the quilting and the ALARM went off!  I waited patiently for the guard to arrive and then explained my actions and he discreetly rolled his eyes, nodded his head, and moved on.  I guess I was not the first over excited quilter to set off the alarm.
In that same gallery, there is a display of dresses from the Colonial era.  Thought you might enjoy a sampling of those...

This quilt hangs in another gallery of the same museum along with a few others.  They rotate through their collection.  Wish I could have seen them all.
I was overwhelmed with the history of this room.  For, being a quilter, it was very moving to think about the women creating these beauties and the love they put in to the stitches.  There were three quilts hung that were all created by this woman.  Each was quilted in straight diagonal rows about half an inch apart and two of them had the same fabric-the yellow- in them.  Here are the others...

There was this lovely crazy quilt.

My favorite was this signature quilt.  Most of the signatures were so faded that you could no longer see them. 

There were also three quilts made by another woman, all made out of silky fabrics- if I remember correctly, she was a relation of the tailor.  Her quilting is amazingly beautiful on this.  The other quilts were tied with ribbons rather than quilted. 

And, to prove that I looked at more than just quilts, here are a few shots of family adventures...

 Here are the kids with "Martha Washington" at Mount Vernon.  My daughter LOVED her!

 The whole family at Mount Vernon, in the yard behind the mansion. 

We thought we would only spend a few hours at Mount Vernon, and we ended up staying the entire day.  I highly recommend it.  I learned so much about George Washington that I did not know!  And, it is lovely!

We took a tour of the white house.  My husband was disappointed in comparison to a tour he took decades ago.  He said he got to enter many more rooms rather than just look in from the doorway as we did.  However, we thoroughly enjoyed it.  The Visitor's center across the street is a great place also!


Well, I will leave you with all this for today.  I will be creating a digital scrapbook and so I will be sharing some more with you as I work on that as well.  Today, I have spent the entire day being lazy, recovering from two weeks away from home, and trying to do laundry.  I would love to just dive into my quilting but there are things that I will have to take care of first.  I am amazed at what everyone of you have accomplished while I was away.

Happy Stitching!