Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Have they lost their memory?

I sat down this morning to check my email and my daily blog reads and decided to turn on "Simply Quilts" to see what Alex Anderson was doing today. During her little intro she said that today's guest was Ann Fahl and she was going to show free-form patchwork.

Guess what this lady's new technique is! String quilts! At no time during the entire show does Alex or Ann say the word "STRING". Ann claims to have come up with this new idea about 15 years ago. Hhhmmmm....what about all those antique string quilts like the ones Bonnie talked about over on Quiltville ?

Ann Fahl even offers a one-day class on how to make her free-form patchwork. How could you need an entire day to learn how to make a string block?

Maybe I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but this seemed a little ridiculous to me!

9 comments:

  1. I was thinking the exact same thing as I watched - and that show was from 2000! Do you think she helped the resurgence? String quilts have been around forever, but maybe they fell off the quilted map, so to speak. But an all day class??? LMBO!!

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  2. I agree string quilts have been around forever.

    It still is good to see someone on TV doing old blocks in the modern day for all the new quilters.

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  3. I have an antique string quilt I found in my grandmother's things. I'm sure it was made before 2000. I agree it does seem a little ridiculous.

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  4. One of these days I'm going to realize that something old can be recycled into a money-making machine. Then again, I agree that it's ridiculous, so I'll probably never actually believe in it as a business idea. The positive side of this for us cynics is that we don't fall for it, either.

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  5. When we did quilt appraisal days in Georgia we would see hundreds (ok, maybe dozens...but a lot!) of string quilts ranging in age from the late 1800's through the 1940's. I don't have a problem with someone writing a book on how to make them just be upfront and say you are teaching a very old technique!

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  6. I'll agree, extremely annoying. Especially since it is easy to admit that the technique is old but that you are adding a "newish" twist. My MIL gave me a fun book by Gwen Marston "Liberated String Quilts" that does just that -- and includes some great pictures of antique quilts along with new projects.

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  7. string quilts may be a new concept to the rookies.... but like history it all comes in cycles and repeats.. Im having a blast using old phone books for the foundation with string'y colors. Our club had a fun day READING the newspaper backing from a string quilt done in 1925.

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  8. wow - is that amazing or what! Just look in books with antique quilts and you see quilts with "free-form" piecing all the time! I can't believe she had a whole show about it and never said string or mentioned it has been around forever. Amazing.... (shaking head)....

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  9. That is weird! I know there's nothing new in the world really but to act like string quilting is new just because you call it by a new name . . makes no sense to me.

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