Weekly update: OMG February, placemats, and the top-along + reading

 

My One Monthly Goal for February is to get Old Town to the flimsy stage.  One motivation is to reclaim the design wall. :)  

The Quiltville FB group has photos of many versions of the design with different colorways and different sashings or settings or borders.  I'm going to stick to the sashing as patterned but I may do something other than the checkerboard border.  

I made six more placemats from units in the parts department.  The tan/green/red one has been around for more since 2007 (gulp!). I always thought I'd piece it into a quilt back.  The one below it (pink and green) is left over from the insert strip from a quilt back. 

Lantern is the The Running Doe Quilts top-along pattern for February. Here are the first four blocks (12" x 14") and the rest of the fabric pull.  

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 "Reframing the Portrait" was the topic of the December 28 episode of NPR's To the Best of Our Knowledge.  British opera singer Peter Brathwaite was one of the people interviewed. I was so intrigued by his story that I checked out the book. 

During the Covid lockdown the Getty Museum challenged people to recreate famous paintings using things in their homes. Brathwaite took the challenge a step further and recreated portraits of Black people, portraits created as early as 1375 up to the present day (Kehinde Wiley's portrait of Barack Obama).   

His Barbadian grandmother's quilt features in several, such as this one by Christian Weiditz circa 1530-40.

Another quilt is the portrait.  I recognized Bisa Butler right away.  

I very much enjoyed this journey through art history.  

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Linking up with Sew and Tell  (thanks for the shout out, Melva!)  Oh Scrap!  OMG February and Design Wall Monday