University of Iowa

Iowa Research Online

Theses and Dissertations

Spring 2011

Framing quilts/framing culture: women's work and

the politics of display
Karen E. Smith
University of Iowa

Copyright 2011 Karen E Smith

This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1083

Recommended Citation
Smith, Karen E.. "Framing quilts/framing culture: women's work and the politics of display." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis,
University of Iowa, 2011.
http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1083.

Follow this and additional works at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd

Part of the American Studies Commons

 FRAMING QUILTS/FRAMING CULTURE:
WOMEN’S WORK AND THE POLITICS OF DISPLAY

by
Karen E. Smith

An Abstract
Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the
Doctor of Philosophy degree
in American Studies
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa

May 2011

Thesis Supervisor: Professor Emeritus John Raeburn

 1

ABSTRACT

Quilts are a unique medium that is deeply layered with meaning, highly gendered,
intimately tied to social and cultural communities, and richly interdisciplinary. Though
quilts are utilitarian in origin, their circulation and display take them far beyond the
home—to art galleries, history museums, state fairs, quilt shows, and philanthropic
auctions. As they move, individuals and institutions make significant intellectual and
emotional investments in how quilts are classified, judged, and valued. In this highly
politicized work, individuals and institutions shape public culture through debates about
quilts’ utility, workmanship, and aesthetics; they create and display quilts to further their
cultural heritage, manifest their faith, delineate aesthetic values, reinforce disciplinary
boundaries, and elevate their artistic status.
This project uses four representative case studies to demonstrate the cultural work
that women and institutions conduct using quilts and to explore what is at stake in that
work. Through research into the Iowa State Fair quilt competition and the Michiana
Mennonite Relief Sale Quilt Auction, I reveal how women employ their quilts and quilt
displays to promulgate their values and shape their communities. In case studies of larger
institutions—the Smithsonian Institution and the American Quilter’s Society—I
investigate how quilts intersect with other artistic and historic objects in their creation,

interpretation, and display. Each chapter includes historical research, observations from
site visits, and evidence from qualitative interviews—research that provides a historical
view of each institution and an analysis of how they currently categorize, judge, and
display quilts. Together, these case studies reveal that individual efforts at quilt display
intersect in broader public culture, where conversations about how to value and interpret
quilts are also essential conversations about aesthetics, community values, disciplinarity,
and the value of women’s work.
 2

Abstract Approved: _______________________________________________

Thesis Supervisor

_______________________________________________
Title and Department

_______________________________________________
Date
 FRAMING QUILTS/FRAMING CULTURE:
WOMEN’S WORK AND THE POLITICS OF DISPLAY

by
Karen E. Smith

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the
Doctor of Philosophy degree
in American Studies
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa

May 2011

Thesis Supervisor: Professor Emeritus John Raeburn

 Copyright by
KAREN E. SMITH
2011
All Rights Reserved
 Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_______________________

PH.D. THESIS
_______________

This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of

Karen E. Smith

has been approved by the Examining Committee

for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy
degree in American Studies at the May 2011 graduation.

Thesis Committee: ___________________________________

John Raeburn, Thesis Supervisor

___________________________________
Bluford Adams

___________________________________
Joni L. Kinsey

___________________________________
Lauren Rabinovitz

___________________________________
Pamela J. White
To Nathaniel and Flora

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My research into the Iowa State Fair would not have been possible without the
assistance of Bill Campfield of the Iowa State Fair Museum. Dorothy Faidley was
generous with her extensive knowledge of over 25 years of State Fair quilt contests, and
she made it possible for me to shadow Cynthia Drajna, Maribeth Schmit, and Cleo
Snuggerud as they judged entries. I am appreciative of their patience as I watched over
their shoulders and am thankful for all of the Fabric & Threads volunteers who welcomed
me to join in the judging process.
During several trips to Goshen, Indiana, I received much generous hospitality. A
special thank you to Linda Gerber-Stellingwerf and Michael Stellingwerf for inviting me
into their home and extending their friendship and to Ron and Sally Jo Milne and Cathy
Hochstetler and family for making me feel so welcome. Dennis Stoesz shared his
extensive knowledge of the Mennonite Church USA Archives with me as well as an
inspiring dose of enthusiasm for my project. At the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale,
Elaine Frey, Elsie Miller, Norma Schrock, and Karen Troyer expressed their dedication
to the quilt auction and its mission and helped me better understand the auction’s
complex logistics. I thank them and the many volunteers for allowing me to be a part of
the auction preparations. Under their tutelage, I became remarkably astute at inspecting

quilts for missing stitches. And finally, thank you to Kathy Leinbach for tracking down
the answers to all of my last minute, detailed questions about the Relief Sale.
As I began to research the history of quilt display at the Smithsonian Institution,
Jane Milosch was an invaluable resource for information about the Renwick Gallery’s
exhibitions and for referrals within the Smithsonian. Doris Bowman welcomed me into
the National Museum of American History during the chaos of renovations and provided
insights that reshaped my entire chapter. I thank Sandi Fox for taking so much time to
talk with me about her contributions to the Going West! exhibition and her perspective on

iii
quilt display and scholarship. Marguerite Hergesheimer’s willingness to gather and share
date about SAAM quilts was extremely helpful.
My chapter on the American Quilter’s Society would not even exist if not for the
countless quiltmakers who mentioned the Paducah Expo time and time again as I
described my research. I thank them for making my project complete. Thanks also to
Bonnie Browning and Karen Kay Buckley for sharing their insights into the shows and to
Pam Bonina and the Emmaus Antique Quilt Study Group for their assistance in
identifying quilts from American Quilter.
At the University of Iowa, I would like to thank the Graduate College and the
Department of American Studies for their financial assistance. Cinda Nofziger, Bradley
Parsons, Wayne Anderson, Jennifer Ambrose, and Mark Warburton formed a very
loosely defined writing group and gave me valuable support when I needed help with
general ideas, specific edits, or advice about which beer, wine, or food would get me
through it all. Thank you to my dissertation committee members, Bluford Adams, Joni
Kinsey, Lauren Rabinovitz, and Pamela White and to Nick Yablon for his feedback on
my prospectus. And sincere and profound thanks to my dissertation adviser, John
Raeburn for his gentle but persistent support over the years, his meticulous editing and
feedback, and his lasting influence on my writing. I feel very lucky and honored to be

one of his final dissertation advisees.

My family has been a crucial source of support in so many forms—from their
steadfast belief in me to their practical assistance. I thank Clint and Elizabeth Baer for
providing steady encouragement and the time and space to focus on my work at some key
moments. My parents, Barry and Susan Smith have continued to express remarkable
faith and pride in my work, though they are the ones who equipped me with the skills to
do it. I do not have the words to thank my partner, Nathaniel Baer for giving me so much
support, patience, and sustenance. Finally, thank you to Flora Baer for granting me hugs,
kisses, laughter, and perspective.

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................ vii

INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1!
Quilts’ Public Cultural Work .................................................................2!
Quilt Scholarship ...................................................................................5!
Contemporary Quilt Revival..................................................................9!
Quilts on Display .................................................................................12!
Scope and Methods ..............................................................................17!
PART ONE REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE SHAPING OF
COMMUNITY CULTURE .................................................................20
CHAPTER ONE – SEWING THE LAND:
QUILTS AND AGRICULTURE AT THE IOWA STATE FAIR..................21
Celebrating the State Fair.....................................................................22!
Women’s Work in the Early Iowa State Fairs .....................................25!
Permanent Space for Women in the Urban Fairgrounds .....................29!
The Taxonomy and Geography of State Fair Textiles.........................32!
Quilt Categorization and an Agricultural Aesthetic.............................42!
Conclusion ...........................................................................................56!
CHAPTER TWO – A MISSION TO STITCH:
THE MICHIANA MENNONITE RELIEF SALE ..........................................57!
Stitching Traditions..............................................................................58!
Anabaptist Traditions...........................................................................62!
Early Mennonite Relief Sales ..............................................................66!
Organizing the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale.................................69!
Relief Sale Weekend............................................................................72!
Negotiating Public Quilt Space............................................................73!
Peacemaking and the Value of Alms-giving .......................................78!
The QUALITY of First Fruits..............................................................83!
An Exceptional Reputation ..................................................................87!
Conclusion ...........................................................................................95!
PART TWO NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE BALANCING OF
UTILITY AND AESTHETICS ...........................................................96!
CHAPTER THREE – HOW TO DISPLAY AN AMERICAN QUILT:
QUILTS AND THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ..................................97!
Crossing Disciplines: Quilts’ Utility and Aesthetics .........................101!
The Smithsonian’s Philosophical Foundations..................................105!
Textiles Among the Smithsonian’s Art(ifacts) ..................................109!
Drawing the Line for Fine Art ...........................................................115!
A New Approach to Applied Art: The Renwick Gallery .................117!
The Tradition Continues: Quilts at the National Museum of
American History...............................................................................123!

v
 Conclusion .........................................................................................137!
CHAPTER FOUR – CONTESTED QUILTMAKING:
THE AMERICAN QUILTER’S SOCIETY..................................................139!
Symposia, Conferences, Expositions & Contests ..............................141!
In the Quilt Show Business: The American Quilter’s Society ..........151!
AQS and Judging Standards ..............................................................159!
Negotiating Dichotomies: Amateur vs. Professional, Traditional
vs. Innovative, and Craft vs. Fine Art................................................166!
Conclusion .........................................................................................183!
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................187!
BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................192!

vi
 LIST OF TABLES

Table
1. Judging Criteria for “Fabric and Threads” Exhibits ..............................................54

vii
 1

INTRODUCTION

When the Denver Art Museum hosted Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt
in 2008, it mounted the exhibition in a cavernous, spare gallery space in Daniel
Libeskind’s ultramodern 2006 addition. The gallery’s stark white dividing walls rose
about 15 dramatic feet above the hardwood floors with as much open space soaring above
them to the ceiling. The vibrant, graphic quilts hung boldly against the minimalist walls,
their irregular shapes and surfaces lending texture to the severe space. Visitors navigated
the three rooms, speaking in hushed tones, while the soundtrack from a documentary film
echoed from one corner.
The Gee’s Bend quilts have a stunning visual impact with their vibrant hues, large
color blocks, and asymmetrical patterns. One grouping of work-clothes quilts intrigued
visitors with its compositions of worn denim, flannel, and ticking. Others showed how
the quiltmakers improvised with traditional patterns like Housetop, Bricklayer, and Log
Cabin to create original designs. The 1970s corduroy quilts commissioned by Sears
Roebuck and Company demonstrated the ingenious application of the era’s distinctive
colors like “avocado leaf.” Across these patterns and designs, most quilts were rough in
their construction with pieces coming together at mismatched corners, patterns with
crooked and undulating lines, and irregularly shaped binding and edges. Large, loose

quilting ran across their surfaces.

