The period from the late 1800s to the early 1900s was a golden age of quilts. New technologies like chemical dyes and sewing machines made materials cheaper and production faster. An expanding awareness of global cultures added new imagery to quilt design vocabulary, as did nostalgia for America’s rapidly receding pioneer history. Women’s involvement in social movements such as Temperance gave quiltmakers topics of personal and national importance to address in their creations.

Susan Else creates three dimensional sculptures with sewn cloth. She describes her work as "stealth art", in which the comfortable ambiance of the textile medium contrasts with narrative imagery that expresses uncomfortable paradoxes of contemporary life. Without a Net, features a mechanized presentation of familiar circus elements that, with a closer look, reveal unexpected twists, meanings and possibilities.

Yorgan is the Turkish word for “quilt.” Quiltmaking has been practiced in Turkey for centuries, from the age of the long-lived Ottoman Empire (c. 1285-1923) to the present day. Intricately block-printed and painted cottons, elegantly embroidered silks, plush velvets, and glistening satins are some of the rich materials and techniques of the Turkish quilt tradition.

The International Quilt Museum is located on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's East Campus. The building and its garden were all designed with quilts and quiltmaking in mind.

In the tabs below, you can learn more about the design of the building and garden.