Those who love textiles and wish to expand their knowledge about them may want to attend the Textile Arts Symposium 2006 on Thursday, June 22, to Sunday, June 25, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. The event will showcase the museum’s extensive textile collection.

More than 15 artists, authors, curators and educators will give lectures and lead tours at the event.

Deborah Pulliam of Castine, who writes for Piecework magazine and is a needlework historian, will give a lecture at the symposium. Her topic will be “Hand Knitting in New England.” She will use examples from the museum’s holdings and other collections to illustrate her talk. She also will discuss the popularity of Victorian “fancy work.”

Maine artist Marguerite Zorach (1887-1968) will be the subject of the lecture, “Modernizing Tradition: Marguerite Zorach’s Tapestry Paintings,” pictorial compositions stitched in colored wool.

Zorach blended traditional American needlework skills with modern artistic sensibility. She and her husband William Zorach were midcoast Maine residents.

Artists Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade, collaborators for 30 years, who maintain a studio in Edgecomb and create art quilts, will talk about their work. They draw inspiration for their pieces from the New England landscape. Their lecture is titled “Et in Arcadia Ego.”

Other lectures are “Dressing for Summer in New England;” “One Hundred Families: An Introduction to Patchwork Textiles in China;” “Look of the Moment: 100 Years of Changing Fashion in China;” “Tree of Life,” a motif found in cultures around the globe; “Shopping in Paris: Haute Couture in New England;” “Folly Cove Designers;” and “Contemporary Fiber Art in New England.”

Study tours at the symposium are Hawaiian Textiles, American Textile Treasures, Native American Textile Treasures.

Docent tours offered are Painting Summer in New England; Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year-old house transported from China and reassembled at the museum; Museum Highlights; and House Tour: Three Centuries of Salem.

The symposium also offers hands-on workshops on re-creating the Mary Richardson sampler, making a Salem flower basket needle roll, and hand painting on silk.

To learn more about the symposium, the cost to attend and other information, visit www.pem.org, call (978) 745-9500, ext. 3213, or e-mail programs@pem.org.

Snippets

. The St. Croix International Quilters’ Guild, a chapter of the Pine Tree Quilters Guild Inc., in cooperation with the Maine Quilt Heritage committee, will sponsor a Quilt Documentation Day 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday, June 4, at the Downeast Heritage Museum, Union Street, Calais. Quilts made before 1960 will be examined, recorded and photographed for historic purposes. The information and photographs will be retained by the Maine Quilt Heritage committee in a permanent file for future generations. The event is free and no appointment is necessary.

. How about this from a January 1906 issue of the Bangor Daily News: “The William Strange Company of Paterson, N.J., which wove the fabric for Mrs. [Theodore] Roosevelt’s inauguration gown, has woven for Miss Alice Roosevelt the goods to make her wedding gown. The pattern is a brocade of pure white.

“The greatest secrecy has been insisted upon, and the workman who watched the shuttle was given an envelope when the 26 yards were measured by the automatic reel. When he opened the envelope he found his week’s pay as well as a $50 bill. A brief note told him to lay off for a week at the expense of the firm and to keep his lips sealed. The design was then destroyed.” [Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, married Nicholas Longworth on Feb. 17, 1906. Her dress had a 6-foot train.]

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.

Common Threads

Ardeana Hamlin’s By Hand column from Aug. 23, 2005, about aprons inspired Bangor resident Donna Tyree to share related memories.

My son Scott’s elementary school in Michigan offered pupils the chance to shop for Christmas gifts right at the school. The gifts were made by the moms and dads in the PTA and sold for $1 or less.

When Scott was 9, he was particularly impatient for me to open the gift he had given me. He assured me that I would love it. It was an apron made of several layers of green nylon netting sewn to a long piece of green satin ribbon, which served as the waistband and ties. Some sequins were sewed to the netting.

The apron never laid flat and resembled a ballerina’s tutu. I wore the apron that Christmas day and on many other holidays after that.

Scott is now 25 and lives in Indiana. I still have, tucked away in a box, the special apron he gave me.

– Donna Tyree