Concurrent with the Gee’s Bend exhibition, a modest exhibition of twelve quilts
hung in a small, lower ceilinged, more traditional gallery space on the sixth floor of the
museum’s original North Building. In Amish & Mennonite Quilts from the Big Valley &
Beyond, quilts were hung similarly on the gallery wall, but the objects were striking in
their contrast. The quilts’ meticulously sized and assembled pieces were highly
symmetrical and geometric with carefully matched corners, straight lines, and even
bindings. The tiny handquilted stitches marched evenly across the quilts’ surfaces.
 2

Whether the quilts were made from soft, subdued colors or vibrant, contrasting ones, the
visual planes gave a sense of deliberate, mathematical order.
Only a few visitors found their way to the Amish and Mennonite exhibition as I
wandered through the small space. In the quiet gallery, I heard a fellow visitor turn to her
companion and declare, “Now THIS is quilting.” Pausing to contemplate further the
difference between these quilts and the ones from Gee’s Bend, she hissed, “And these
women were isolated, too, so that’s no excuse.”1

Quilts’ Public Cultural Work

While quilts are utilitarian in origin, their circulation and display take them far
beyond the bedroom—to living room walls, art galleries, history museums, state fairs,
quilt shows, and philanthropic auctions. As they move, individuals and institutions
classify, judge, and assign value to them, and in doing so, manifest extremely divergent
opinions about what constitutes a good or valuable quilt. Debates typically center on
utility, workmanship, and aesthetics and are particularly contentious because the stakes
are high for those involved. The individuals and institutions that assess quilts in the
public arena shape the identity and status of both quilts and quiltmaking and determine
how they influence and intersect with culture.
The intense intellectual and emotional investment that individuals and institutions

grant to quilts stems from the medium’s uniqueness. Quilts are deeply layered with
meaning, have intimate ties to social and cultural communities, and are richly
interdisciplinary. They possess social significance for their creation in quilting bees, their
status as family heirlooms, and their ability to provide shared warmth. They are central
to many community traditions and identities—from African Americans in Gee’s Bend,
Alabama to Mennonites in Goshen, Indiana. History is stitched into their fabrics,

1 Site visit by author, Denver, Colorado, May 23, 2008.

 3

patterns, quilting designs, signatures, and personal touches. They also make visual and
artistic statements through their color combinations, textures, shapes, and pictorial
elements. Their creation and circulation remain highly gendered processes, linked to
women’s labor, domesticity, and the private sphere. And they are often stitched
communally or collaboratively. For all of these reasons, quilts are symbols of religious,
racial, ethnic, gendered, regional, and aesthetic affiliations.
It is not an overstatement to say that quilts are unique from all other visual art
objects. Their utilitarian roots set them apart from paintings, drawings, and prints in an
essential way, though many display techniques conflate these media by hanging them all
on vertical planes. Quilts, by definition, are three layers—a top, batting, and back—held
together with stitching, and their construction manifests their function as warm bedding.
Their soft, draping fabrics contrast with the canvas that is stretched to prepare for a
painting or the mats and frames that stiffen drawings and prints for display. While all of
these visual art forms are concerned with aesthetic presentation, the quilt holds onto its
utility and has distinctive physical characteristics.
Quilts have more in common with pottery, sharing a tension and balance between
use value and aesthetics. Each can be employed daily, saved for a special occasion, or
displayed as a unique artistic expression. Both share an essential dimensionality and

tactility; they are frequently held, caressed, and used by the body. The apprentice system
of pottery education mirrors that of quiltmaking, where women continue to pass on their
skills and techniques to other women. Yet, quilts are materially and symbolically
different from pottery. Their supple fabrics drape and bend in ways that ceramic objects
never do once they are formed and fired, and the fragility of textiles is fundamental, as
they deteriorate from caustic dyes, exposure to light and oils, and friction on the fibers.
Quilts also more intensely bear the stories, traditions, and techniques that women pass on
within families and communities and provide a vehicle for public work.
 4

This project focuses on the individuals and institutions that claim ownership over
how quilts are circulated and displayed in the public sphere. In many instances, women
use quilts as a means for participating in a male-dominated public culture. They craft
these gendered objects that physically manifest their cultural values and aesthetic
standards and create public displays that promote those values and standards in the public
arena. I explore this public work through two case studies: the Iowa State Fair quilt
competition and the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale Quilt Auction. From the
establishment of these annual events through their contemporary iterations, they
demonstrate how women employ their quilts and quilt displays to promulgate their values
and shape their communities.
Larger institutions also use quilt displays as a means for negotiating broader
cultural values and aesthetic standards. They strive to define quilts and their relationship
to other historic and artistic objects, taking into account both their creation processes and
their final products. In my chapter on the Smithsonian Institution, quilts are indicative of
the contentions between utility and aesthetics at the national museum, where their display
in different contexts demonstrates the disciplinary constrictions that often limit
interpretive quilt exhibitions and public discussions about quilts. My case study of the
American Quilter’s Society, a membership-based for-profit institution, further explores

these discussions as I demonstrate that through its shows, contests, and publications, the
AQS has cultivated conversations among quiltmakers about what constitutes a good quilt
and how quilts intersect with art.
Through focusing on both women-centered, community-based quilt displays and
those organized and mediated by larger institutions, I reveal the strong investment that
individuals and institutions have in interpreting quilts. Because of quilts’ uniquely
complex balance of utility, workmanship, and aesthetics, they have become a powerful
material vehicle for shaping public culture. Individuals and institutions use them to
further their cultural heritage, manifest their faith, delineate aesthetic values, reinforce
 5

disciplinary boundaries, and elevate their artistic status. Quilt display, then, is highly
politicized public work with significant cultural stakes.

Quilt Scholarship
Quilts’ complexity affects how they are studied and by whom, and my analysis of
quilt display intersects with the work of quilt scholars from a range of disciplines
including textile studies, art history, history, anthropology, folklore, museum studies,
women’s studies, and American studies. These scholars represent a plethora of
disciplinary approaches, conducting research as academics, museum curators, and
independent scholars—with many of them quiltmakers themselves. Because their
backgrounds and professions are so varied, the scholarship itself ranges from laboratory
research into historical fibers to visual analyses of quilts’ forms to ethnographic studies
of quiltmakers and their communities. Yet, very little has been written about public quilt
display and the cultural work in which such displays engage.
General overviews of American quilts’ history form the foundation for quilt
studies and at present represent a consensus in the field regarding common historical
patterns, the influence of the textile trade, regional styles, motivations for quiltmaking,
and quilts’ social significance.2 More technical scholarship strives to catalogue specific
quilt patterns and to date fabrics.3 Regional quilt studies have also formed a significant

2 Essential quilt histories include Lenice Ingram Bacon, American Patchwork Quilts
(New York: William Morrow & Co, 1973); Carrie A. Hall and Rose G. Kretsinger, The Romance
of the Quilt in America (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1935); Roderick Kiracofe, The American
Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort (New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1993); and Patsy
Orlofsy and Myron Orlofsky, Quilts in America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974).
3 Barbara Brackman is the authoritative scholar for this type of quilt identification. See
especially Barbara Brackman, Clues in the Calico: A Guide to Identifying and Dating Antique
Quilts (McLean, VA: EPM Publications, 1989); Encyclopedia of Applique (McLean, VA: EPM
Publications, 1993); and Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns (Paducah, KY: American
Quilter’s Society, 1993). See also Eileen Trestain, Dating Fabrics, A Color Guide, 1800-1960
(Paducah, KY: American Quilter’s Society, 1998).
 6

portion of the scholarship, emerging as part of the quilt indexing projects of the 1980s,
when advocates and historians began marking and cataloging each state’s quilts to create
a permanent historical record.4 These publications often overlap with research about
quilts from specific ethnic or religious traditions.5
The majority of this quilt scholarship is dedicated to carefully identifying, dating,
and drawing connections among quilts—gathering evidence and mapping the history of
individual objects and their interrelations. It focuses intensely on discrete quilts in order
to formulate these complex maps and timelines. While my project is concerned with
broader questions about quilts’ categorization, assessment, and interpretation, this
methodological approach provides essential context for this work. After all, it is through
the creation, judging, and display of individual quilts that these individuals and
institutions engage in cultural work.
Scholarship that addresses the intersections between quilts and art is particularly
relevant to my own research. A number of scholars have written about the art quilt
movement, focusing primarily on quilts created specifically for public display and
conceptualized as objects on a vertical plane.6 Not all “art quilts” are created with this

4 These are too extensive to list, but some significant titles include Barbara Brackman,
Kansas Quilts and Quilters (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993); Mary Bywater
Cross, Quilts of the Oregon Trail (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2007); Patricia Cox Crews
and Ronald C. Naugle, Nebraska Quilts and Quiltmakers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1991); Jonathan Holstein and John Finley, Kentucky Quilts 1800-1900 (Louisville, KY: Kentucky
Quilt Project, 1982); Marsha MacDowell and Ruth D. Fitzgerald, Michigan Quilts: 150 Years of
a Textile Tradition (East Lansing: Michigan State University Museum, 1987). The Quilt Index
project through The Alliance for American Quilts, MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters
and Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University, and the Michigan State University
Museum is the central clearinghouse for cataloguing quilts: http://www.quiltindex.org.
5 Cuesta Benberry was the foremost scholar of African American quilts, writing Always
There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts (Louisville, KY: The Kentucky Quilt
Project, 1992) and A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans (Fayetteville: The University
of Arkansas Press, 2000). Amish quiltmaking has also received significant attention in books like
Eve Wheatcroft Granick, The Amish Quilt (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 1989)
6 Michael Kile and Penny McMorris, The Art Quilt (San Francisco: Quilt Digest Press,
1986); Robert Shaw, The Art Quilt (New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1997); Gayle A.
 7

conceptualization, however, as collectors and curators have also assigned this label to
quilts that were likely created with other uses or contexts in mind. Jonathan Holstein was
the first prominent collector to assign a significant art imprimatur to quilts, and he
reflects on that process in Abstract Design in American Quilts: A Biography of an
Exhibition. He chronicles the collection and curation of quilts for his 1971 exhibition at
the Whitney Museum of American Art. Employing twenty years of hindsight, he raises
some of the general concerns that I address here—about categorization, standards,
aesthetics, and value.7
My aim in researching quilt display is not simply to enumerate how quilts have
been shown in public spaces but to discuss how women have used their quilts to shape
public culture. This is certainly a subtext in much quilt scholarship, but is rarely the
central concern or argument. Pat Ferrero’s film, Hearts and Hands, and the
accompanying book with Elaine Hedges and Julie Silber are the primary texts addressing
such public and political work, and they focus on nineteenth century women
needleworkers.8 In her essay in the book, women’s studies scholar Elaine Hedges argues
that “women used their quilts to register their responses to, and also their participation in,
the major social, economic and political developments of their times. Through their
quilts women became, in fact, not only witnesses to but active agents in important

historical change.”9 Hedges supports this assertion by demonstrating how women used

