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Show Saving Our Quilting Heritage One Quilt At A Time OMAHA, NE - Nancy Kirk is on a mission, to save America's quilts one quilt at a time. But she's hoping to find some allies in the effort and is holding two Quilt Restoration Workshops in Omaha in April. She has also released a DVD set on Quilt Restoration to train as many quilt restorers as possible. The DVD can be ordered at www.kirkcollection.com, a website web-site which also has free information informa-tion on how to preserve family quilts. The April workshops include a Beginning Quilt Restoration Workshop Apr. 6-7, and an Advanced Workshop focusing on Victorian Crazy Quilts on Apr. 9-10, all to be held at the Scott Conference Center in Omaha. There is a field trip planned to the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, Neb., on Apr. 8. Registration details can be found on-line at www.quiltrestoration.com or by calling The Kirk Collection at 1-800-398-2542. The six-hours of lessons on the DVD set cover simple and complex repairs and issues in quilt history, fabric dating, cleaning, storage and safe display dis-play options for quilts. "Before you can restore an antique quilt you need a good idea of what it looked like when it was first made" according to Kirk. Restorers are generally most concerned with restoring the visual and structural integrity of a quilt that has been damaged. The Advanced Restoration Workshop will be available on DVD in April. "Restorers are different from conservators," explained Kirk. "The job of the conservator is to maintain an historic artifact in its current condition for another 150 years. But if the quilt was damaged in a fire, they will usually usu-ally leave evidence of the fire showing because that is part of the quilt's history." In the case of a museum piece, this can help document events the object survived. sur-vived. Restorers on the other hand, are generally asked to make grandma's quilt look good again after too much washing or too much love. Professional restorers charge $25-$50 an hour in most parts of the country. "But there are an estimated five million quilts with damage and less than a few dozen restorers working professionally," profes-sionally," said Kirk. So it is a wide open field. People who enter the field need good basic sewing skills and a passion for quilt history. "A good imagination helps too," explained Kirk. "As a restorer, you have to be able to see what is no longer there - because every damaged quilt has lost something. It has lost fabric, lost stitching, lost batting, lost color. So a good imagination is a great asset to envision what the quilt used to look like." Workshop details and registration regis-tration forms are available at www.quiltrestoration.com or by calling The Kirk Collection, 800-398-2542. |