The International Quilt Study Center is an academic program of the Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

. Remember that quilts like the same environment as humans. Do not store quilts in unheated areas, in plastic bags, or in high humidity. Attics, garages, and basements are a no-no.

2. Really think twice about wet-washing a quilt. Irreparable damage can occur, especially to antique quilts.

3. Wear gloves when handling old quilts to protect YOURSELF from possible surface contaminants.

4. In hanging a quilt, old or new, make sure that it is adequately supported. No push pins, please!

5. Do not leave quilts hanging vertically for a long time. Every 3-6 months, let them rest for the same amount of time they have hung vertically.

6. Never fold a quilt or textile the same way every time. Insert padding in the folds. Polyester batting is an inert substance that will not damage the quilt. Acid-free, lignin-free, archival tissue paper can be purchased from Gaylord or other archival supply companies. Fold it, accordion style, to stuff into the folds.

7. Dry cleaning utilizes chemicals that are potentially carcinogenic. Avoid dry cleaning any quilts. The solvent will saturate the batting and remain inside.

8. Hang quilts in interior spaces, not on outside walls of your home, to help prevent mildew from forming on the reverse side, from changes in temperature and humidity.

9. Paint wood surfaces and seal them with two coats of polyacrylic before letting them come in contact with quilts or textiles. Another barrier for preventing wood acid migration is aluminum foil. When storing a quilt in a box, wrap the outside of the folded quilt in de-sized muslin, available at the source indicated in my book, Straight Talk About Quilt Care.

10. Replace acid-free tissue as soon as it yellows, or as soon as a ph indicator pen shows that the paper has regained an unacceptable level of acidity.

Above all, enjoy your quilt!

More tips are available in the book, Straight Talk About Quilt Care, formerly a hard cover book published by Quilter’s Muse Publications, Concord, NH. And now available free online.

Perhaps one of the greatest skills of African Americans before they were liberated from their shackles of slavery was the art of textile weaving. However, this was an ability that was not well known as historians lent their focus to their languages, practices and religious beliefs. Initially men would uphold the tradition of textile weaving, however after the Africans were sold as laborers on American soil, many things changed.

African American slaves were made to work plantation lands for their slave masters in order to supply the world’s demand for crops such as sugar, tobacco, indigo, rice and many more. The Africans were over worked and inhumanely treated. Thus somewhere during this process the men no longer adhered to the tradition of weaving African American Quilts. This was now taken up by the women.

Due to the slave trade their textiles were also bartered heavily throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and the Southern United States. Thus the traditions of each distinct region became intermixed. So when early African American quilting became a tradition it was already a combination of textile traditions reflecting the artistic expression of African aesthetic, religious and cultural traditions.

Buying an African American Quilt illustrates one’s appreciation for cultural history. In the days of slavery African American Quilts were used as methods of communication. Many of the abolitionists would weave maps and star points that would serve as guides to slaves so that they could free themselves of their oppressive masters. Several quilts also demonstrate a fusion of cultures from the Africans who were traded to Caribbean and South American plantation owners. This synchronisation of culture and religious practices were also demonstrated in their artistic expressions on these quilts.

Other African American quilts tell of their religious practices and beliefs. For instance the use of shapes such as diamonds and circles symbolized life stages, with the points of the diamond for instance representing birth, growth, death, and re-birth. These African weavers who believed in the existence of evil spirits also used these quilts as a manner of expressing this and often creating distractions for the spirits.

African American Quilts were perhaps not given the due credit as a form of artistic expression that came from the African who was enslaved. Investing in an African American Quilt means that the owner appreciates the talent and artistic representation of these people.

For more interesting tidbits on African American history visit http://www.allmattersafrican.com/ a website offering views and topical resources on issues such as African American quilters, African food and even African American art.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sarah_H

The following quidelines for collectors may be helpful for collecting crafts, collectibles, and ethnic artifacts. Collecting different categories of artifacts can be very exciting; for example, combining antique quilts with contemporary art quilts or with ethnic crafts.

1. Go for the challenge. The fun is in the hunt. Collecting on a budget can be more fun than working with unlimited funds.

2. Do the collecting yourself. You’ll learn in the doing and it’s much more fun than getting someone to do it for you.

3. Explore what it is you really like. Learn before you spend your money by reading and talking to collectors and dealers, and look, look, look.

4. Buy for the love of the work, never for appreciation or investment.

5. Evolve. Know that your taste will change as you grow and learn. At some point in time, you may edit, trade, give away, or change your collecting focus.

6. Try to specialize. You can specialize in a medium or a style. Specialization will enable you to more fully explore and learn. But, don’t lose the sense of fun.

7. Learn how to care for and store the artwork. Remember, we don’t own anything; we are merely caretakers for the next generation.

8. Don’t fret if you can’t afford works by established, nationally known artists. Forge your own territory. It’s OK to begin with small pieces. You’ll develop experience.

