Saving Our Quilting Heritage One Quilt At a Time

Nancy Kirk is on a mission to save America's quilts. A new set of DVDs teach quilters to restore antique quilts and helps families save their heirloom treasures.

Omaha, NE (PRWEB) October 22, 2004 -- Nancy Kirk is on a mission, to save the worlds quilts one quilt at a time. She has released a new DVD set on Quilt Restoration to train as many quilt restorers as possible to help in this effort and is teaching two Quilt Restoration Workshops in October in Omaha, NE.

The DVD can be ordered at www.kirkcollection.com, a website which also has free information on how to help preserve family quilts. The live workshops are detailed on-line at www.quiltrestoration.com. Interested stitchers can also contact Nancy Kirk in Omaha at 800-398-2542. The live workshops cover restoration techniques, fabric dating, quilt history and business practices. The Advanced Workshop looks at the special problems of restoring Victorian Crazy Quilts, a special quilt type which has complex embroidery and many types of fragile fabrics like silks and velvets.

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 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.

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 leave evidence of the fire showing because that is part of the quilts history." In the case of a museum piece, this can help document events the object survived.

Restorers on the other hand, are generally asked to make grandmas 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 5 million quilts with damage and less than a few dozen restorers working professionally," 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."

In addition to the 4-disc DVD set which is available from quilt shops, bookstores or on-line at www.kirkcollection.com, Kirk also offers in-person training. Upcoming workshops are scheduled for April 6-10, 2005. Workshop details and registration forms are available at www.quiltrestoration.com or by calling The Kirk Collection, 800-398-2542.

Ms. Kirk has been restoring quilts for 14 years and offering workshops and conferences on quilt restoration for the past 10 years. She is the owner of The Kirk Collection which specializes in teaching, design and appraising quilts. Nancy serves as president of the Quilt Heritage Foundation, a non-profit organization which sponsors The Crazy Quilt Society and the Quilt Preservation Society. She has appeared four times on Simply Quilts" on HGTV, and is the author of numerous articles in national quilting magazines and is a popular speaker at national quilting conferences.

The Kirk Collection

P.O. Box 19266 Omaha, NE 68119

(800) 398-2542 FAX (402) 934-9970

E-mail:kirkcoll@aol.com www.kirkcollection.com

Quilts - Lectures - Workshops - Design - Appraisals

For photos or additional information call Nancy Kirk (800) 398-2542

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