While visiting a Kingston Heirloom Quilters member, Phyllis Vanhorne, she showed me a magazine clipping of a quilt she had made.
I remembered the quilt as very distinctive – it had silhouettes of life-sized cats appliqued all over it. Phyllis said it was a commission for a California artist.
Several weeks later, I researched another project. On the website of the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NB, I ran a search for quilts in its collection from Canada. And there the cat quilt attributed the ‘Quilt Maker’ as ‘Tony Berlant’.
Well, after much investigation with Phyllis and Diane Berry, the story of the making of the ‘Artists’ Quilts’ exhibit in 1981 in California came forth. (And in 1984, at the ‘Agnes’ here in Kingston). We confirmed that Phyllis and Diane, along with Margaret Rhodes and Margaret McLean, made quilts designed by California artists. I continue my research on this story. In the meantime, Carolyn Ducey from the IQM has interviewed both Phyllis and Diane by phone. Thankfully, the the IQM website attributes the women from the Kingston Heirloom Quilters.
They are very modest about their participation but pleased to know their names are now on the quilts they made that are now in the permanent collection of the International Quilt Museum.
