Hand pieced. Hand quilted in an undulating pattern that echoes the movement of the ocean.
Gift of The New England Quilters' Guild with funding provided by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1983.01

Archipelago is the first quilt in the collection of the New England Quilt Museum. Nancy's original design features houses and trees on the islands off the coast of Maine where artists live and find inspiration.

This quilt contains twenty blocks, all different, and each displaying a high mastery of appliqué and embroidery. The blocks are set in double concentric circles of blue and gold. To complete the quilt it is bordered by an elegant vine which is embellished with a profusion of fruits and flowers.

The iconography of the quilt is unique. The central image is of a house, perhaps the family homestead. There is also an image taken from American needlework in the square with the jumping deer. We still do not know who the man on horseback is. Could he be a general from the Mexican American War, or is he the dynamic president of the era, Andrew Jackson?

The star is conceivably the most widespread imagery used in American quiltmaking. The eight-pointed star appears in quilts around 1820 and after 1840 innumerable variations on star patterns were made. This quilt is so dramatic because the maker chose to use a dark and patterned background which makes the stars seem to vibrate on its surface. Blue and Brown were favorite color combinations for quilts in the early nineteenth century. This quilt contains a variety of mill prints from the Pennsylvania mills. Next to New England, Pennsylvania had the biggest cotton manufacture in the United States.

This is a carefree piece, about enjoying life and the moment. It is a whole cloth quilted painting. The artist has attached painted slide mounts to the quilt and backed each one with a scrap of fabric depicting a person, object or scene that could be viewed through a window.

Victorian Crazy quilts were frequently embellished with commemorative ribbons. Through their study one can learn about the maker and her family. Blanche Staples made this quilt when she was a young woman and signed it in the corner using a multicolored silk floss. A silk bandanna from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair serves as the quilt's central medallion. It is balanced at the four corners by side corners cut from a handkerchief containing the flags of many nations. Someone, maybe Blanche's mother, gave her a souvenir ribbon from the Women's Pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 to sew into her quilt. Her father had political leanings, and perhaps offered Blanche the ribbon, which promoted Frederick T. Greenhalge's successful candidacy for Congress. Her parents were active Baptists and probably bought her the Adoniram Judson Centennial ribbon at Malden's First Baptist Church in 1888.

This quilt is a fine example of an early New England high-style quilt. As are many New England quilts of this era, the corners are cut to fit a four-poster bed. The quilt contains an array of luxury fabrics including toiles, indigo blue resists and chintzes. The chintz used for the borders is called a pillar print because of the neoclassical design references.