9. Be willing to look outside the usual venues for yet undiscovered values and unknowns.

10. Collecting is a long term process, so relax and enjoy every step.

Adapted from a presentation by Bruce W. Pepich, at a Sculpture Objects and Functional Art (SOFA). Pepich is Executive Director and Curator of Collections at the Art Museum, a sister museum of the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts in Racine, WI, where, since 1981, he has nurtured the contemporary craft collection at the museums.

Museum of Nebraska History -Quilts A to Z Exhibit, 15th and P Streets
Lincoln, Nebraska 68508

The Virginia Quilt Museum-301 S. Main St. (map)
Harrisonburg, Va. 22801

The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum-1111 Washington Ave. (map)
Golden Co. 80401

The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles-520 S. First St.
San Jose, Ca. 95113

The New England Quilt Museum-18 Shattuck St.
Lowell, Ma. 01852

The Peoples Place Quilt Museum-3510 Old Philadelphia Pike Intercourse
Philadelphia, Pa. 17534

Ancient relics give us hints of quilted items in early China, Egypt, India and Persia. For example, a carved ivory figure of a pharaoh of the Egyptian First Dynasty, circa 3400 B.C, appears to be wearing a quilted mantle, probably ceremonial attire. An Egyptian leather canopy quilt from 980 B.C., preserved now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, is considered the oldest surviving example of antique patchwork.

Other than this type of preserved images very little remains as evidence of early quilting except in the written word dating from 13^th Century and on.

The earliest form of quilting consisted of a few stitches to hold the three layers together at important points. These firm anchor stitches came to be known as counterpoints or quilt points and account for our current words ‘counterpane’ and ‘quilting’.

The earliest mention of ‘Quilt’ in the Oxford English Dictionary (1290):

“Maketh a bed of quoiltene and of materasz”.

Encyclopedia Britannica offers the following on the origins of the quilt:

“Probably a coverlet for a bed consisting of a mass of feathers, down, wool, or other soft substances, surrounded by an outer covering of linen, cloth, or other material. In its earlier days the quilt was often made thick and sewed as a form of mattress. The term was also given to a stitched, wadded lining for body armor.”

Quilts are described in a variety of spelling formats from cowltes to qwhilteq. The word is derived from Latin culcita, a stuffed sack, mattress or cushion. The word quilt seems to have come into the English language from the old French word cuilte. This in turn, is derived from the Latin word culcitra, which was used to describe a stuffed mattress or cushion. From the word form culcitra came the old French word cotra, or coutre. From whence comes coutrepointe: This was corrupted into counterpoint, which in turn was changed to counterpane. The word pane is also from the Latin pannus, a piece of cloth. Thus counterpane is used to describe a coverlet for a bed. Counterpane and quilt are by origin the same word.

Whether the art began in India, Persia, or Egypt, it is believed that the crusaders discovered it in the Middle East, and brought it back to Europe and the British Isles in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By the fourteenth century, because of the drastic change in the weather patterns, quilted garments and quilted bedcovers became a way of life. (continue reading on the history of quilting by Kateryn de Develyn – Notes on Historical Aspects of Quilting www.kateryndedevelyn.org/Quilting.pdf)

Alzheimer’s: Forgetting Piece By Piece is an exhibit created by the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative organization to raise awareness of the plight of 5 million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.

Ami Sims, founder of the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative and curator of this show, began contacting professional quilters in 2005 with the idea of a traveling exhibit. To her surprise many of her colleagues had also experienced Alzheimer’s in a very personal way. They were eager to use their talents to make a difference, to tell their stories and to comfort others.

The result is an exhibit of 52 art quilts, each unique to the quilter’s style and the story told in fabric and thread. Each tribute is accompanied by the artist’s statement.

Alzheimer’s: Forgetting Piece By Piece will be on exhibit in in Abilene’s The Grace Museum in Galleries A, B and C through February 28, 2008.

The Grace Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every Thursday. Admission is free Thursday evening after 5 p.m.

For more information visit The Grace Museum website.

Image: Cheryl Lynch, Leaving Us

Many people think of quilts primarily as somewhat rigorous, repetitive exercises in geometrical patterning. But a great free-wheeling tradition exists in quiltmaking in which improvisation, asymmetry, and experimentation are the norm. This creative impulse goes back to the early years of quiltmaking in our country. For at least 200 years, American women artists have made quilts in which off-beat color placement and manipulation of printed textile patterns have combined with bold experimentation in block formation and applique. This lively exhibit, which was organized by the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, presents quilts from the early 1800s to the present day that explore innovations in color, abstraction, figuration, and other modes of expression. The selection of 25 works in the exhibition affirms that American quilt artists’ greatest aesthetic legacy is that their work is, in every sense of the term, wild by design.

Selected by Janet Berlo, University of Rochester professor of art history, from the collection of the International Quilt Study Center, these quilts explore the once-radical proposition that some 19th-century American women were “painting with fabric.” Ranging in date from about 1825 to 1989, the quilts were made by artists both known and unknown, all of whom share an essential quality: the desire to push the boundaries of their medium in their own time.