Pritchard, Uncommon Threads: Ohio’s Art Quilt Revolution (Athens: Ohio University Press,
2006).
7 Jonathan Holstein, Abstract Design in American Quilts: A Biography of an Exhibition
(Louisville, KY: The Kentucky Quilt Project, 1991).
8 Hearts and Hands, directed by Pat Ferrero (San Francisco: Ferrero Films, 1987); Pat
Ferrero, Elaine Hedges, and Julie Silber, Hearts and Hands: The Influence of Women and Quilts
on American Society (San Francisco: Quilt Digest Press, 1987).
9 Ferrero, Hedges, and Silber, 11.
 8

needlework to engage in church and missionary work, the Civil War, and reform
movements like abolition and temperance. She also describes the more ambivalent,
problematic relationship that late-nineteenth century suffragists had with needlework—
many eschewing it for its association with women’s subjugation to domestic norms.
Though Hedges concludes her essay by discussing the contemporary quilt revival, she
makes no political links among nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century
needleworkers. Instead, she argues that revivalists can learn about nineteenth century
women from their quilts. In other words, she makes a vaguely methodological argument
rather than one about legacy or continuity.
My own project begins where Hedges’ ends in terms of chronology, since I focus
largely on the contemporary quilt revival, but in other ways as well. Quiltmaking has
persisted in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and so has quilts’ public presence.
Despite popular impressions to the contrary, such creative production was not confined to
the pre-industrial and early industrial eras. Even as the presence of sewing machines
increased in American homes, fabrics became less expensive, and readymade
bedcoverings became both more available and more affordable, women continued to
create quilts—often incorporating new technologies and materials. While an obvious
assumption might be that this quilt creation and circulation exists as part of a longing for

pre-industrial, “simpler” times, there are additional motivations and additional results.
By creating and displaying quilts, women continue to engage in significant public work.
While I do not investigate quiltmakers involved in specific social movements—like
Miriam Schapiro’s feminist fiber art or the collective AIDS Memorial Quilt—this work
certainly intersects with politics and “the political,” as women’s quilts are employed to
engage in peacemaking, define value and values, and negotiate aesthetic hierarchies.
 9

Contemporary Quilt Revival

The late 1960s and early 1970s marked the beginning of an explosion of all things
quilts, as a growing crafts movement converged with the imminence of America’s
bicentennial. The 1960s crafts movement marked a desire to both preserve and revive
handwork skills that were being lost. It represented a resistance to standardization and
mechanization at a time of cultural unease and unrest. As citizens reacted to major events
like the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam War, many looked to past traditions to distance themselves
from the present. Relearning handwork skills was one aspect of a larger back-to-earth
movement.10 Such work was not simply reactionary, but was also an active cultural and
political critique—one that often framed the past as a model for future reform initiatives
and even utopian development.
The crafts movement served as a means of documenting and learning such hands-
on skills, but it also provided an alternative means of income for those who possessed
these unique talents. This was clear in the growing success of relief sale quilt auctions in
the Mennonite community, where women sold quilts to raise philanthropic funds. But, it
was also evident in economically depressed communities throughout rural America
where cooperatives established cottage industries to market their crafts.11 The Freedom

Quilting Bee of Wilcox County, Alabama was one particularly prominent example of
such a project. Francis X. Walter, a white Episcopal priest, incorporated the Freedom
Quilting Bee (FQB) in 1966 to sell the handmade quilts of impoverished black residents
of Possum Bend and Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The FQB eventually led to the famous Gee’s
Bend quilts that circulated in major art museums in the late 20th and early 21st century,

10 McMorris and Kile, 40-1.

11 Ibid.
 10

but even in its earliest incarnations, it certainly fed into the nascent quilt revival. Walter
began connecting with artists, designers, art collectors, and publishers in New York City
to sell Wilcox County women’s quilts, and the project soon grew into a more formal
arrangement with professionals helping manage the FQB’s materials, patterns, and
quality control. The FQB gained partnerships with major design companies and
department stores—influential businesses that not only sold FQB products but also
shaped fashion trends toward “patchwork.” By 1968 and 1969, publications like Vogue
and House and Garden were featuring spreads of patchwork quilts, curtains, pillows, and
tablecloths, and the FQB began contracting with Bloomingdale’s and then Sears in the
next few years.12
Despite patchwork’s omnipresence in the day-to-day lives of Americans—or
perhaps because of it—some members of the art community began to see these objects in
a different light. Jonathan Holstein and Gail Van der Hoof organized their selective
antique quilt collection into a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art
in 1971. Entitled Abstract Design in American Art, the exhibition focused purely on the
quilts’ visual aspects, conceptualizing them as large-scale modern art pieces for gallery
walls. This exhibition caused a stir among art critics and the general public, and its quilts
and approach to quilts had a lasting impact as it travelled to other museums throughout

the United States and Europe. It encouraged new quiltmakers, collectors, and dealers to
embrace the quilt craze.
America’s 1976 bicentennial came on the heels of both the patchwork explosion
and Holstein and Van der Hoof’s groundbreaking exhibition. As such, the 1960s radical
reclaiming of the quilt craft segued into a broader, patriotic act. Bicentennial celebrations
encouraged women to pull out old quilts and revisit the old-fashioned craft. State fairs

12 Nancy Callahan, The Freedom Quilting Bee (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama
Press, 1987).
 11

offered special categories to commemorate traditional patterns and tie contemporary

quiltmakers to those preceding them. Good Housekeeping sponsored a national quilt
contest that drew almost 10,000 entries.13
The combination of these social movements, shifting cultural values, major quilt
exhibitions, and the U.S. bicentennial created a perfect storm of quilting. Spurred by the
fashion trends, popular magazine articles and advertisements, commemorative
competitions, and exhibitions, came a growing base of avid quiltmakers. It was not
simply that quilts were suddenly more visible in the public sphere—but that more people
were actually taking up quiltmaking as a personal and/or professional activity. And with
the increase in quiltmaking came quilt publications, organizations, and guilds—places for
women to learn more about quilt history, patterns, collecting, technologies, fabrics,
piecing techniques, and quilting strategies. They provided a venue for women to share
their excitement and passion and to improve their craft through competition and critique.
Four decades later, these quilt publications, organizations, and guilds have grown
into a major professional industry with competing magazines, television shows, national
expositions and competitions, academic conferences, and endless product lines for
fabrics, threads, sewing machines, patterns, adornments, and specialized techniques. In
the twenty-first century, quiltmaking is now an approximately $3.58 billion industry with

over 16 million participants in 14% of U.S. households.14

13 McMorris and Kile, 50-1.

14 Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, “Quilting in America 2010,” Quilts, Inc., accessed

July 30, 2010, http://www.quilts.com/announcements/y2010/QIA2010_OneSheet.pdf. While it is
too soon to tell how these trends will play out, the “Quilting in America” surveys indicate that
there were fewer quilters in 2010 than in 2006, but quilters spent more money on quiltmaking in
2010. In its 2010 press release about these surveys, Quilts, Inc. explains that there are less
“casual” quilters but more “dedicated” quilters, who spend more money (Quilts, Inc., “Dedicated
Quilter Spending Rises: Quilting in America 2010 Survey Shows Industry Worth $3.6 Billion
Annually,” Quilts, Inc. News, accessed August 5, 2010, http://www.quilts.com/newHome/news
/viewer.php?page=../../pressreleases/y2010/quiltingInAmerica).
 12

Quilts on Display
In the early twenty-first century, quilts on display vary widely—from historical
utilitarian ones to contemporary bed-sized show ones to wall or miniature quilts. Venues
are as diverse as history, fine art, and textile museums, state and county fairs, expositions,
and juried shows. In some instances, the makers’ intentions and quilts’ forms are
important to those who display them. More frequently, however, quilts become “show
quilts” by virtue of the fact that they are simply regarded as objects worthy of privileged
treatment and a public audience. Decisions about how to publicly display and interpret
quilts are quite deliberate and are indicative of the cultural agendas of individuals and
institutions. These agendas are informed by complicated motivations including
community identity, religious values, disciplinary investments, and profits.
There are a number of physical and logistical challenges associated with quilts
that are shared by all who hope to place them in public view. Fiber, by its nature, is a
delicate medium, and quilts can only withstand limited exhibition time; every moment
they are exposed to light, they deteriorate. They deteriorate further when subjected to
paint fumes, wall moisture, body oils, and other environmental factors, and suffer the
strain of their own weight when they are hung from walls. The staunchest supporters of
textile preservation eschew any form of public display due to the inevitability of

irreversible damage. Quilts’ typical large scale is also an issue; traditional bed-sized
quilts require significant exhibition space or creative techniques that involve folding.
Viewers often protest when they can only see a small portion.15 Quiltmakers themselves
may pose the greatest threat in quilt exhibitions, as they crave the feel of the cloth and
desperately want to see the quilt backs. In my many site visits, I nearly always saw at
least one quiltmaker successfully touch a displayed quilt despite much signage designed

15 This is a perpetual complaint at the Iowa State Fair where all but the blue ribbon quilts
are folded, draped over display racks, and crowded side by side.
 13

to discourage her. Because textiles are so fragile, quilts also may have condition issues
that actually preclude them from being displayed or require special handling.
Quilts also pose interpretive challenges for those wishing to publicly display
them. It is common for historical quilts to lack a known maker or provenance, making it
difficult to date or contextualize them. Though fabrics and patterns may hint at the date a
quilt was created, quiltmakers may not have used newly purchased fabrics or stayed
abreast of quilt fashions. The information that is handed down with the objects is often
unsubstantiated or distorted by oral history or family lore—from the name of the maker
to the date, occasion, intended recipient, desired use, or value. As with many artifacts
and texts, maker intent can be speculative, and quilt scholars tend to discount attempts to
read too deeply into quilts’ symbolic meanings or intended uses.16
Even with these common challenges, individual institutions vary widely in their
display techniques and the philosophies and agendas behind them. Historical museums
typically display quilts as artifacts—material evidence of period textiles, handcrafting
labor techniques, and social and familial networks. They stay true to their disciplinary
perspective by emphasizing the utility and production of quilts over and above aesthetics,
though they certainly do not ignore the objects’ beauty. At Living History Farms in
Urbandale, Iowa, for example, the curators display quilts on beds in period houses. In

order to preserve the historical quilts in their collection, they organize volunteer
quiltmakers to meticulously copy the originals and create display quilts that demonstrate
how families would have used them in historic homes. Costumed interpreters also

16 The controversy surrounding Hidden In Plain View has been particularly heated. The
book’s authors speculate that a historic quilt’s symbolic patterns communicated to slaves about
the path to follow for the Underground Railroad. Though quilt scholars have debunked the
book’s claims, the enticing story has had staying power in the popular imaginary as well as in
social studies curricula. In the wake of this controversy, quilt scholars have defended their field’s
boundaries even more carefully, demanding that interlopers hold themselves to high evidentiary
standards. See Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard, Hidden in Plain View: A Secret
Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad (New York: Doubleday, 1999).
 14

demonstrate quiltmaking techniques as part of their daily housework. Not all history
museums display quilts in such period contexts. Many use the art gallery technique of
hanging quilts fully opened on vertical planes. Nevertheless, they still focus their
interpretation on the quilts’ social and cultural context rather than their visual impact.
The Smithsonian Museum of American History has included quilts in a number of
exhibitions that focus on textile production, for example, and place quilts alongside the
industry’s tools and materials.
Fine art museums have displayed quilts increasingly since the groundbreaking
Whitney Museum of American Art Museum exhibition in 1971, and they generally
utilize an aesthetically based art historical/critical mode of analysis rather than a
primarily socio-historical one. Gallery displays foreground the quilts’ aesthetic merits,
emphasize color combinations and geometric patterns, and draw connections between
quilts and broader fine art movements such as Abstract Expressionism. Whether showing
historic or contemporary quilts, art museums examine quilts’ social and cultural contexts
and their workmanship primarily for their relationship to discrete pieces’ visual impacts
and/or individual creators’ genius. The Quilts of Gee’s Bend and Gee’s Bend: The
Architecture of the Quilt are two wildly popular, blockbuster shows that have toured
extensively to fine art museums and promoted quilts as examples of modern art. While

the exhibitions certainly include the quiltmakers’ stories of poverty in a community

descended from slaves, this background is offered in part to make the quilts’ artistry seem
all that more miraculous.17

