Astounding textiles on our day trip

What a marvellous place is the Textile Museum of Canada! A tough act to follow but we followed with a few hours of fabric and wool shopping.

What could be better?

Kaliedoscope

The Tannenbaum’s quilt collection is absolutely stunning. The first one we saw consisted of 2,880 one -inch hexagons of silk in a myriad of colours and patterns, hand sewn and quilted. Most of the quilts of that era were made of silk and the colours are still vibrant and glowing. There were quite a few crazy quilts and several traditional patterns to recognize. The embroidery work on all of them was outstanding, no blanket stitch or feather stitch but much more complex. A lot of it looked like machine work. On the Fan quilt shown below every one had different and quite complex stitching. I believe it was one done by a group of women.

I found it very interesting that there did not seem to be much padding in the quilts. The guide told us that the British quilts would have been placed back to back and then the sides were folded in and sewn together, unlike the American and Canadian quilts which have binding on the edges. All together there were 40 of them, all collected by Carole Tannenbaum as works of art ... because she liked the look of them.

Fashionably Wrapped

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Kashmir gave the world shawls of intricate and brilliant colours and patterns. We were told that a shawl could take 18 months to weave. They were 100 threads to the inch, silk warp and wool weft, woven in tapestry style in the beginning. Unlike what we know as a shawl today, these are huge, about the size of a double bed covering at least. Some of the rectangular shawls were 12 feet long.

They were reserved for special occasions, probably because they cost a huge amount of money. As their popularity grew, in an attempt to speed production, the shawl was woven in sections by many weavers and then the pieces would be sewn together. One shawl had 1600 pieces sewn together and you couldn’t see any sign of a stitch!

The hardest part of all was not to touch!!

After a bit of time and money spent in the museum’s fabulous gift shop, we left for lunch and shopping in all the fantastic fabric and wool stores in the Fashion District on Queen Street West. All in all, a great day. We must do this again some time.

To see more of the treasures in the museum check out their website www.textilemuseum.ca

Peggy