The European Patchwork Meeting convenes every year in Ste-Marie-aux-Mines, in northeastern France, to celebrate the art of quilting. Bordered by Germany and Switzerland, the Alsace region was the birthplace of the Amish movement. In 1693, the followers of Jakob Ammann broke off from their
fellow Anabaptists, and in the early 1900s, many Amish immigrated to Pennsylvania. Today, the Amish are strongly associated with their quilts, which are famous for their bold colors, simple geometry, and fine needlework.

In 1997, I was a master’s student at Indiana University. I had just completed and submitted my application for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s  doctorate program in Textiles, Clothing and Design. My goal was to study quilts with Professor Patricia Crews, a professor doing groundbreaking research in textile history. I wasn’t sure what career path that would lead to,  I was only thinking one step at a time. 

Power, Passion, and Politics was curated by six high school students from Lincoln Public School’s Arts and Humanities Focus Program. Each member of the Politics and Government class, taught by John Clark, selected a politically- or socially-themed quilt from the permanent collection of the International Quilt Museum. Students were able to engage with the quilts in person before writing their labels. Each student composed text contextualizing and explaining the importance of the quilt they selected.

Today, quilt collectors and aficionados know the bright, yellow-orange fabrics that were staples of late nineteenth-century quilts as “cheddar.” The color became especially prevalent in the parts of the United States that were settled by German immigrants: southeastern Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. 

Arts and Humanities is one of Lincoln Public School’s five focus programs. Inspired by their October 2017 visit to the International Quilt Museum—and especially by “The Haunting of Quilt House,” a Halloween pop-up exhibit—students from Arts and Humanities went on to create a “quilt” made from individual paper collages.

During the decades following World War II (1941-45), the United States launched space ships, built modern suburbs, emerged as an industrial giant, and looked toward even greater accomplishments in the future. But as 1976 and the Bicentennial approached, the American people also regained an interest in their personal and collective national heritage. A revived popular interest in quiltmaking and its historical roots were manifestations of this nostalgia.

British artist Pauline Burbidge creates rich depictions of nature through her mastery of textiles. Her pieces express both distant horizons and intimate details of nature that inspire a sense of spirituality and connection she feels deeply.

“(My) work is made by the fusing together of textiles and the natural world and the combining of elements so that you can hardly see the difference… the landscape is in the room with you.”

Artists have long used their crafts to help them come to terms with grief and sorrow. The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch’s searing remembrance of his dying sister Sophie in The Sick Child comes to mind. Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, composed by the Estonian Arvo Part, is a soulful dirge punctuated by tolling bells and darkly colored by Part’s experience of Soviet oppression. These artists, and many more, have made their pain palpable to viewers and listeners through their creative work.

Quilts and other heirloom textiles are important artifacts that can represent the history of a person, a family, a community, or a country. Preserving them is a way to maintain an important link to the past. Unfortunately, there are many agents, both natural and human-made, that can slowly (or quickly!) destroy these pieces of our history. The exhibition Quilts Under the Microscope presents a group of quilts that, after careful study, divulge some of the secrets of their past and help us determine the best to way to safeguard them for the future.