17 Many scholars have written extensively about the Gee’s Bend quilt phenomenon, so I
will not repeat that analysis in my dissertation, though the quilts and their exhibitions are
certainly significant. Patricia A. Turner wrote an especially thorough and compelling analysis of
the quilts, their display, and the politics surrounding them in Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of
African American Quilters (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009).
 15

A number of museums showcase quilts exclusively, and these strive to strike a

balance between a social and cultural interpretation and an aesthetic one. Textile and
quilt scholarship typically focuses on physical elements such as fabric type, construction,
and patterns, and it strives to orient individual textiles in relation to each other and their
historical context. When quilt museums exhibit quilts, they may organize exhibition
themes in accordance with these priorities, but they seem unable to resist the display
techniques employed by fine art institutions. This may be because defining quilts as fine
art raises their cultural status and deems them more worthy of attention. Small quilt
museums have been created throughout the United States, including the Kalona Quilt and
Textile Museum in the Anabaptist community of Kalona, Iowa. Significantly larger
museums include Paducah, Kentucky’s National Quilt Museum, which is affiliated with
the American Quilter’s Society, the University of Nebraska, Lincoln’s International Quilt
Study Center & Museum, and the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Quilts are certainly exhibited in venues outside of museums as well, and
workmanship is highly prized in many of these spaces—from state and county fairs to
juried shows. Each institution has its own process for judging workmanship and placing
value on quilts. State and county fairs have long displayed quilts as part of annual
competitions. These displays have been integral to the rural, agricultural celebrations and

have defined workmanship as a quality that invokes both utility and a very specific
aesthetic. Meticulous piecing, appliqué, finishing, and quilting are all prized because
they contribute to both a well-constructed quilt and an aesthetically pleasing one.
The displays at such fairs are shaped by the physical spaces available as well as
the entries and judging criteria. While quilts may be judged and prized individually,
displays often downplay individual quilts because the institutions lack the space to open
each quilt and give it privileged treatment. Though fine workmanship may win a ribbon,
displays typically make it impossible for viewers to actually see that level of detail. At
the Iowa State Fair, for example, most quilts are folded for display and visitors are kept at
 16

a distance; even the open blue ribbon winners are hung edge-to-edge with no white space
to frame them. Organizers choose to display all entered quilts—not just ribbon winning
ones—and the display leaves the visitor with a sense of sheer quantity rather than one of
individual artistry. This is indicative of the quilt contest’s goal of promulgating
community aesthetics over and above the celebration of specific quilts or quiltmakers.
Specialized quilt shows and expositions are another important venue for
contemporary quilt displays. These juried exhibitions vary in scope from Quilt National,
the premier “art quilt” show, to the many American Quilter’s Society events that
showcase a broad range of quilt types—from bed to wall to fabric art. Though Quilt
National certainly brings an art critical perspective to quilts, it is also very cognizant of
their textile medium. It does not aim to conflate quilts wholly with paintings but
emphasizes their textural dimensionality. It strives to grant quilts a fine art imprimatur
without stripping them of their defining materiality. While the American Quilter’s
Society does draw connections between art and quilts, it also focuses heavily on
workmanship and categorizes quilts based largely on their functions. As a for-profit
institution, it aims to jury shows that draw large crowds and encourage eager entrants. Its
success has relied on its ability to open dialogue about what defines quilts and to avoid
alienating potential members and customers.

One final category of quilt display comes in the form of the philanthropic
fundraising fair or auction, where a well-made, visually stunning quilt that can put to use
in the home is greatly prized. Such displays are usually more overtly associated with
political or religious organizations or values than other display forms.18 They provide a
venue for women to use their home-based skills to participate in their public

18 For an extensive history of women’s handmade items and fundraising fairs, see:
Beverly Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies: A History of the American Fundraising Fair
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998).
 17

communities, raise money, and shape the belief systems and aesthetic values of their
communities. At Mennonite relief sale auctions like the one held each fall in Goshen,
Indiana, women have policed the auctioned quilts’ aesthetic boundaries and organized the
auction proceedings to reinforce their traditions and extend their religious values both
within and beyond the Mennonite community.
In each of these settings, women and institutions use quilts to reinforce and
promulgate their own values and priorities—whether their goal is to use material objects
to interpret the past, to elevate quilts in the artistic hierarchy, to increase quilt-related
commerce, or to give shape to religious beliefs. They manipulate quilts’ complex
meanings by choosing which quilts to display, defining quality workmanship and
aesthetics, designing physical exhibition conditions, selecting other objects to accompany
the quilts, and rewarding ones that meet specific criteria. This work functions on a very
personal level for many of the women who make quilts, but it also shapes institutions and
communities. Ultimately, these individual efforts at quilt display intersect in broader
public culture, where conversations about how to value and interpret quilts are also
essential conversations about aesthetics, disciplinarity, and the value of women’s work.

Scope and Methods

To investigate the different types of cultural work that women and institutions

conduct using quilts and to gain a deeper sense of what is at stake in that work, I rely on
four representative case studies. These include the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale Quilt
Auction in Goshen, Indiana, the Iowa State Fair Fabrics & Threads competition in Des
Moines, Iowa, the Smithsonian Institution’s treatment of quilts, and the American
Quilter’s Society’s shows and publications. For each case study, I conducted extensive
historical research to outline the distinct institutional histories and quilts’ roles over time.
I also visited each site in order to gauge how quilts are categorized, judged, displayed,
and circulated currently. For the Relief Sale and State Fair, I actually volunteered
 18

behind-the-scenes alongside the women who were judging and preparing the quilts for
display. I supplemented my own research and site visits with qualitative interviews that
added to my historical understanding of each institution and provided insights into the
motivations behind specific display techniques and strategies, judging criteria, and
aesthetic standards.
This project is divided into two parts. The first part includes two chapters that
look at relatively small, regional institutions and the women who create and display quilts
within those institutions. In case studies of the Iowa State Fair and Michiana Mennonite
Relief Sale, I demonstrate that women use their quilts as a material means of participating
in and shaping their culture. Their classification systems and judgments about quilt
workmanship and aesthetics are in conversation with their specific cultural values—
informed by community norms but also designed to influence those norms. In Goshen,
Indiana, Mennonite women stitch and auction quilts that promulgate their religious values
of almsgiving, giving quality first fruits, and exceptionalism or separatism. At the Iowa
State Fair, women create and award quilts that maintain their integration in the state’s
agricultural production and also assert an agriculture-based way of seeing. Together, the
first part’s chapters demonstrate the communal and cultural stakes that women have in
managing the types of quilts that are created and those that are prized.

The second part addresses the role of larger, national institutions in defining
quilts. In particular, it explores the inevitable question of how quilts intersect with art in
their creation, interpretation, and display. Because quilts cross disciplinary boundaries at
the Smithsonian Institution and appear in the history, art, and craft museums, the
Institution is an especially rich site for tracing negotiations about quilts’ utility and
aesthetics. The Smithsonian has long struggled with how to interpret fine and applied
arts, and the disciplinary traditions of different museums within the institution influence
how quilts are conceptualized and exhibited. The debates within the museum are
indicative of broader external debates about how to display and interpret quilts and how
 19

to balance their utility, workmanship, visual appeal, and their social and cultural histories.
I conclude with an analysis of the American Quilter’s Society (AQS), a large, member-
based, for-profit organization that organizes quilt expositions and contests, publishes
magazines and books, and certifies master quilters and judges. Extremely well-known
and popularly regarded among quiltmakers, AQS has taken on the role of moderator in
debates about how contemporary quilts are judged and categorized as well as how they
are defined in relation to art. It has helped to shape the contemporary quilt revival’s
technical and aesthetic path.
Together, these case studies demonstrate the unique complexity inherent in quilts
and reveal the investments that individuals and institutions have made in their display and
circulation. These case studies raise the essential issues that motivate and inform quilt
display, fuel debates, and make public quilt work political. And they show just how
serious quiltmakers, collectors, and curators are about their work and its stakes. The
vehement frustration in the Denver Art Museum visitor’s voice as she compared the
frenzied Gee’s Bend quilt phenomenon with the modest Amish and Mennonite exhibition
wholly expressed the passion at the heart of public quilt work. Quilts’ complexity makes
them both a rich and personal medium and a dynamic site for cultural influence and
change.
 20

PART ONE:
REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND
THE SHAPING OF COMMUNITY CULTURE
 21

CHAPTER ONE:
SEWING THE LAND: QUILTS AND AGRICULTURE
AT THE IOWA STATE FAIR

The Iowa State Fair has housed “Fabric & Threads” in the centrally-located, air-
conditioned William C. Knapp Varied Industries Building since 2002. The spacious
exposition hall teems with “varied” vendors hawking their wares. Iowa colleges and
universities promote their educational programming and sports teams while selling
officially-licensed school merchandise. Vendors of saunas and whirlpools encourage
passersby to sit in operational saunas even on the hottest days. Oreck sells vacuum
cleaners, Iowa Public Television promotes its programming, Iowa Baptists explain the
place of dinosaurs in Creation, and the Iowa State Lottery distributes scratch tickets and
pull-tabs. Fairgoers weave through the aisles to load up on free giveaways and adorn
themselves in temporary tattoos.
The Varied Industries Buildings’ wings and upstairs rooms house both the Fabric
& Threads exhibitions and Iowa food displays. These spaces are distinct from the central
hall—in their architecture, content, and mood. The lower-ceilinged, carpeted rooms are
significantly more hushed, tucked away from the hall’s hurly-burly. Fabric & Threads
utilizes two spaces in this sprawling building. It showcases the blue ribbon quilts in a

downstairs room adjacent to the lobby and features additional entries in a larger second-
floor room. This upstairs room contains the full range of Fabric & Threads divisions:
needlework, embroidery, counted cross stitch, needlepoint, crochet, hand knitting,
machine knitting, weaving, hooked rugs, quilting, quilt block contests, clothing
construction, toys and dolls, and others. Near the downstairs “Blue Ribbon Quilts,”
chairs line the corridor, and weary men take a seat while women file through the blue
ribbon room and head upstairs to the larger exhibition. Some men do venture into the
 22

