Friday, February 7, 2014

Lost in Austen

I am the curator of a traveling quilt exhibit entitled "Notable Women Quilt Initiative" that is set to be shown at Southern Oregon University during March, 2014 in honor of Women's History Month.  Quilts are being entered from all over the US and other countries.  My quilt entered for this exhibit is entitled "Lost in Austen" in honor of Jane Austen, celebrated English novelist who lived from 1775 to 1817.

Even though Jane has been deceased for almost 200 years, there are over 16.5 Million hits on a Google search under her name.  In addition, there are over 15,000 entries on Amazon.com for her books and sequels, greater than 250 movie versions and close to 200 audio books.  Jane only wrote six novels in her lifetime, two which were published posthumously.  Quite a number of achievements for a single woman from a small country town in Hampshire, England.




All six of Jane's books are situated on a bookshelf with a pastel of Jane that was done by her sister, Cassandra.  Jane's famous profile is pictured on the top right.  The bottom left utilizes a photo of Chawton Cottage (now Jane Austen's Museum House), the last residence of Jane.  Lastly, a letter that Jane wrote to Cassandra in 1813 about the publication of Pride and Prejudice was typed in TrueType Jane Austen Font and printed on fabric.  (The photo of Chawton Cottage printed on fabric, used with permission by citation, from Randomduck, Creative Commons Attribute - Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.)

I am a big believer in using the back of the quilt as an additional canvas for the quilt label, the quilt story, the quilt process, and/or to add items related to the quilt front that just didn't fit there.  Below are photos of this quilt's back.   The full back so the wonderful Jane Austen fabric designed by Kelly Brookshire can be seen with the quilt labels and the photos of C.E. Brock prints from 1895 used in Jane's books.  The closeup photos of the two labels tell the story of Jane Austen and the story of the making of the quilt.