The History Center in Tompkins County - Knot Sew Fast: Patchwork of Tompkins County

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Knot Sew Fast: Patchwork of Tompkins County

Detail of an embroidered "Crazy Quilt" from The History Center textile collections.

EXHIBIT OPENING - February 3rd 2023

10am-8pm as part of First Friday Gallery Night @ Tompkins Center for History & Culture

Knot Sew Fast pulls from the extensive textile and fabric arts collections held by The History Center to lay out the stories these functional artworks tell about Tompkins County history.

Piecing together the story of quilts encourages us to consider shifts in technology, industry, transportation, and materials over generations of local life. As we unravel (figuratively) each quilt we consider the hands that did the work, and the stories they captured in every knot and stitch. In addition to historic quilts displayed from four of the nine townships of Tompkins, there will be interactive patternmaking stations in the Exhibit Hall; an invitation for our modern audience to try their hand at replicating patterns from ancestral woven Haudenosaunee belts to modern-day art quilts.

Quilts are a unique measure to explore history as the practice of quilting was a skill developed and practiced equally by historic Ithacan city-dwellers, as well as our rural township communities of Trumansburg, Groton, Dryden, Lansing, Caroline, Newfield, and Danby. The merging of this functional skill, and the hundreds of hours and handwork displayed in each quilt shares narratives about community, history, home, and skilled labor.

Knot Sew Fast will encourage a slower recognition of the diversity of textiles and patterns, as well as the hands and minds that created them. The exhibit will be on display from February 3rd 2023 through August 2023. Follow @TompkinsHistory and http:// thehistorycenter.net/knot-sew-fast for updates.

Exhibit Hall Displays

What can a quilt tell us about the history of enslavement, and slave owners in Tompkins County? Or which locally grown herbs were used in medicinal home remedies? What can quilts tell us about families and community?

Historically, quilt-makers (mostly women) performed important but undervalued labor, with their lives less likely to be formally documented. Each quilt is a record of hundreds to thousands of hours of hand labor by both our rural and urban Tompkins County ancestors. These makers lives are informally documented in their choice of pattern, fabric, and the stitches that comprise each quilt.

From quilts made from clothing scraps to quilts entirely of imported silks - the story of fabric, industry, and transportation is tied up in our understanding of how the materials for each quilt made their way to centrally isolated Tompkins County in the 19th and 20th centuries. Knot Sew Fast showcases nearly half of The History Center's quilt collection, but looks at each hand sewn work through the lens of the women, families, and communities who made them. Drawing a connection between the sewing circles of rural Danby in the 1800's to the modern quilt guilds that meet in Tompkins County today.

QUILTS ON DISPLAY

Black History Quilt Honoring African Americans in New York State - ca. 1995
Boardman Family Whitework Quilt - ca. 1870
Bruce Family 'Square in a Square' - ca. 1860-1875
Caroline Bicentennial Quilt - ca. 1976
Crutts Family Quilt - ca. 1880
Frear Family 'Twelve Crowns' Quilt - ca. 1840-1860
McGowan Family 'Lily of the West' - ca. 1858
Snyder Album Family Quilt - ca. 1840s
Star of Bethlehem - ca 1850
Todd Family Four Patch - ca. mid-1800's
Women of Influence: Each Block a Story - on loan from the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum - ca. 2021

Additional unfinished blocks, sewing implements and other quilting ephemera from The History Center collections also on display in the Exhibit Hall.

1869: A Year in Quilting on display in the 'Passage Through Time' tunnel draws from our reference and Research Library collections. Carrie Mannings Diary 1869 documents a year in the life of a local teenager circa the mid 19th century. Carrie's diary was first printed for the public by the DeWitt Historical Society (now The History Center in Tompkins County) in 1956, and has been re-printed locally a number of times. Her diary from the year includes her reflections as she worked on her own patchwork quilt, slowly piecing together scraps of her own story. Carrie died in the Town of Ithaca at 18 years old, and her diary is a rare record of a child's memories of life, work, and play in Tompkins County.

Women of Influence: Each Block A Story quilt is on loan from the Seneca Iroquois National Museum. Quilts have long been used in Native communities to honor individuals of distinction. Women of Influence: Each Block A Story builds on that tradition, bringing together 41 Haudenosaunee women who stitched thousands of beads in honor of the Native women who provided support, inspiration, and love for each of them. Beaded samples from the 1940, created by Dorothy Blacksnake Jimerson (Seneca), a grandmother of two of the participants, inspired the use of the flat beadwork style used throughout the quilt.

Knot Sew Fast - Events & Programs

2/2 - First Glimpse - Private Opening of Knot Sew Fast (Invitation only)
2/3 - EXHIBIT OPENING - 10am-8pm - Join us for Gallery Night 5-8pm
2/25 - Quilt Appraisal w/ Cathy Klimaszewski - (Registration required)
3/3 - Gallery Night 5-8pm - demo TBA
3/16 - Meet the Sewing Machine - An Introduction w/ Cady Fontana at the TCPL MakerSpace
3/18 - Make a Fairy Quilt w/ Zoë Van Nostrand (All Ages) - in collaboration with Spring Fairy Festival in Downtown Ithaca

UPCOMING

4/6 - Introduction to Quilting: Mini Quilt Tops w/ Cady Fontana at the TCPL MakerSpace (Registration required)
4/7 - Gallery Night 5-8pm demo TBA
4/13 - Quilted With Care 1996 Retrospective (Panel Discussion) - 4-5:30pm
4/26 - CHAT - Is the Ithaca Kitty the first "calico cat?" w/ Zoë Van Nostrand
4/27 - Quiltmaking for Community Good with the Brooktondale Community Center Quiltmakers and Ellis Hollow Quiltmakers (details TBA)
5/5 Gallery Night 5-8pm demo TBA
6/2 Gallery Night 5-8pm demo TBA
6/7 - P.L.A.C.E. Discovering Textile & Garment Workers through HistoryForge w/ Eve Snyder (details TBA)

More quilting and textile program dates will be announced soon!

1976 Bicentennial Quilt Show Revisited with a panel of the Tompkins County Quilters Guild
49 Years of the Tompkins County Quilters Guild
Back to Where it All Started: Returning to Making Quilts from Used Clothing (Community Quiltmaking Center and Finger Lakes ReUse)

Beyond the Exhibit Hall in Tompkins County Quilts

In addition to the displays at our museum on the Ithaca Commons, a digital exhibit 'Patterns: Quilting in Tompkins County' will be available in February 2023.

Researchers are encouraged to schedule appointments in our Research Library & Archives to review the following archival materials from our textile related collections:

FINDING AID HIGHLIGHT

The Tompkins County Quilters Guild was established in 1974, at a time when there were no local, state, or national organizations to support quilting. That year Jeanne Greene, a board member of Ithaca’s City Federation of Women’s Organizations, suggested holding a weekend quilt show to measure local interest, and 500 people came to see quilts on display at the Women’s Community Building. Shortly afterwards the Quilters Guild formed and began planning a major show for August 21-27 in 1976. Their Bicentennial Finger Lakes Quilt Exhibit displayed 600 quilts from 14 area counties, staged many lectures, workshops and demonstrations, attracted 8,200 visitors from 31 states and 10 foreign countries, and was hailed as the largest such show to date in the nation.

Members of the Quilters Guild began donating their records to The History Center's archives in 2011 and we are delighted to keep adding to this rich collection. It contains business records, grant and workshop information, newsletters, correspondence, programs and publicity for quilt shows, and much more.

Tompkins County Quilt Books

Carrie Mannings Diary 1869