For the 4th of July weekend, I traveled from Cleveland to Dearborn, Michigan to visit The Henry Ford. The first day, we spent in the museum looking through the endless examples of innovation. There were many highlights of the museum. I enjoyed walking through the Dymaxion House and thinking about what it would be like to live in one. It was surreal to sit in the same seat as Rosa Parks on the bus where the seat on the Rosa Parks bus that started the Montgomery bus boycott and the Civil Rights Movement. With a mechanical engineering background, it was amazing to see the Corliss Steam Engine demonstration. Once the 157 year old engine was started, it was very quiet and the enormous wheel turned quickly but only at 1/10th of it’s maximum speed. The Driving America exhibit did a great job of documenting the evolution of cars, from Henry Ford’s quadricycle to the Prius! I always keep my eye out for quilts but didn’t see any in the museum.
Our next day was spent at the Greenfield Village (also part of The Henry Ford). The village is enormous and has numerous important historical buildings (or recreations). One section of the village is the Liberty Craftworks which demonstrates historical methods for creating goods. I loved the tile murals they had depicting some of the trades. I always look at 2-dimensional art as inspiration for quilts.
I did discover a couple quilting related items in Greenfield Village. The first was the fabric section at the General Store from 1857. They certainly didn’t have quite as many choices as we have now.
I saw two more quilts in the Sarah Jordan Boarding House. This house was located in Menlo Park, NJ near Thomas Edison’s labs. It was the first private home wired with electricity. Here are the two quilts that were in 2 different boarders rooms.
In George Washington Carver’s cabin, was the 3rd quilt I found.
I enjoy looking at traditional blocks and reusing them with modern colors or incorporated in more modern designs. One piece of quilting that I continue to revel in is that you can change the colors, the contrast and the white space to create such different impacts for 1 block pattern. In the original quilt, some of the blocks are more scrappy and some change the white space. For the block variations I drew up, I focused on a fading effect moving the same color hue from darker in the center to lighter at the edges as well as flipping the white space.
Preliminary sketch to layout out colors and understand the block composition
Cleaned up drawing of the blocks
*I was not paid by The Henry Ford for this post. I truly enjoyed my experience and wanted to share. I would highly recommend visiting.
Logic Quilts 