Fabric & Threads rooms, but the overwhelming majority of visitors are women—
sometimes alone and sometimes in groups.
The winningest quilts from each entry category are fully open in the “Blue
Ribbon Quilts” room on the first floor. The colorful, meticulously pieced and quilted
textiles are clipped to clear plastic skirt hangers and hung from metal tubing around the
room’s periphery. To the right of the entrance, one of these metal structures runs
perpendicular to the wall, partitioning off one corner of the room. Behind it, visitors can
try their hand at machine quilting on two types of long-arm sewing machines. During my
visit, the smaller machine was set up to follow along a stencil, tracing a continuous
design onto the sample quilt. The larger machine was free hand so visitors could move
the framed quilt unrestrictedly to create designs. This prominent technological display
underscores the content of both the blue ribbon room and the larger upstairs exhibition, as
machine-quilted entries dominate the Iowa State Fair competition.
Colorful quilts overwhelm the upstairs Fabric & Threads exhibition, encircling
the other entries displayed on freestanding panels in the center of the hall. Around the
room’s edge, rows of uniformly folded quilts hang in a series of niches—with metal
tubing structures built both parallel and perpendicular to the walls. Each niche also
includes smaller quilted objects arranged on the floor, draped over quilt stands, or

propped up with display stands. The room teems with quilted textiles. An additional low
tubing structure covered in bright blue skirting keeps visitors at a distance from the quilts,
and small graphic signs remind visitors “do not touch” these tactile objects.1

Celebrating the State Fair

State fairs have contributed instrumentally to the development and continuity of
Midwestern culture since the mid-nineteenth century. For this largely agricultural region,

1 Site visits by author, Des Moines, IA, July 30 and August 12, 2007; July 28, 2008.
 23

they have provided education, social opportunities, and entertainment through livestock
competitions, agricultural exhibitions, and amusements. Over their 150 years, fairs’
popularity and attendance have oscillated depending on the economy, U.S. involvement
in war, and the shifting mix of rural and urban populations, but they nonetheless have
remained remarkably unchanged in emphasizing agricultural themes alongside
performances and spectacles. Twenty-first century Midwestern fairs boast growing
attendance numbers and continue to hold a prominent place in the collective imagination
of their states’ citizenry.
More than any other state’s fair, Iowa’s perseveres as a vital cultural force within
the state. With attendance over one million since 2004, the fair attracts approximately
one-third of Iowans each year; only 26% of Iowa residents have never attended it.2
Iowa’s state income tax form offers taxpayers the opportunity to contribute to the Fair, an
incentive known popularly as the “Corn Dog Check-off.” In a state with approximately
86% of its acreage dedicated to farmland and with some of the world’s richest soil,
agriculture remains a vital part of Iowa’s social and economic fabric.3 As the state
embraces alternative energy production, agribusiness promises to remain a prominent
feature of the Iowa economy. New ventures in ethanol, wind power, and biodiesel fuel
have also generated new Fair exhibitions. A large wind turbine dominates the grounds,

supplies one-quarter of the fairgrounds’ annual energy needs, and exemplifies the link
between the Fair and Iowa’s future landscape.4

2 Thomas Leslie, Iowa State Fair: Country Comes to Town (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2007), 16-17.
3 Percentage of acreage according to 2007 census, United States Department of
Agriculture, Economic Research Service, State Fact Sheets: Iowa, last modified December 16,
2010, http://www.ers.usda.gov/statefacts/ia.htm.
4 Rod Swoboda, “Wind Turbine Built at State Fair Grounds, Wallaces’ Farmer (August
6, 2007), http://wallacesfarmer.com/index.aspx?ascxid=fpStory&fpsid=29422&fpstid=2.
 24

Today’s fairgoers continue a long tradition of identification with the content and
values of the Iowa State Fair. In 1881, Congressman James Wilson extolled the fair’s
centrality to Iowa’s state culture: “The State Fair is to us what Mecca is to the
Mohammedan, what Jerusalem was to the Crusader, what Paris is to pleasure seekers.”5
When Life Magazine covered the fair’s 100th anniversary in 1954, it cited a young
Iowan’s enthusiastic assessment: “Except for Christmas, it’s the most important thing
that happens all year.”6 A State Fair Board Secretary declared in 1968: “[W]e here in
Iowa really have more than all the rest of the world to be proud of—and the Iowa State
Fair is a symbol of this pride.”7 These few of many such proclamations capture the
fervency with which Iowans celebrate their state fair.
The Iowa State Fair’s prominence and significance make it a dynamic venue for
investigating the state’s culture and culture makers. As a synecdoche of the changing
U.S. agricultural landscape, it mirrors the social and economic shifts wrought by such
change. From the urbanization of the fairgrounds to the increasingly industrialized farm
equipment displays and the machine-sewn quilts, the State Fair’s built environment,
exhibitions, and competitions have reflected the state’s shift from a rural economy based
on family farm communities to a more urban culture that both relies upon industrial
agribusiness and is paradoxically distanced from it. The fair has also provided a forum

for citizens to advocate their own cultural values and to intervene in public culture.

5 Earle D. Ross, “The Fair in Transition,” Palimpsest 35, no. 7 (July 1954): 294. James
Wilson went on to serve as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft.
6 “Iowa Fair Starts Strong on Second Century,” Life (September 19, 1955), reprinted in
Iowa State Fair Board, Complete Report of the Iowa State Fair (Des Moines: State of Iowa,
1955), 100.
7 Iowa State Fair Board (ISFB), Report of the 1968 State Fair Board (Des Moines,
1968), 26.
 25

Retaining agency in their changing culture, Iowans have used the State Fair as a platform
for negotiating new social and economic systems and reshaping the state’s culture.
Women have claimed spaces within the State Fair to make their own interventions
in public culture and to influence the social, economic, and physical landscapes of Iowa.
This gendered work is not a new phenomenon but grows directly out of rural work
patterns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While women’s work was
typically bound by gender expectations, it was also valued as essential to the farm
economy and the larger farm community system. Women, men, and children all served
productive roles in a gender-integrated economic system, and women persistently fought
to maintain that productive status. Two of the many productive labors women performed
were quilt production and circulation; these contributed to the farm economy by
providing objects for exchange and by forging and reinforcing crucial social networks.
Women persist in quiltmaking, and their participation in quilt competitions represents one
potent way that they perform as arbiters of culture and promulgate their own social and
economic values. In their persistence, they have demonstrated their commitment to a
gender-integrated model of productivity and have modeled new ways to incorporate
technology in the public and private landscapes of Iowa. Their quilt creation processes
and their finished quilt objects assert an agriculture-based way of seeing that has

influenced state-wide aesthetic values.

Women’s Work in the Early Iowa State Fairs

Agricultural fairs were common in Europe from the Middle Ages on as sites of
trade and social festivity. Early nineteenth-century fairs in the U.S. continued this
tradition, but consonant with the new nation’s dedication to Enlightenment rationality,
shifted the emphasis toward instruction and scientific development. The Iowa State Fair
grew out of this reformist work with its earliest frontrunner Elkanah Watson’s livestock
 26

fair held in Massachusetts in 1811.8 Under the auspices of the Berkshire Agricultural
Society, Watson created an annual fair with exhibitions and competitions of livestock,
crops, and domestic manufactures. Agricultural societies in New York, New England,
and across America subsequently replicated this first fair to introduce agricultural reform
to their local populations. By means of these public gatherings, they believed industrial
and scientific techniques would increase yields and contribute to their communities’
prosperity.
The agricultural societies’ reform agendas reached beyond farmers’ fields,
pastures, and barns to include the farm family and household as well, so that “household
arts” have been a central feature of fairs since the Berkshire Agricultural Society awarded
fifteen prizes for women’s domestic manufactures in 1813.9 This inclusion was a logical
extension of the agricultural societies’ aims and reflected the integrated social and
economic systems of family farming. Men’s and women’s work overlapped
considerably, and mutuality and flexibility were essential features in farm family
operations. Early agricultural societies recognized that improving farming processes
would have to include household work as well as field and barnyard activities.10
The Iowa State Fair embraced this integrated model from its beginnings in the
mid-nineteenth century when the Iowa State Agricultural Society—formed in 1853 just

nine years after Iowa achieved statehood—initiated it to “promote the cause of

8 Wayne Caldwell Neely, The Agricultural Fair (New York: Columbia University Press,
1935), 61.
9 Neely, 63.

10 For an extensive description of gender and farm labor, see Mary Neth, Preserving the
Family Farm: Women, Community and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-
1940 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995) and Katherine Jellison, Entitled to
Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1993).
 27

Agriculture, Manufactures and Domestic Economy.”11 Composed largely of Iowa

businessmen, the ISAS strove to cultivate the state’s agricultural and economic growth.
Its founders wanted Iowa to be competitive as Chicago’s markets expanded and river
navigation and railroads made the shipment of Iowa’s commodities to Chicago more
feasible. In part, the organization was an exercise in marketing and self-promotion, but it
was also a forum for critique and self-improvement. Members sought to strengthen and
expand the Iowa agricultural economy by rigorously testing farms and farmers at a micro
level—calf by calf and quilt by quilt.
The ISAS held the first state fair in Fairfield on October 25-27, 1854. The
opening day featured livestock exhibitions, while the second highlighted farm
implements, dairy products, grains and seeds, and ladies handiwork.12 Women entered
their work into two classes of “Domestic Manufactures” in addition to “Preserves, Cakes,
Pickles, &c.,” and a grains and breads class. They also participated in miscellaneous
competitions that awarded premiums for such displays as the best floral painting, pair of
elk, roofing improvement, and dentistry. ISAS members lauded women’s
accomplishments in their first “Report of the Agricultural Fair”: “Here was a most
brilliant feature of the exhibition. This display spoke volumes to the honor of the
‘mothers, wives, and daughters’ of our state.” Awards honored the best plaid flannel,

fringed mittens, rag carpet, and fine white hose, among other items.13 A second
domestic category of ornamental needlework and fancy work displayed a large number of
entries and was well attended by fairgoers. Within that category, organizers made

11 Iowa State Agricultural Society (ISAS), Report and Proceedings of the Iowa State
Agricultural Society (Keokuk, Iowa: Ben Franklin Book and Job Office, 1854), 5.
12 Dorothy Carlson, “The Iowa State Fair: Its First Six Years,” Annals of Iowa 40
(1969): 74.
13 ISAS, Report and Proceedings, 15.
 28

“honorable mention of the great variety, number and beauty of the quilts on
exhibition.”14 Their language suggests that while quilts were certainly appreciated by
judges and fairgoers, they were not as aesthetically distinguished as other women’s
handiwork, perhaps because they were still considered more commonplace and
utilitarian.
A detailed newspaper story about the third state fair in Muscatine in 1857
provides a more specific sense of the items exhibited, hints at the layout of early fine art
halls, and praises both the workmanship and aesthetic quality of the items displayed.
According to the reporter, women’s work dominated the space. As visitors entered from
the building’s north side, they first saw “a very attractive display of embroidery,
needlework, &c.”15 Select entries included “most beautifully executed” landscape and
portrait needlework, work in perforated paper, “The Fall of Jerusalem” in crayon
“executed with exquisite taste and faithfulness, “admirably executed” ornamented
leather-work, “beautiful specimens of worsted embroidery,” and a “beautifully
embroidered” white merino scarf. In addition, “Quilts, blankets, coverlets, etc., of home
manufacture were plenty, and did great credit to the industry and skill of the ladies of
Iowa.”16 In contrast to women’s more decorative products, quilts were defined by their
workmanship rather than their aesthetic qualities.

