The Embroiderers’ Guild of America

San Francisco Chapters

The Embroiderers’ Guild of America has a diverse membership from beginners to professionals. Their commonality is an appreciation of the art of stitchery and an insatiable desire to learn and share with fellow stitchers. Chapters offer educational programs and resources such as an informative newsletter, embroidery libraries, embroidery workshops, shorter projects and informal gatherings. See their website for further details.

Open Source Embroidery Show, Oct. 2 — Jan. 24, Museum of Craft and Folk Art, SF, CA, The Open Source Embroidery exhibition presents artworks that use embroidery, thread, and code as a tool for participatory production and distribution. Open Source Embroidery includes workshops and exhibitions that investigate how the open source software development model has been incorporated into the language of cultural participation. This major exhibition brings together individual and collectively made artworks by artists, makers, computer programmers and html users that explore the relationship between craft and code through social and digital networks. The works experiment with interdisciplinary approaches to modifying patterns, the DIY culture of hacking and sampling in sound, GPS and mobile technologies.

The de Young museum, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park
November 14, 2009 — June 6, 2010
This exhibition features approximately 48 full-size and crib quilts dating from the 1880s to the 1940s. Quilts made by girls and women of various Amish communities in Pennsylvania and the Midwest are visual distillations of their way of life. The Amish faith embodies the principles of simplicity, humility, discipline, and community, but their quilts are anything but humble. Using a rich color palette and bold patterns, these quilts are truly a unique contribution to American textile history. The quilts highlight the beauty and complexity of the abstract patterns.

Credit Line
Amish Abstractions: Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The exhibition is supported by The Brown Foundation, Inc.

Button du Jour is head over heels for The British Button Society. Founded in 1976, members receive their quarterly magazine, Button Lines. They also have a page of links to other button collecting sites, including the California State Button Society.

Jenny & Eric provided the Society with an amazing photo page of antique button images. There are buttons with green glass ducks, brass owls, swooning Victorian women clasping dogs to their bosom, Satsuma scenes, pirate ships, railroad buttons and more!

Here is the Antique & Vintage Sewing Machine Virtual Museum with a gallery of over 130 machines in order of country! I am ‘specially enthralled with the toy sewing machines & sock knitters. The toy Vulcan machines are totally cute in either vibrant robins egg blue or poppy red. I wish there machines for grown-ups like these! *sigh*

The National Button Society Beginners Booklet for collectors: how to measure, mount, identify, clean, store your button collection, and more! Written and compiled by Jocelyn Howells of the National Button Society.

National Button Society

San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
August 4 through October 25, 2009
408.971.0323
The World According to Joyce Gross: Quilts from the Dolph Briscoe Center
A selection of 30 important historical quilts & quilt-related ephemera from the collection amassed by Joyce Gross over 35 years. Includes 30 important quilts dating from 1845 to 1980, with an emphasis on appliqué quilts.

San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
Aug 4 through Oct 25, 2009
Fabric Tattoos: Spirit of the The Mola
Molas are a traditional Panamanian textile created by the Kuna people of the San Blas islands and worn in their costumes. They are created using a unique reverse appliqué technique, where the layers of colored cotton cloth are turned under to reveal the colors in the layers below.

San Francisco Quilters Guild meetings
Third Tuesday of each month at 7:15pm
The Chinese Seventh Day Adventist Church, 7777 Geary Blvd. (entrance on 42nd Ave), San Francisco, CA.
Guests pay $5 admission. All levels of quilters are welcome.

The Arnaldo Caprai Virtual Museum of Textile Arts is an online museum devoted to the textile arts, with the ability to search by period, typology, technique, provenance and keyword. Here is a beautiful Italian doily depicting a winged child astride a four-legged animal, made using the punto Venezia technique, and created between 1890 and 1910.