Quilt Trip to Kansas City

Last weekend, I met up with Dorry in Kansas City. On Friday we took in the Kansas City Regional Quilt Show, but I'm not going to post photos of that. Instead, we're going to visit the National WWI Museum and Liberty Memorial, which we did on Saturday.

The Memorial was funded and erected by the people of Kansas City. The site was dedicated in a 1921 ceremony that included the Supreme Allied Commanders, and the Egyptian Revival-style monument was finished in 1926.

 The two sphinx that flank the tower cover their faces to shield their eyes from the horrors of war and the uncertainty of the future. 

The platform affords a beautiful view of the city.

Two halls were the extent of the museum's display space until the state-of-the-art larger museum was built under the tower.

  

One of the many remarkable features of the new museum is this display of poppies under a transparent walkway.

 

The museum is the only one in the world dedicated to the entire history of the war and is well worth the visit.  We spent one day there but your ticket is good for two days. I didn't realize until too late they also have an extensive library that is open to the public by appointment during the week for research.

The timing of our trip was the display of 24 quilts made from the design and story of Denniele Bohannan and Janice Britz' book, Where Poppies Grow, which was published as a free Block of the Month quilt in the Kansas City Star and has also been published as a book. 

 

Here are a couple of photos I took of the display on Saturday.

  

In the photo above, you see one that's smaller - it does not have the appliqued wreaths of leaves.  In the one below, one quilt is much smaller because it was made at a smaller scale - That takes a quilter who truly loves precision piecing.

That one got a lot of admiring comments, as mine did for the hand dyed fabric and the quilting. 


I've posted photos of my finished quilt, but it was special to see it hanging with the others in this place for the 100 year anniversary of the war.

This is actually the first quilt I have made following a pattern but I felt that Denniele's colors and setting were too good to be tampered with, and the white space was a great place to show off some fancy quilting.  The viewers did seem to enjoy seeing the different uses of fabrics and design in the various quilts. The book included an on-point setting of the blocks with no applique that also made a beautiful quilt - just barely visible at the end of the row pictured below. (Sorry, I only had my cell phone to take photos!)

Here's my quilt's label 

The North Carolina provenance also caused remarks, but Dorry's quilt gathered crowds.  Her unique setting was interesting to many viewers who kept her standing there to talk about why her quilt was so different from the rest.  

Dorry's quilt was made to honor the service of her Grandfather, James Patrick Coughlan, who was wounded at Gallipoli while serving with the ANZAC forces.

This is the best photo I took of her quilt - she has better ones on her blog in these posts - The first one explains how she incorporated symbols that relate to ANZAC into a design with the same set of blocks the rest of us used.  http://colvinkiwiquilts.blogspot.com/2015/04/an-anzac-day-tribute-poppies-for-jpc.html This more recent post has her finished quilt with closeups of the quilting designs. http://colvinkiwiquilts.blogspot.com/2015/06/where-poppies-grow-on-exhibit.html