Other more masculine displays in the Fine Art Hall gave priority to Iowa’s
workmanship, resourcefulness, and scientific prowess over aesthetics. As a Dubuque
North-West reporter recounted: “About the center of this Hall was an extensive and rare

14 ISAS, Report and Proceedings, 16.

15 ISAS, Report of the Iowa State Agricultural Society (Muscatine, 1857), reprinted in
“Source Material of Iowa History: The Iowa State Fair of 1856,” Iowa Journal of History 154,
no. 2 (April 1956): 177.
16 Ibid., 177-8.
 29

collection of reptiles and insects, also, a double-headed calf.”17 Other displays featured
photographs, ambrotypes, penmanship, marble and stone work, engineer’s and surveyor’s
instruments, school apparatus, engravings, and musical instruments. All of these
divisions reflect the practical nature of the Iowa State Fair and the desire to create and
display utilitarian objects. Even though aesthetics were certainly the defining feature of
much of the women’s decorative entries in the Fine Art Hall, functional objects also
played an essential role.
The taxonomy of fair competitions changed over time, and these shifting
categories mirrored changing attitudes toward art, crafts, and women’s work more
generally. Annual “premium books” that list the competitive events, their organization
into classes, entry rules, judging criteria, and prizes provide an ongoing record of how
Iowans have mapped their economic and social lives. As the early fairs moved
throughout eastern Iowa from one temporary fairground to another, organizers
consistently dedicated a specific building to female-identified household arts and
denominated that building the Fine Art Hall. While this building also included some
male-identified competitive classes, it is significant that the early fairs categorized “fine
art” as primarily the purview of women. This would change over the history of the fair,
but it would take nearly 120 years for the display of arts like painting and photography to

become completely separate from that of traditionally female-defined arts.18

Permanent Space for Women in the Urban Fairgrounds

In 1886, the Iowa State Agricultural Society held its first fair at newly constructed
permanent fairgrounds in the capital city of Des Moines. Locating an agricultural fair in

17 ISAS, Report of the ISAS (1857), 177.

18 In 1974, such arts were organized into a newly renovated “Cultural Center” after
sharing space with many other crafts, handiwork, and educational programming over the years. I
will discuss this in greater detail later in this chapter.
 30

an urban setting was controversial, but Des Moines was not only centrally located but
was also increasingly the economic and cultural hub of the state.19 In organizing the new
grounds, the ISAS constructed several large timber buildings for major exhibitions and
smaller cottages to house individual organizations. Women’s participation had been
largely confined to the submission of entries for the Fine Art Hall at the early, peripatetic
Iowa State Fairs, so it is not surprising that women’s groups were the first to apply for
new permanent spaces for additional activities. The Iowa Women’s Suffrage Association
(IWSA) and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) submitted the first
requests for designated cottages. Successful in their applications, they used the humble
spaces to promote their causes, showcase educational displays, and hold political
meetings.20 An understanding of these spaces and the new urban grounds helps provide a
context for what became separate women’s textile exhibitions.
Though fair organizers granted women’s political organizations space, they also
directed resources toward grander, more attractive, and less outlying women’s spaces that
excluded political organizations. In part, this was indicative of the discord between the
Iowa State Agricultural Society’s goals and those of the women’s organizations. Though
they all shared a desire to bring progress to the prairie, they disagreed about the ideal
manifestations of that progress. The IWSA and WCTU represented a dramatic departure

from the social and economic systems at play in farm communities and brought an urban-
oriented perspective to a rural-identified Iowa. The ISAS, in contrast, was invested in
preserving the state’s rural agricultural strength, and recognized that women’s farm labor

19 See Leslie for an extensive analysis of the rural/urban tensions at the fair.

20 Mary Kay Shanley, Our State Fair: Iowa’s Blue Ribbon Story (Ames, IA: Iowa State
Fair Blue Ribbon Foundation, 2000), 234-41.
 31

was still essential for such work. The IWSA and WCTU wanted to move women from
their central role in the private sphere into the public sphere of political action.21
With aims similar to the ISAS but with more resources, the State of Iowa Board
of Agriculture took over management of the State Fair in 1900.22 In 1903 it constructed
a large Woman’s Rest Building and Emergency Hospital (or “Woman’s Building”) as a
space for women to gather, rest, and care for children away from fair activities and
exhibitions. It explicitly forbade political groups’ presence in the new building.23 When
publicizing this space, the Board described it in apolitical terms, emphasizing its serenity.
The 1906 premium book and catalogue described the Woman’s Building as “situated
upon a beautiful hillside. It is provided with a typical southern veranda overlooking the
main grounds, and is furnished with chairs and seats of every description.”24 Organizers
believed that women ought to have space for respite and relaxation rather than political
agitation and organizing.
The Iowa General Assembly committed $75,000 for a new Women and
Children’s Building in 1913.25 Looking back on this appropriation years later, an Iowa
State Fair Board President’s wife sardonically noted that “this was the same amount as
appropriated for the Swine Barn and six years later.”26 Regardless, when the building

21 For a more extensive discussion of how these women’s reform movements intersected
with changing notions of women’s domestic labor, see Glenna Matthews, “Just a Housewife”:
The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
22 In 1923, the State Department of Agriculture began to oversee the fair and appointed a
specific Iowa State Fair Board which consisted of the Governor, Secretary of Agriculture,
President of the Agricultural College, Board Secretary, and others.
23 Chris Rasmussen, “State Fair: Culture and Agriculture in Iowa, 1854-1941” (PhD
diss., Rutgers, 1992), 291.
24 ISAS, Rules and Premium List for the Fifty-First Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State
Fair (Des Moines, 1906), 4.
25 Rasmussen, 289.

26 ISFB, Report of 1952 Iowa State Fair (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1952), 132.
 32

opened in 1914, it represented a much more dynamic space for women. While fair
publications would continue to tout the Women and Children’s Building as a resting
place, the structure included educational exhibits about food and nutrition, home
furnishings, child development, and home management. The inauguration of the Women
and Children’s Building coincided with accelerating rural reform and the passage of the
1914 Smith-Lever Act. This federal legislation funded Extension Service activities to
educate farm families—and to reform rural America.27 The Women and Children’s
Building would become host to Extension Service competitions and the famously
problematic Healthy Baby Contest—a forty-year tradition of judging the physical
characteristics and health of Iowa babies.28 These competitions fit well with the
established aims of the Iowa State Fair, encouraging competitors and fairgoers to adopt
modern technologies and to contribute to a more prosperous Iowa.

The Taxonomy and Geography of State Fair Textiles

Women’s household arts continued to be featured at the Fair through the many
attempts to secure women-specific spaces on the fairgrounds that would be independent
of Women and Children’s Building activities and women’s political organizations. This
distinction was indicative of household arts’ longstanding integration into the farm
economy. Such arts warranted an independent exhibition structure that paralleled that of

other farm economy features such as livestock and agronomy. Competitive categories
like textiles stood in contrast to the reform work of organizations like the Extension

27 For a thorough discussion of the Extension Services Iowa activities, see Dorothy
Schwieder, “Education and Change in the Lives of Iowa Farm Women, 1900-1940,” Agricultural
History 60 (1986): 200-215 and Schwieder, “The Iowa State College Extension Service Through
Two World Wars,” Agricultural History 64 (1990): 219-230. Jellison also describes the
limitations of these programs and farm women’s resistance to them.
28 Annual premium books describe and promote the Women and Children’s Building
activities.
 33

Service, WCTU, or IWSA, which were urban-based institutions seeking to change the
largely rural state. The Fair’s urban visitors may have seen household arts as quaint
holdovers from the pre-modern past, but the women who created them did not. For them,
the work they exhibited reflected their ongoing negotiations with new technologies,
changing social structures, and shifting economic realities no less than did the new
techniques of modern farming that farm men were being encouraged to adopt.
Throughout the Fair’s history, textile exhibitions have had an unsettled taxonomic
and geographic relationship to other arts, crafts, and household skills. At different
historical moments, fair organizers have included textiles with exhibitions of fine art,
china painting, crafts and hobbies, or with culinary competitions. Textiles’ venues have
been equally various—ranging from a large Exposition Hall to the Agricultural
Building’s balcony. By tracing the categorization and physical movement of textiles, it is
possible to develop a nuanced picture of the context for women’s cultural work and to
understand the place of women’s work within the larger Iowa farm culture. Each of these
alterations is indicative of broader attitudes towards women’s work and of that work’s
cultural reach.
A standard taxonomic system governs Fair exhibitions, and it is worth outlining
that system’s structure and terminology before moving into a more substantive discussion

of how it has functioned on the fairgrounds. While the terminology may be cumbersome,
it constitutes a working vocabulary that fair organizers, staff, volunteers, and visitors
have used since the earliest fairs. It organizes print materials, competitive events,
employees, and physical spaces, and manifests the scientific philosophies and models at
the Fair’s core. At the topmost level of organization are broad categories used primarily
to organize print materials such as premium books. For example, for several decades
textiles have been listed in the “Family Living” premium book, which currently includes
categories like “Fabric and Threads,” “Agriculture and Horticulture,” “Creative Arts and
Crafts,” “Food,” and “Floriculture.” These subcategories are called “departments” and
 34

are much more specific, connoting a shared subject matter and physical proximity of
exhibits and events; one staff superintendent typically oversees one specific department.
Within each department, superintendents organize competitions into division
subcategories and then class subcategories. At the contemporary fair, for example, the
“Fabric and Threads Department” includes divisions such as “weaving,” “counted cross
stitch,” “needlepoint,” and “quilting.” It makes further distinctions within divisions so
that the quilt division now includes over fifty specific classes like “team or group
appliqué quilt,” wall quilt, scrap,” and “pieced crib quilt.” Entrants compete against one
another within these classes; the winning entries from each class are then considered for
“Best of Show” within the division.
When the permanent fairgrounds in Des Moines opened in 1886, it housed the
textile exhibitions in its grandest, most permanent new building, Exposition Hall. This
10,000 square foot building stood atop the fairground’s steep hill, overlooking the
expansive grounds below and the new State Capitol in the distance. Its architect modeled
it on London’s Crystal Palace but also incorporated the vertical boards so prevalent in
agricultural architecture. It featured a large, octagonal peak, broad wings, and thousands
of windows. Two smaller pavilions with a similar layout flanked the vast hall.29 The
grand Exposition Hall was meant to symbolize the fair’s prominence and permanence.

