New England Quilt Museum, part 2

Zen Nosegay by Pat Ferguson

When we visited the New England Quilt Museum we went specifically to see the Paula Nadelstern exhibit. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had an exhibit on the evolution of machine quilting! I didn't take as many photos in the exhibit because 1) I had seen many of the quilts in shows before and 2) there were a number of people looking at the quilts and it was taking too long to get in  a position to take photos. But I have a few to share.
​This first photo is a small section of a wholecloth quilt.
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Mountain Torrent by M. Joan Lintault

I have seen this quilt in a magazine but it's so much more impressive in person. The center section is all machine created lace. You can see right through the quilt. She said she experimented with machine made lace as a connecting element, not decorative delicate element, in this quilt. 

As I'm posting these photos I realized that I didn't get any photos of some of the earlies machine quilted quilts. It's clear that as soon as sewing machines were invented that quilters were taking advantage of the timesaving tool for every step of the quilting process. There are some very early machine quilted quilts. They even have probably the earliest free motion quilted quilt.  

Bamboo White by Jinzenji Yoshiko

The photo can't possibly do this quilt justice. It's absolutely stunning. 

The quilt is made in intricately quited strips and pieced strips are appliqued over each panel join.
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I love Zentangling so I had to capture photos of these 3 Zentangled stitched quilts by Pat Ferguson.
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Double Arc by Carson Converse

I think there were 3 quilts in the exhibit by Carson Converse and each one was very powerful and so precise! Her website is worth a visit! 

Here's a closeup of the absolutely perfect stitching on this quilt. There isn't a backstitch on it anywhere.
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Gray Applique by Karen McTavish

When I started longarm quilting Karen McTavish was one of the first "famous" longarmers that I followed and I took a couple of classes with her at some quilt shows. She says that she made this quilt during the winter of 2023 when Minnesota had 138 inches of snow. I just love the grayscale transition from block to block.

Funny story on this one. I really wanted a photo and was waiting for another woman to finish taking photos so I could get in position. She was taking her time getting her shot lined up. What she didn't realize was that I could see that she wasn't taking a photo at all. She was holding her phone like she was taking a photo but she was actually reading something on social media. I know she was doing it on purpose as a little powerplay but I wasn't in a hurry and was just amused.

The detail quilting is beautiful!

There were also quilts by Margaret Soloman Gunn, Debra Wagner and others. You can see a few more quilts on the website.
Then we turned a corner and got this fun surprise...

Humamachine Sculpture by Bruce Rosenbaum

You can read more about it here.