More book reviews from Quilter's Muse

More Book Reviews at Quilter's Muse

September 2006

by Patricia Cummings

Feed Sacks in Georgia by Ruth Rhoades (Kearney, Nebraska: Morris Publishing, 2006)

Feedsack in Georgia bookcover

The first thing I noticed about this book is its compact size that is easy to hold in one's hands. Author Ruth Rhoades has combined a paper, that she originally wrote for the American Quilt Study Group, with additional information on feedsack that she has been collecting.

Rhoades is a retired math and business teacher and has been an avid collector of feedsack fabric since the early 1970s. Of feedsack and its users, Rhoades says:

May this part of our history be preserved. It shows a hard-working people who were basically poor, but happy. May we learn character, discipline, and standards from them, as well as an appreciation for their ability to create such beauty in a time when life had few material luxuries.

This well-documented book is jam-packed full of facts and photos that one will not find elsewhere readily. If you love feedsack and its history, you need this book!

To order send a check or money order for $9.00, plus $1.50 postage, per copy. Add $1. postage for each additional copy. Address: Ruth Rhoades, Rt. 2, Box 2347, Eastanollee, GA 30538.

A Common Thread...Quilts in the Yakima Valley. Text by Diana McLachlan; drawings by Felicia Holtzinger. Yakima Valley Museum & Historical Association, 1985.

Beautiful quilts in both color photos and sepia toned ones abound in this historical overview of quilts from the Yakima Valley. Many of the quilts' names are recognizable, such as "Presidential Wreath," "LeMoyne Star," and "Kansas Troubles." Other quilts are quite unusual, original designs, or are variations on a theme. A marvelous close-up of a Crazy Quilt pictorial scene appears on page 30. Pictures of quilters also are shown in this book, as are short poems. This book of nineteenth century quilts and their history is as refreshing as an open window.

The Rape of the Turin Shroud: how Christianity's most precious relic was wrongly condemned and violated by William Meacham, published by Lulu.com, 2005.

The name of this book says it all. The book describes how a cloth relic once thought to be mysterious, with its haunting image of the face of Christ, was at first dismissed as a medieval "fake," and later "suffered major damage in an ill-advised and secret restoration." The current investigations have been "condemned by Shroud researchers as a conservation and scientific disaster."

The author is an archaeologist at the University of Hong Kong whose investigations of the Turin Shroud were published in the prestigious journal, Current Anthropology.