We hope you will join us Wednesday, May 6 at 1 p.m. CDT for Textile Talks.

This week’s program will be “Cultivating Culture: Botany, Gardening and Nineteenth Century American Quilts” presented by Carolyn Ducey, Curator of Collections at the International Quilt Museum.

If you would like to participate live, please click here to register.

“Textile Talks” features FREE weekly presentations and panel discussions from the International Quilt Museum, the Modern Quilt Guild, Quilt Alliance, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Studio Art Quilt Associates and Surface Design Association. The programs will be held online at 2 p.m. Eastern (11 a.m. Pacific) each Wednesday April 29-June 3.

The lectures will be presented live on Zoom with recordings published on each organization’s Facebook page later. Follow each organization’s page for updates on each of these exciting presentations.

About this week’s program: The connection between women and plants is perhaps as old as human history. Knowledge of plants in early civilizations was inextricably linked to people’s needs for food and medicine. Women were often the primary gatherers of plant foods, so they needed a basic, practical knowledge of herbs and plants. 

Gardening—especially the cultivation of flowers—became one of the most pervasive influences in the lives of 19th century American women.  Women were encouraged by popular women’s magazines to cultivate flower gardens to benefit from the exercise that gardening provided, as well as to demonstrate their cultivated taste. Scientists, theologians and popular writers extolled the virtues of women who understood floriculture and decorated their homes with fresh flowers and furnished them with floral textiles, in curtains, upholstered furniture and quilts.