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.

Throughout western India, people make quilts for practical reasons: to have something to sleep under, to hang in doorways, to augment dowries, to sell. They make quilts for personal reasons, as well: to document daily life, to offer as gifts, to signal group affiliation or individuality. The quilts in this exhibition were made by women and men from towns and villages across the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. These craftspeople come from varied geographic, economic, and social backgrounds, but all value quiltmaking for the creative outlet it provides.

Liberian quiltmaking is a transatlantic tradition. American immigrants, many of them freed slaves and free-born black people, first brought their sewing and quilting skills to West Africa in 1820. They continued to practice patchwork and appliqué as they settled and helped build what would become the country of Liberia, which declared its independence in 1847.

Valerie Goodwin is a mixed-media fiber artist whose background as an architect plays a key role in her work. Her quilts are inspired by real and imaginary maps of landscapes and cities. Her compositions work on a number of levels, from close up and far away, as if an aerial view. Surface detail is created using hand and machine stitching.

Stitched Textiles from West and Central Africa