This month's Past Perfect post focuses on Carter Houck, who recently passed away in Virginia after
a long career writing about quilts and needlework.
Carter Mason Greene Houck Holt (1924-2020)
I don't know that Carter sewed quilts but she certainly influenced a generation of quiltmakers with her books on historical quilts.
And especially in her nearly 20-year run editing the magazine
Lady's Circle Patchwork Quilts
Each issue took readers on a regional tour of museums and introduced us to
quilters who were influencing their areas.
She and photographer Myron Miller showed us how to stage a quilt shot.
Carter & Myron on a book tour in 1975
Patterns in the back of the book were well-drawn...
and must have
inspired many to attempt a traditional design.
Carter Mason Green was born in Fauquier County, Virginia growing up with dreams during the Depression and World War II of "Seventh Avenue, New York's fashion center. "But it didn't happen that way." Her first jobs during the war were less glamorous working for New York pattern companies.
1950
Living in Texas and raising two children after the war she wrote a needlework column for the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
In the 1960s she had a column in Parents magazine and at the beginning of
the 1970s quilt boom owned a fabric shop in Darien, Connecticut. She began
Lady's Circle Patchwork Quilts in 1974.
In the 1980s she married her second husband A. Grant Holt of Darien.
He'd been a housewares manufacturer.
Perhaps you collect Pixie Ware.
They moved to the Catskill Mountains where Carter loved to ski.
https://quiltershalloffame.net/carter-houck/