Paul Pilgrim Honored

Paul Pilgrim's Dresden Garden quilt has received an honor! Here's the notice:

    "Recently I was notified that the Cotton Council International, a non- profit organization that promotes the export of U.S. cotton, has chosen Paul Pilgrims “Dresden Garden Quilt’’ as the quilt to represent their new PR campaign. Their theme, ‘’American Quilts ‘’ Cotton US.

The new campaign targets China as well as all other countries in order to stimulate trade with the U.S.

“Dresden Garden” is in the collection of The National Quilt Museum, Paducah, Ky. It was chosen out of the entire collection by the Cotton Council representatives.

Needless to say I am thrilled and can only imagine how he would feel. After fifteen years he is still contributing and obviously his work is still meaningful.

I had to share this with everyone who knew him and with everyone else as well.

Gerald Roy"   

Good for you, Paul! And good for you too, Jerry, since I know your work often influenced and accented each other. The words 'Pilgrim/Roy Collection' are an honor any textile would be proud to wear.    

   This quilt is from Paul's posthumous sampler book, Blending the Old & New: Quilts by Paul D. Pilgrim, co-authored by his partner, Gerald Roy. An amazing book, both for working with antique blocks (Paul incorporated them into his work, adding antique and modern fabrics as needed) and for expanding on the sampler style. The book's been out for years, but is still breaking new design grounds. One of the most inspiring quilt titles I've ever read...and continue to learn from.

I have to admit, though: my heart still belongs to another quilt from the same book, Paul's Old Blocks Expanded, shown below:

LOVE the positive/negative setting here. (The secret is in treating the sashing the same as the 'plain' squares, including quilting them to resemble Nine Patch blocks. See my variation on this, "Golden Years," in Quilts of the Golden West.)
     Paul's life was cut tragically short; we're lucky to have his quilts to learn from, but I still wish that he was around. It would be fascinating to see his latest work!