The first 1970s quilt I bought reminded me of my childhood, especially summers spent at the community pool. As I accumulated more quilts—many made from polyester double-knit fabrics—the critics had plenty to say. People would actually make faces when I talked about polyester quilts. I didn’t care. I was enthralled. When I started bringing the quilts to show-and-tell with the local quilt guild, they were better appreciated. Part of that was generational—the group had a sense of Modern art, and the quilts’ aesthetic prompted a certain nostalgia in people who had come of age in the 1970s.

“I map the state where I live and document an internal and external landscape. I work with cloth and with piecing and quilting because of their references to human scale, human touch, and human occupation. With image and stitch I communicate the beauty and diversity of Nebraska, revealed over time and across distance. I want to attend to what is unseen as well as to what is visible, and value what is lost as well as what persists.”

-Elizabeth Ingraham

Something quilted this way comes . . .

The International Quilt Museum will share some of its most boo-tiful and spook-tacular pieces in “The Haunting of Quilt House,” a pop-up exhibit celebrating Halloween, October 27-29.

In addition to viewing specially selected pieces, there will be a scavenger hunt available, with answers hidden in the quilts. Visitors who come wearing their Halloween costumes will receive free admission and they can Trick or Treat at the front desk on their way out.

In the 1820s and 1830s, American quilts were increasingly made from pieced blocks—generally squares made up of smaller squares or triangles. American quiltmakers introduced the practice of alternating pieced blocks with un-pieced blocks made of a solid color or a single print, and set these elements straight (perpendicular to the edges of the quilt) or “on-point” (at 45° angles). Blocks were then attached to each other, or to strips of fabric called “sashing.” Unlike earlier quilts, which often featured multiple borders, block-style quilts generally had single borders or none at all.

Patchwork holds a special place in the folk art of Central Asia. In this region of diverse people, cultures, and landscapes, the act of sewing pieces of cloth together can be both sacred and commonplace. Everyday objects gain beauty through the display of plentiful fabrics, but they also acquire a mystical quality. Central Asians have long honored the power of talismans to guard against illness and malevolent spirits, fashioning protective amulets from patchwork and other textiles.

Founded in Britain in 1985 to develop and promote the quilt as an art form, the Quilt Art group currently includes artists from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, the Netherlands, and the United States. Small Talk—one of two 30th anniversary exhibitions—celebrates the possibilities of the textile form and surface. 

The IQM is pleased to present Voltage, a selection of quilts by Erica Waaser. “I construct my quilts,” says Waaser, a native of Germany and an architect. Waaser considers her studio practice both an offshoot and an antidote to her day job in an engineering profession focused on design and function.

Old World Quilts transports us to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an age of burgeoning global commerce and cultural exchange. Here you will view some of the earliest textiles from the International Quilt Museum’s collection. In this era, Europe’s desire for goods from unfamiliar, “exotic” Asian cultures led to unprecedented growth in overseas trade, which also fueled a boom in domestic manufacturing and fed a growing consumer mentality.

Kathleen Caraccio was born in the Bronx, New York in 1947. As a child, she was fluent in an “old world language” of needlework and manual dexterity, and remembers her parents’ support for her artistic inclinations as a kind of indulgence. In the 1960s, Caraccio’s artistic focus shifted to printmaking and works on paper, but she never lost her affinity for textiles.

The “Tucson Sector” encompasses most of the state of Arizona, including 262 miles of its border with Mexico. This territory, designated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is part of the Sonoran desert—an ecologically diverse, spectacular landscape of rough terrain and extreme conditions. Water sources are scarce. Temperatures frequently rise above 100 degrees and fall below freezing at night. Violence on both sides of the border—at the hands of “coyotes” (human smugglers), sex traffickers, and Border Patrol agents—is also a threat.