Daily Sitka Sentinel

Sitka Quilter Displays Her 70 Antique Quilts

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer

Quilter and quilt collector Charlotte Candelaria had her own “two” to add following the Ocean Wave Quilters annual quilt show.

“Since the theme of this year’s show was Two/To/Too, I thought, how about a second show?” Candelaria said.

Her show “70 for 70” opened Thursday in Whitmore Hall on the Sitka Fine Arts Camp campus. She has already had dozens of visitors stopping by the historic dormitory, where the quilt show banner still hangs.

Charlotte Candelaria

Candelaria turned 70 in March of this year and as a quilt enthusiast and collector thought it might be fun to hang 70 of her mostly antique quilts. Janine Holzman suggested having a show for those quilts on the heels of the annual Ocean Wave show, since the hangers are still in place.

The 70 for 70 show will be up through the weekend, 5 to 8 p.m. tonight and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.

Candelaria said the quilts on display were collected over the years, and the history is known of some but not all. The oldest goes back to the Civil War period.

Candelaria first started quilting when her daughter, Alexis, tactfully pointed out that some of her friends were receiving quilts for graduation. Candelaria learned how to quilt, and made one for her daughter.

“And that led to seeing quilts everywhere,” Candelaria said. She started collecting them from antique stores, estate sales and garage sales, and they all “seemed to need homes.”

“Even word of mouth,” she said. “People would ask, ‘do you know anyone who wants an old quilt? No one wants it.’ I’d love to make every quilt in the world, but there’s no way. I just keep collecting them. Joining ‘quilters anonymous’ isn’t working for me - I just keep collecting them.”

Candelaria said Holzman, who hangs the annual Ocean Wave quilt show, helped her on where to place each one since she knows the wall sizes of each of the rooms and hallways in Whitmore.

The works on display reflect the changes in styles, techniques and popular colors over more than a hundred years of quiltmaking. She pointed to a “whole cloth” quilt with a single color on each side, a design popular with Amish quiltmakers, and another featuring dogwood flowers that was made from a quilt kit from a 1927 pattern.

“These kits were popular up though the ’60s, because you didn’t have to pick your fabric, a lot of people have trouble with colors, and it came with everything,” Candelaria said.

She can also tell visitors which ones were stitched or quilted by hand, and some of the names of the colors, such as “arsenic,” “turkey” and “Nile.”

“They say, ‘every quilt needs a little blood’ – it reflects hard work and your finger pokes,” Candelaria said. “So a number of these have blood on them.”

Even if she doesn’t have the complete history of every quilt, she can share her connection with them, and how they came into her possession. One of the quilts came to her from Audrey Curran, who was moving with the Coast Guard; another, a quilt of 2,335 small squares, she purchased in an auction from the estate of Sue Falkner, an Ocean Wave quilter who died in 2020 and donated quilts and fabrics to the guild.

“I’ve always wanted to make one of these but I won’t live long enough to do that,” Candelaria said.

The auction raised some $7,000 for student scholarships.

One quilt on display in the foyer of Whitmore came from Candelaria’s mother when she was in a hand-quilting group at a senior center in Springfield, Oregon. The pieced pattern is called “Snake in the Grass,” and the group hand-quilted it.

“She thought it was ugly and I said, ‘oh mom, I love it,” and Candelaria kept it.

Does she have a favorite?

“It changes all the time,” she said.