This imposing hall was deemed an appropriate place to showcase women’s textile
work in the late 1800s. Victorian attitudes hailing women’s positive moral influence
were still widespread in the United States, and handiwork materially represented
women’s authority to oversee a positive home environment and educate family members
about proper, tasteful living.30 For rural women, sewing and quilting were also an

29 Leslie, 47-9.

30 Beverly Gordon, “Cozy, Charming, and Artistic: Stitching Together the American
Home,” in The Arts and the American Home, 1890-1930, ed. Jessica Foy and Karal Ann Marling
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 125-6.
 35

essential aspect of a farm economy that relied on the cooperative labor of men, women,
children, and neighbors. Women’s sewing created goods for the household, exchange,
and sale, and quilting was a particularly important “neighboring” activity. Farm families
depended on one another’s labor to sustain their farms, and communal work like quilting
helped build the relationships necessary for resource sharing. Quilting was also symbolic
of women’s ability to “make do,” a skill much prized in rural families and
communities.31 As an integral part of the farm economy and society, textiles had a
natural place in the prominent, clapboard building at the Iowa State Fair.
In the new Exposition Hall, textiles were located in a category as eclectic as the
Fine Art Halls of the temporary fairgrounds—reflecting the symbolic integration of
agricultural industries and activities. For many years entitled “Mechanical, Textile
Fabrics, Boys’ and Girls’ and Fine Art Department,” it hosted divisions such as Cabinet
Work and Upholstery, Sewing Machines, Factory Goods Made in Iowa, Musical
Instruments, Fine Worked Metals, Natural History, Zoology, Botany, and Printers’ Work.
It also exhibited an array of textile arts including a number of embroidery styles, knitting,
crochet, lace work, tatting work, and quilts. Fine arts included painting, marble and
white bronze work, crayon work, and designs and models, and in several of these classes,
distinctions were made between “Amateur” and “Professional” entries. The Boys’ and

Girls’ competitions included a potpourri of entries from across this department. By 1887,
the department separated “Fine Art Work” from the other divisions, making space for
hammered brass objects, art pottery, plaster fruit, embalmed flowers, crystallized baskets,
and animal paintings.32

31 Though quilt scholars have refuted the notion that quiltmaking has always been a
resourceful use of scrap fabrics, the medium continues to connote a sense of “making do.” For
more on the value of “making do” in rural communities, see especially Neth’s chapter “Building a
Rural Neighborhood,” 40-70.
32 ISAS, Premium Lists and Rules, 1885-1904.
 36

The process of distinguishing textiles from the other artifacts in this department
was slow, but by the first decade of the twentieth century, the “mechanical” entries had
all but disappeared, and fine art was soon sequestered in the “Fine Art Hall” or “Art
Barn.” Despite classical art hierarchies, textiles were granted a higher status than other
fine arts into the twentieth century. While textile exhibitions were praised for
demonstrating the skills and talents of Iowa’s women, the fine art exhibitions met with
mixed reactions, at best. An 1873 review in the Western Farm Journal described the fine
art display as “feeble attempts to reproduce the fashions of feeble art schools, but not a
single effort at original design or execution.”33 Of the 1896 art exhibition, the Des
Moines Leader wrote: “In no other department of the fair could there be found such a
medley of good and bad. Some of it was in touch with the most advanced ideas of the
times and some with the extreme backwoods of a primitive civilization.” Fulminating
against such a lack of discrimination, it declared that state and county fairs “commit
crimes against the progress of art and against those persons who have a desire to become
artists.”34 The poorly received fine art entries were indicative of Iowa’s artistic
immaturity and ongoing struggle to establish a distinctive cultural base.35 More
practical, farm-based forms of creative production took center stage at turn-of-the-
century state fairs.

As the fair adjusted to its new home in the growing city of Des Moines, it needed
to attract the local urban population and reflect more cosmopolitan sensibilities. Fair
organizers tried to address urban critiques of the fine art exhibitions by changing the

33 Rasmussen, 414.

34 Qtd. in Bess Ferguson, Charles Atherton Cumming: Iowa’s Pioneer Artist Educator
(Des Moines: Iowa Art Guild, 1972), 37.
35 See Rasmussen’s extensive discussion of the Iowa State Fair’s art department in his
chapter “Agricultural Lag,” 403-48.
 37

competitive categories, assigning new superintendents, and bringing professional

expertise to the art department. In 1914 the fair board divided into two departments the
former “Mechanical, Textile Fabrics, Boys’ and Girls’ and Fine Art Department”;
“Textile Fabrics, Arts and Crafts and Decorated China” became entirely separate from
“Graphic and Plastic Arts Department.”36 The board appointed Professor Charles
Atherton Cumming as the new superintendent of the latter, enlisting his skills as a
practicing painter and educator. Cumming had been trained at the Chicago Academy of
Design (now the Art Institute of Chicago) and the Academie Julien in Paris. He had
taught at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, directed the Des Moines Academy of
Art, helped establish the University of Iowa art department, and founded his own
Cumming School of Art in Des Moines.37 To his state fair work, he brought a very
traditional artistic sensibility, shunning the modern art coming into prominence elsewhere
in the early 1900s and advocating traditional, representational art.
This professionalization of the “Graphic and Plastic Arts Department” contrasted
with the home-based work that women continued to enter into the textile exhibitions, and
the two departments would grow increasingly far apart—in terms of content, stature, and
relationship to agricultural Iowa. The newly renamed “Graphic Art Department” was
relocated to the Women and Children’s Building in 1926, and the next year its first

female superintendent was named. Mrs. Henry Ness transformed the fine art department
into an even more distinctive program during the late 1920s and 1930s, moving it into the
Educational Building and repositioning it as the “Art Salon.” 38 During her tenure as

36 ISFB, Rules and Premium List for the Sixtieth Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State
Fair (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1914).
37 Furguson, 20-25.

38 This is how “Mrs. Ness” is listed in the premium books, and I choose to retain that
nomenclature to reflect the parlance of the time; Iowa State Fair Board, Rules and Premium Lists,
1926-1936.
 38

superintendent, the Midwest’s proudest art movement began to gain ground, and
established its foundation on the walls of the Art Salon. In 1929, Grant Wood’s John D.
Turner, Pioneer won the grand prize in the salon, and regionalists would dominate the
competition throughout the 1930s. Ness also introduced an “Iowa Photographic Salon”
to the fine art offerings, keeping pace with modern conceptualizations of photography as
fine art.
The Art Salon’s prestigious entries and controversies undoubtedly overshadowed
the textile exhibitions during this time, as fair organizers attempted to balance
cosmopolitan sensibilities with rural traditions. Women’s handiwork had become less
valued in the broader U.S. culture as well, as the home was increasingly figured as a
locus of entertainment and charm rather than morality and education. Needlework was
no longer perceived as an uplifting activity, but as old-fashioned and trivial.39 The 1920s
and 1930s were a particularly strenuous time for rural women, however, and coping with
the agricultural depression certainly left little time or resources for women to worry about
how charming their homes were. Instead, they needed to focus their energies on making
do with what was available and on advocating for more beneficial agricultural policies.40
Their labor was crucial for sustaining their farms through the depression, and needlework
production was one way that women “made do,” sewing clothing, piecing feed sacks into

quilts, and making other items for home use. Iowa women continued to compete in the
State Fair with their appliqué work, crochet, embroidery, knitting, weaving, needlepoint,
quilts and rugs. The 1933 fair’s theme “Back To Fundamentals” held up as exemplary
“the proven principles which gave our farm regions their first development and

39 Gordon, 141-3.

40 Jellison, especially chapters 2 and 3, 33-105.

 39

prosperity.”41 While urban fashions may have shunned these fundamentals, rural women
recognized them as instrumental to preserving their livelihood.
The textile department’s first female superintendent was appointed in 1936, and
Mrs. S. A. Alpin oversaw it until the fair was suspended during World War II. When it
returned in 1946, it celebrated the centenary of Iowa’s statehood and reached an
attendance record of 514,036.42 The textile exhibition resumed in the Exposition
Building under the direction of new Superintendent Mrs. S. N. Van Vliet, and the Art
Salon continued in the Educational Building. Though the Art Salon had attracted
significant attention well before the war, it still received mixed reviews from
agriculturally-oriented publications. Covering the revived fair, the popular farm journal
Wallace’s Farmer and Iowa Homestead noted: “The art salon was good for a laugh from
some and for serious consideration of the Iowa scene from others.”43 In other words,
Iowans lacked consensus about the qualities that defined “fine art.” Textiles, on the other
hand, were not subject to accusations of modishness and self-indulgence, likely due to the
fact that they were conceptualized as utilitarian as well as aesthetic objects.
The Iowa State Fair Board dismantled the long-standing and increasingly decrepit
Exposition Hall in 1950 to make room for a new 4-H Girls’ Dormitory, relocating the
Textile Department to the balcony of the Agricultural Building. Originally built in 1907,

this structure was at the fairgrounds’ main crossroads in the thick of fairgoer foot traffic.
Inspired by the architecture of the Chicago Columbian Exposition, the brick and stone
building reflected the era’s Beaux-Arts aesthetics and featured grand interior spaces.44

41 ISFB, Premium List of the Seventy-Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State Fair and
Exposition (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1933), 7.
42 ISFB, Report of 1946 Iowa State Fair (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1946), 4.

43 Qtd. in Ibid., 15.

44 Leslie, 104; 66-9.

 40

The Textile Department shared space within the Agriculture Building with agriculture,
horticulture, and floriculture, the exhibits of which highlighted farm, orchard, and garden
products as well as seed and grain displays and floral arrangements. This building still
stands on the fairgrounds a century later, and its balcony remains one of most sweltering
spaces of the mid-August fair.
As rural women struggled to maintain their role as “farmers” rather than “farmers’
wives,” their textiles’ placement in the Agriculture Building served as an unmistakable
symbol of the continuing inseparability of household work, agriculture, horticulture, and
floriculture. Farm women largely resisted more than fifty years of reform efforts,
governmental programs, and marketing campaigns dedicated to making them over into an
idealized image of urban, middle-class, full-time homemakers. They resented these
expectations and were determined to continue playing an economically productive role in
farm life. As Katherine Jellison demonstrates in Entitled to Power, their antagonism was
in part a conscious resistance to reformist rhetoric and urban lifestyle choices, but also an
economic necessity. Farm families depended upon women’s labor and could ill afford
the loss of it by assigning women to a privatized, separate sphere.45 As the Agricultural
Building layout suggested, their industry remained integral to the economy of Iowa’s
farms.

This recognition of the centrality of women’s productive farm labor would ebb,
however. In the decades following World War II, businesses consolidated much of farm
women’s productivity and moved it off the farm; women no longer performed activities
like egg and vegetable production, dairying, and butchering to the extent they had before
and during the war. Increasingly, farm women worked in the fields and took the place of
hired hands farm families could no longer afford, or found jobs off the farm to

45 Jellison, 107-29
 41

supplement farm income. They also faced increasing pressure from farm publications,
advertising campaigns, and out-of-work hired hands to perform the roles of an urban-
styled homemaker.46 Though farm women continued to resist this pressure, the farm
family structure was certainly changing and women’s contributions to the farm economy
were significantly different than they had been in small, community-based farm systems.
The Fair Board moved textiles to the east end of the Grandstand in 1965, where it
shared space with the Culinary Department until the latter relocated in the newly-
refurbished Family Center in 1982. This Grandstand location certainly denoted
depreciation of rural women’s work—particularly inasmuch as the Art Salon in more
attractive quarters was receiving increased attention and attracting enthusiastic audiences.
The wooden Grandstand was originally the Fair’s entertainment venue. It was rebuilt in
steel in 1909 and major renovations to it in 1927 created exhibition space under the
seating areas; this awkward area would host the textiles and culinary department for some
twenty years after its 1965 placement there.47 Commonly associated with death-defying
stunt shows and popular musical acts, the Grandstand was an inauspicious location for
textiles, and the exhibitions were dwarfed by the cavernous spaces under the stadium
seating. Textiles’ dismal fate contrasted with the Art Salon’s move to a special purpose
“Cultural Center” in 1974—that featured art, photography, crafts, and hobbies.48

Iowa State Fair textile competitions would be reinvigorated over the next few
decades, however. This was in large part due to the quilt revival of the late 1970s and
early 1980s, but also to new leadership. Dorothy Faidley was appointed to supervise the

46 For farm census data and an analysis of farm publications and advertising, see
Jellison, especially Chapter 6, “Community Work and Technological Change: The Thresheree,”
147-83.
47 Leslie, 73-88.

