By Julia M Brennan American quilts are truly a local art form and very much alive. In the little Western Slope Colorado town of Palisade (population 2,700) which is famous for its peaches, I found a quilt maker who has been creating rag rugs and quilts for the last 50+ years. Even now with limited […]
Slow Down and Listen to the Stitching
by Julia M Brennan and Anna Tendler Mulaney In these hurried days leading up to the holidays, we invite you to slow down and engage in a little stitching meditation. Listen. Pictured above is a late 19th c Meiji period Japanese uchikake, a ceremonial robe custom made for a bride. It is decorated with symbols from the […]
Adorable Alert: Christening Gown Photos…Baby Included!
We work on quite a few christening dresses here at Caring for Textiles. However, we don’t often get to see the final result once we send these precious pieces on their way. Imagine our delight when we received a greeting in the mail with two photos of a gown we had worked on—and the adorable […]
The Bobbinet Blog, or “Tulle Tales”
By Julia Brennan and Kaitlyn Munro Recently I met my lovely friend Claire Chen, who was wearing a gossamer tulle skirt, which fluttered around her like a butterfly. It was enchanting, so was she, and my curiosity about tulle was stirred. I started noticing the tulle explosion everywhere …… in the fashion magazines Chanel, Dior, Mango, […]
Gloriously Blessing the Baby…and Restoring the Glory to the Gown
Over the years we have cleaned, conserved, and repaired hundreds of historic christening dresses. Each one is different, short or long, tiered or sheer, embroidered or laced, pleated or smocked – each with its own family stories. Most have very yellowed ‘bib’ areas from sweet milky spittle, and often a host of rips and tears…..it […]
Field Trip: Williamsburg, Virginia
We visit “Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and the Home” By Kaitlyn Munro Lauren and I recently returned from a fabulous trip to Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) to attend the symposium, Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and the Home. We were honored to present a paper “Burn Out”, about a range of conservation techniques for stabilizing […]
In Fond Memory of Olive B. Graffam
Olive B. Graffam, Curator of Collections, Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Museum It is rare and wonderful to work with the same client for nearly 20 years…and over this time a treasured relationship developed; tender, deeply thoughtful, and professional. We got to know each other’s families, and grandchildren by name, and shared our challenges […]
The ‘Lesage’ of Lao: Master Tiao Somsanith
I recently met Tiao Nithakhong Somsanith at the 5th International Conference on Lao Studies, in Bangkok. He transformed a drab classroom into a sacred space—golden embroideries of the Buddha, lace-like stencils of angels hovering like snowflakes on the windows overlooking the Chao Praya river, and an aura of the timelessness that imbues these ancient arts. Amongst […]
Puppet Masters: Conservation in Miniature
In the first partnership of its kind, I led the The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok and the Taiyuan Asian Puppet Museum in Taipei for a puppet textile conservation training workshop. In the lively one-week session, conservators Nuchada Piranprasankit and Yaowalak Bunnag, from the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, and I trained staff […]
Let’s Hear it for the Boys #3: The All-American Installment
The final post in Julia’s three-part series dedicated to the gentleman. If you missed my first two posts on ‘man-centric’ textiles (or if you just loved them so much and you want to reread) – you can find the first post here, and the second post can be found here. Over the years, Caring for Textiles has […]
