Powerhouse Museum
Here's a fun museum for your online travels.
The Powerhouse Museum is located in Sydney, Australia and has an interesting, and very extensive, variety of online exhibits available. For example, they have a great kids section where you can print templates to make a 1921 Outback Farm out of cardboard! The barn, dairy, stable and even the people, animals and equipment. What a hoot!
Oh, in case anyone's curious I really should include the link: Outback Farm!
One of the more spectacular items they have is an electronic swatchbook of hundreds of swatches from the 19th and early 20th century. All you have to do is flip through the online swatchbook and you can see actual, not reproduction, examples of these great fabrics.
Here's the link to the swatchbook: Powerhouse Museum's Electronic Swatchbook
Here are a couple examples of their fabrics from 1893/4, 1849 and 1923 respectively:
They also have about 50 quilt histories available. Each one is worth reading if you're interested in the stories associated with the quilt and the quilter. The attention to detail in this museum's research is truly stunning. Even though there are about 50 histories online there are about half that many images of the quilts. Their images, however, are great. You can zoom in on the quilts!
But you can't cut and paste any of the pictures, unfortunately, becuase of this zooming ability. So I have the link for you to Aunt Clara's Quilt, from about 1890, that has 21 sub-images as well. All the other quilts are listed to the right of the quilt history.
Powerhouse Museum - Quilts Online
There are different quilt types here, including the famous wagga(!) as well as a beautiful one made from the uniforms of the British 90th Regiment of Foot, about 1880. Again, I can't show the picture but here's an except from their excellent notes: "There is an English quilting tradition of men making quilts from soldiers' uniforms which, prior to the introduction of khaki after the Boer war, provided a good supply of colourful woollen materials."
Whoever organizes and maintains this site is brilliant. Absolutely great site.
Best,
Fiona
The Powerhouse Museum is located in Sydney, Australia and has an interesting, and very extensive, variety of online exhibits available. For example, they have a great kids section where you can print templates to make a 1921 Outback Farm out of cardboard! The barn, dairy, stable and even the people, animals and equipment. What a hoot!
Oh, in case anyone's curious I really should include the link: Outback Farm!
One of the more spectacular items they have is an electronic swatchbook of hundreds of swatches from the 19th and early 20th century. All you have to do is flip through the online swatchbook and you can see actual, not reproduction, examples of these great fabrics.
Here's the link to the swatchbook: Powerhouse Museum's Electronic Swatchbook
Here are a couple examples of their fabrics from 1893/4, 1849 and 1923 respectively:
They also have about 50 quilt histories available. Each one is worth reading if you're interested in the stories associated with the quilt and the quilter. The attention to detail in this museum's research is truly stunning. Even though there are about 50 histories online there are about half that many images of the quilts. Their images, however, are great. You can zoom in on the quilts!
But you can't cut and paste any of the pictures, unfortunately, becuase of this zooming ability. So I have the link for you to Aunt Clara's Quilt, from about 1890, that has 21 sub-images as well. All the other quilts are listed to the right of the quilt history.
Powerhouse Museum - Quilts Online
There are different quilt types here, including the famous wagga(!) as well as a beautiful one made from the uniforms of the British 90th Regiment of Foot, about 1880. Again, I can't show the picture but here's an except from their excellent notes: "There is an English quilting tradition of men making quilts from soldiers' uniforms which, prior to the introduction of khaki after the Boer war, provided a good supply of colourful woollen materials."
Whoever organizes and maintains this site is brilliant. Absolutely great site.
Best,
Fiona
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