October 5, 2019

The Rocky Mountain Quilt Experience

By roads-rus

Judy has been a quilter for 3 years.  This year she felt advanced enough to make the special quilt seen here for her granddaughter.  Judy sent designs she liked for a nursery rhyme quilt to her granddaughter to color and return for Judy to embroider.  Judy proudly showed us how far along she was on this project.  This lucky girl will receive a very special Christmas gift this December.  Ruth told Judy the story of Sue’s bug quilt as we got ready to leave the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden.

 

Golden has improved over the years as a tourist destination, but Ruth and I had not been there since the Coor’s Brewery tour was the only game in town.  We plan to go back for more, but this summer we only had time for one attraction and RMQM won. The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum has accumulated 600 quilts in the past 20 years, so it changes all displays every 3 months.  You probably won’t see the historic Amish and Mennonite quilts Ruth and I enjoyed or the quilt above from a private collection that featured many Hawaiian quilts.  That’s one of them just above showing a white crown and 2 flags.  You will, however, see an interesting show called British Style:  English Paper Pieced Quilts if you visit between October 21, 2019, and January 18, 2020.  Not being a huge quilt fan like Ruth, I didn’t know that paper quilts existed.  Judy educated me by taking us next door to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum’s library and showing us 2 paper quilts hanging in the entry hall.  I especially liked the chocolate themed one.

In Golden since 1990 and recently moved from downtown to Violet Street for more space, RMQM’s library has more than 6,000 resources about quilting including how-to books, historic pamphlets, etc.   It’s opened to the public.  Regular Sunday lectures on quilt history and techniques are offered.  As it preserves the art of quilting and accumulates more historic and modern quilts, RMQM lives up to the words on its brochure, “No Two Quilts are Alike”.

I also learned that Mennonite quilts are more colorful and elaborate than Amish quilts.  Mennonites also use more patterns and are not as insular as the Amish.  The quilt above made in 1915 featuring a Mennonite Whig Rose clearly shows the difference.  What they share is commitments to their faiths.

Hank

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
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