We went to Lowell today, first to the New England Quilt Museum-where they were having a special exhibit of quilts recently donated to the museum...so up the stairs and there they were...beautifully familiar Pennsylvania quilts and not the new-to-me New England quilts I expected! Happily they did show some quilts from their permanent collection-an interesting group of Connecticut quilts. Wish I could show you some pix but no go-the main thing I noticed about the Connecticut quilts was that several were two color quilts (a blue and white single Irish chain) or three color quilts (a green and mustard sawtooth star with black plain blocks from 1800 and all the wool fabrics were home dyed with native plant dyes! ) and the blocks were fairly large-at least 12". I don't want to generalize too much here but these were my initial impressions...hope I get to see some more New England quilts while I'm here.It was then on to the Bootts Mill-definitely worth a trip...a wonderful tour inside the mill with the roar of the looms and wonderful explanations by the US Park Rangers. No pix because my battery died :(
I bought some of the fabric made now in the mill (I chose the green stripe towelling because that is what we saw being made on the looms during the tour ) and two bobbins that went into the loom shuttles. I'm planning on using the bobbin thread for some outline embroidery on the towelling.
