Sue Spargo’s unique folk-art imagery reflects her multi-cultural background and her fascination with folk art from around the world. Her inspiration comes from memories of her childhood in South Africa with its distinctive environment and animals and her subsequent time in the green meadows of southern England. 

In 2007, twelve quilt artists from around the world, linked only by shared communication via the Internet, came together to challenge themselves artistically.  Each member of Twelve by Twelve: International Art Quilt Challenge took turns setting a theme or color palette for their group to use as inspiration for a piece made in a standard 12-inch size. (In 2012, the size changed to 20” by 12”.) After multiple projects they set their final challenge’s unveiling for December 12, 2012.

Feed sack is a catch-all term for any cloth bag that contains a variety of dry goods.This type of bag has many names: feed sack, feed bag, cloth commodity bag. Ingenious and thrifty quilters, seamstresses, home sewists and children re-used the cloth to create quilts, clothes, bedding, decor and accessories that exemplify the era.

The International Quilt Museum’s exhibition, “Stitching and Sharing Culture: Molas from Panama’s Guna People” will feature complex textiles that share the rich imagery, both indigenous and cross-cultural, that Guna women have long incorporated into their stitched handiwork. The exhibition is being curated by University of Nebraska-Lincoln students in Anthropology 292: Special Topics, with help from students from Saitama University (Saitama, Japan), who will participate in a two-week internship at the IQM in early September.

For nearly 30 years Katie Pasquini Masopust has produced high quality contemporary art quilts that have been coveted and collected by a broad range of admirers. From her early beginnings as a painter dabbling in traditional quiltmaking, her work has evolved from structured mandalas and mind-blowing dimensional pieces to painterly landscapes and abstracts executed with the finest fabrics and most creative stitching techniques. This exhibition will feature a range of work from this prolific artist.

October 20, 2023 - May 4, 2024
Von Seggern Gallery

Italian artist Annamaria Brenti has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Florence. While living in the U.S. in the 1980s, she became intrigued with quilting, ultimately focusing on pictorial quilts inspired by the Italian landscape and quilts that reference her love of mathematical theory. Her detailed cloth images of the Florentine countryside will be featured in this exhibition.

September 20, 2023 - February 17, 2024
Pumphrey Family Gallery

The ancient maharajas (kings) of northern India wore lavish robes in a variety of styles. In 2016, quiltmaker Geeta Khandelwal of Mumbai, India decided she wanted to make miniature versions of these traditional garments. Inspired by the ceremonial and everyday clothing of the Indian maharajas between the 1750s and the 1950s, Khandelwal dedicated her sewing expertise to creating royal robes that were approximately one-eighth of their original size.

World War I, also referred to as the “Great War,” greatly impacted American quiltmaking.  From April 1917 to March 1919, women created quilts and textiles that read as historic documents, revealing the many ways quiltmakers responded to the war: telling heartbreaking stories of loss, expressing rousing patriotic messages and raising significant funds to support the Red Cross. With their quiltmaking skills, women contributed thousands of quilts for one of the greatest benevolent efforts of the twentieth century.

For the last 3+ years, our world has undergone a traumatic sea change. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced individuals, communities, and entire countries to shift their perspectives, policies, and priorities.