It’s been a year since I last posted on this site. Time really does fly. In the interim, I found a wonderful quilt appraiser, Beverly Dunivent, who agreed to come to Anchorage last October and, like the miller’s daughter in Rumplestiltskin, kept her in a hotel room in Anchorage for two weeks to appraise the vast majority of mom’s quilts. Every day I’d bundle up a stack of quilts and drop them off to Beverly, and pick up the quilts she’d finished appraising. I learned a lot about quilt appraisals, and through Beverly’s eyes, a lot about my mother’s attention to detail and good workmanship. Beverly is a professional appraiser, and she knows a lot about dating fabrics. I was fascinated to learn that a quilt appraisal – for insurance replacement value – starts with the premise that you are determining the cost to re-create the quilt both in materials and time. In my mom’s case, there was also a “premium” for the “fame of the quilter” for most quilts.

Beverly also appraised a number of antique quilts – made by family members or purchased by my mom at antique stores. There are collectors who specialize in certain genres of quilts, which make them more valuable. I’m not a fan of the appliqué quilt kits that my grandmother made, but they were a huge amount of work in terms of hours, and there are collectors out there who appreciate them, so that is reflected in their value. I’ll be posting those quilts later this week.

The quilt appraisals are now a part of my documentation project – one more piece in the puzzle.