The final two Quilt Documentation Days will take place on Saturday, July 25 in the parish house of St. James Episcopal Church, Mill Creek Hundred, 2106 St. James Church Road, Wilmington, DE, 19808; and Saturday, August 29 at the Milford Senior Center, 111 Park Ave., Milford, DE 19963. Both sessions will take place between 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

The sessions will provide owners of quilts made before 1945 with their last chance to participate in this informative documentation process which involves photographing each quilt, recording its physical characteristics, and gathering historical information about the quilt and/or the quilt-maker. There is no cost to quilt-owners for this process and admission is free of charge.

After the documentation process has been completed, data will be compiled and analyzed and a book featuring the most representative and historically important quilts will be printed. The project is also hoping to mount a traveling exhibition of selected quilts which will be displayed in each of Delaware's three counties.

The Delaware Quilt Documentation Project is a collaborative effort between the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs (HCA) and the University of Delaware. Information gathered in the project will be submitted to The Quilt Index, a national data base maintained by The Alliance for American Quilts. The project is supported, in part, by grants from the Delaware Humanities Forum and the National Quilting Association; a gift from the Helping Hands Quilt Guild of Dover; and private donations.

"Delaware quilts run the gamut" provides an inside perspective on the Delaware Quilt Documentation Project provided by its coordinators—Frances Whitaker Mayhew, Ph.D., Associate Professor for Fashion and Apparel Studies at the University of Delaware; and Ann Baker Horsey, Curator of Collections for the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs.

For a photographic sampling of quilts examined during the Delaware Quilt Documentation Project, click here.

For a photographic sampling of quilts in the collections of the State of Delaware, click here.

"Cracking the Numbers Code" is presented in conjunction with "First Saturday in the First State," a monthly series of events sponsored by the First State Heritage Park at Dover. Admission for all programs is free and open to the public. For additional information, call the Delaware Visitor Center at (302) 739-4266.

The Johnson Victrola Museum, located at 375 S. New St., between North St. and Bank Lane, in Dover, Delaware, highlights the life and achievements of Delaware's native son, Eldridge Reeves Johnson, founder of the Victor Talking Machine Company. Through phonographs, memorabilia, trademarks, objects, and paintings, the museum showcases Johnson, his company, and the development of the sound-recording industry.

The exhibition presents ceramics made in England, Germany, and early America including a wide array of stoneware vessels for drinking, dining, and storage from the 17th and 18th centuries. Items range from utilitarian jugs to decorative teapots used by Americans from the time of the first settlement to 1800.

HCA items in the exhibit include a pipkin recovered from HMB DeBraak, a British naval vessel that sank off the coast of Lewes, Delaware in 1798; and a German-made mineral water bottle recovered from the Roosevelt Inlet Shipwreck, thought to be the remains of a British commercial ship that sank off Lewes' Roosevelt Inlet in the late 18th century.

Completed in 1858 and first lit on August 1, 1859, Fenwick Island Lighthouse helped to protect shipping from the treacherous Fenwick sand shoals that extend several miles into the Atlantic Ocean off the Delaware coast. The lighthouse is unusual in that the outer brick tower is conical, while a second inner brick tower is an 8-foot diameter cylinder. The lighthouse sits exactly on the eastern origin of the Mason-Dixon Line. Fenwick Island Lighthouse is a property of the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, administered by the New Friends of the Fenwick Island Lighthouse. For additional information, call 302-436-8100.

As is the case every year, the end of June marked an extremely busy season for the team as it worked to complete HCA's fiscal year-end accounting closeout. As is also the case, the team again completed the closeout in an efficient and timely manner.