48 Iowa State Fair, Historical Highlights: Iowa State Fair, 1854-1983, 11.
 42

newly renamed “Textiles & Clothing” department in 1982 and instituted major changes
in it. During her twenty-five year tenure, exhibitions reflected several dynamic cultural
shifts, including the effect of the 1980s farm crisis on women’s roles and new quilt
production methods. Faidley has sought quiltmaker input and watched quilting trends so
as to sensitively modify the entry rules, judging criteria, and competition classes, enlarge
educational programming, and solicit more active sponsor participation.49 In 1989 she
renamed the department with a more contemporary label, “Fabric and Threads,” and
engineered its move from the Grandstand to a new and more congenial space in the
Varied Industries Building in 2002. Quilts are such an integral part of the State Fair’s
twenty-first century identity that the exterior of the Richard O. Jacobson Exhibition
Center, constructed in 2010, is decorated with a band of brightly colored quilt square
motifs—each designed to represent an Iowa county.50

Quilt Categorization and an Agricultural Aesthetic51

While the Textile Department’s classification and location reveal the shifting
status of women’s household labor in Iowa culture, the dynamics within the department

49 Dorothy Faidley, interview by author, Des Moines, IA, March 12, 2008 and evidence
in premium books.
50 This outdoor mural also mirrors Iowa’s popular barn quilts, quilt motifs that are
painted onto or affixed to rural barns throughout Iowa. These barn quilts represent a very
tangible way that Iowa women are imposing their quilt traditions and aesthetics on the Iowa
landscape.
51 The categorization and judging criteria introduce a fairly technical vocabulary into my
argument. A few important terms: A “quilt” is generally defined as two pieces of fabric filled
with batting and stitched together. “Piecing” is the process of joining fabrics to create a larger
item. “Quilting” is the term for the stitching that holds the quilt together or is the process of
creating this stitching. The specificity of “a quilt” and “quilting” is important. For example, a
“comforter” is similar to a quilt in that it usually includes two pieces of fabric and batting, but it is
typically tied or knotted together rather than quilted together. Therefore, even if it is “pieced,” it
is not defined as a “quilt” without “quilting.” Given this distinction, I reserve the term “quilter”
for individuals who actually quilt; those involved more generally in the production of quilts are
“quiltmakers.”
 43

illuminate the specific cultural work that women have enacted through their labor. The
changing categorization of and judging criteria for textiles reveal how Iowa women have
actively negotiated the tensions between a traditional agricultural society and an
increasingly urbanized, cosmopolitan one. The quilt division, in particular, has reflected
women’s determination to engage with changing technologies and new professional
opportunities without jettisoning their commitment to an agriculture-based way of seeing
and of participating in community. Faidley has been the public face for these quiltmakers
as they have negotiated this cultural tension by adopting machine quilted and team-based
production strategies, professionalizing the quilt competition, and establishing distinctive
aesthetic priorities for the judging of quilts at the Fair.
Through quilts, Iowa women have crafted new cultural models that address
Iowa’s changing social and economic arrangements. As technological advances in
farming practices changed rural labor systems, women used the quiltmaking process as a
means for sustaining the social networks that had long been integral to community farm
life. By constructing quilts together, exchanging quilt labor, and competing at the State
Fair, women sustained threatened neighboring practices and forged new networks that
would connect them socially and financially with other women. They also created
economic change through their quilt work by establishing new businesses and earning

wages for their quilt labor. These distinctive social and economic strategies have been
evident over the course of the State Fair, and have played out in the quilt exhibitions.
Women have also used their state fair quilt work to promulgate a distinctly
agricultural aesthetic that has shaped Iowa’s contours. The Iowa State Fair plays a
central role in negotiations regarding the state’s economy, values, and landscape, and
women have employed quilts as a material means of engaging in those negotiations. By
selectively adopting new sewing technologies, working collaboratively, and enforcing
meticulous technical standards, women have helped to shape the social and cultural life
of Iowa, and in turn, the physical appearance of the state. In particular, the State Fair’s
 44

early acceptance of machine quilting and active support of longarm quilting have
encouraged quilts with a very different appearance and tactility. Machine-quilted quilts
are textured with mechanically even stitches, a tighter stitch tension, and a greater
proportion of quilted area. By adopting these processes, women have also increased their
productive yield. Iowa quiltmakers have literally stitched the contours of their state as
they have promulgated an aesthetic that underscores the beauty of such topography.
Through their quilts, they have signaled their advocacy for and embrace of the
agricultural technology that has shaped the Iowa landscape. Their quilt surfaces have
changed in tandem with the land, and Iowa quilts and land now share a common visual
aesthetic—as more acres are dedicated to crops and cultivated land showcases linear
fields with more intensive, narrow rows and increased yields.

Sewing Technology and the Iowa Landscape

Iowa State Fair textile superintendents have long designated quilt classes in
relation to new fashions and emerging sewing technologies. Quiltmakers have
determined their entry into these classes based on both their access to materials and tools
and their preferred quiltmaking processes. By adopting or rejecting sewing technology,
in particular, women have expressed their own economic status as well as their financial
and aesthetic values. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, proponents of

agricultural progress and reform perpetually encouraged rural women to adopt new,
modern household technologies. Women often resisted these inducements—either
because they could not afford them or they gave them low priority. As stakeholders in
the farm’s economic system, women usually believed resources ought to be invested in
technologies facilitating fieldwork rather than housework. If discretionary funds were
available, they wanted technologies that expedited communication and transportation.
When women did adopt a household technology, it was more likely to be one that would
 45

contribute directly to farm production and family income. 52 The sewing machine was
one of the few that fit these criteria.
Rural midwestern women’s adoption of sewing machine technology was evident
in the State Fair quilt division as early as 1888. The division had traditionally featured a
class in which women could showcase their quilting skills specifically in addition to
classes organized around form or pattern, such as “fancy silk quilt,” “log cabin quilt,” and
“white quilt.” However, the 1888 superintendent created two separate classes for quilting
skills: “Specimen of quilting, hand work” and “Specimen of quilting, machine work.”53
A competitor entering the “machine work” category would be advertising her financial
and/or social standing as well as asserting a new quilting aesthetic. Though sewing
machines were readily available and relatively inexpensive in the Midwest during this
time, women would have needed discretionary authority over the farm’s budget to
purchase them.54 Alternatively, women could have relied on established social exchange
networks to share a neighbor’s machine. Once a woman procured a machine, she would
need ingenuity to use it for quilting, and the product she created would have a very
different appearance than those in the hand work class. Quilting a large item on a small
machine was difficult, and women often quilted individual blocks before assembly, or

52 Jellison provides a detailed historical arc for understanding rural women’s relationship
to technology.
53 ISAS, Premium List and Rules for the Thirty-Fifth Exhibition of the Iowa State
Agricultural Society (Des Moines, 1888).
54 Both Marguerite Connelly and Anita Loscalzo argue that sewing machines were
widely common across the United States during this time; given the dynamics of the rural
Midwestern economy, I believe that women would have needed the resources or networks to
access them and may not frequently have had the means to exploit them for these purposes.
Regardless, both Connelly and Loscalzo provide invaluable histories of sewing machines in the
home and for quilting, respectively. Marguerite Connelly, “The Disappearance of the Domestic
Sewing Machine, 1890-1925,” Winterthur Portfolio 34, no. 1 (1999): 31-48 and Anita B.
Loscalzo, “The History of the Sewing Machine and its Use in Quilting in the United States,”
Uncoverings 26 (2005): 175-208.
 46

made smaller doll quilts.55 Beginning in 1897, fair rules required that entries in the
“specimen of quilting, machine work” category be “not less than one yard square.”56 As
a result, women would stitch a simple grid pattern across the surface—the most
straightforward way to machine quilt a pre-assembled quilt.57 Regardless of the selected
process, the quilts in this category proclaimed their makers’ access to technology and
mastery of it.
The textiles superintendent dropped the “Specimen of quilting, machine work”
class from the “Household Fabrics, Quilts, etc” division in 1906, but retained a discrete
class for hand quilting, the more revered technique at the time. Women could still enter
machine-quilted items in other quilt classes, but the Fair no longer rewarded women
separately for their skills at quilting on a machine. It is unlikely that this change affected
many women, as contemporary trends reflected a return to hand quilting. Many early
twentieth-century women used sewing machines in their quilt construction, but only for
assembly—not for actual quilting. This shift reflected the waning novelty of the sewing
machine, the growing influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the beginnings of
the Colonial Revival. Contemporary aesthetic and philosophical movements emphasized
simpler designs, natural materials, and a return to “old-fashioned” production techniques.
Just one year prior, fair organizers had added an “Arts and Crafts” division to the same

department that housed textiles, and encouraged entries in bead weaving, basket weaving,
hammered brass and copper, hair work, pottery, bent iron, and leather work.58

55 Loscalzo, 184-6.

56 ISAS, Premium List and Rules for the Forty-Fourth Exhibition of the Iowa State
Agricultural Society (Des Moines, 1897).
57 Loscalzo, 186.

58 ISFB, Rules and Premium List of the Fifty-First Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State
Fair (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1905).
 47

The Iowa State Fair reintroduced classes that specifically showcased machine
quilting for a few years in the early 1960s and then permanently in the late 1970s—well
ahead of the national acceptance of such techniques.59 Major national competitions
would not begin to accept and award prizes to machine quilting until well into the
1980s.60 In the State Fair’s machine quilting classes, women took advantage of new
sewing technologies that radically changed quilt processes and products. Free arm
sewing machines, available in the United States after World War II, allowed women to
move a mechanized needle across a stationery quilt rather than moving the quilt under the
needle. This engineering facilitated a motion more consistent with hand quilting
processes, as it allowed quilters to manually control the needle’s movement. The
introduction of longarm quilting technology around 1980 also changed quiltmaking. It
allowed the quilter to freely navigate the entire full-framed quilt rather than being
restricted to working on the smaller portions that fitted under a conventional machine’s
arm. Some variations in longarm technologies have since been introduced, but this basic
design has dominated machine quilting.
The visual and tactile effects of machine quilting are quite distinct from those of
hand quilting, and when women began to quilt with machines they also developed a new
aesthetic that took advantage of the ways machine and hand stitching differed. Like any

sewing machine, the free arm and longarm variations produce tight, even, precise
stitches. They use two strands of thread, one each on the quilt’s front and back, creating
trenches in the fabric that differ in appearance from the undulating surface texture
produced by a single thread of hand quilting that travels between front and back.
Computerized programs also allow machine quilters to create patterns that repeat evenly

59 See ISFB, Rules and Premium Lists, 1960-2010.

60 Loscalzo, 190-4.
 48

over the quilt’s surface, and women take advantage of machine quilting’s relative ease to
add more stitching and patterns. The tighter machine tension and profusion of stitching
creates a stiffer, firmer quilt than hand quilting and leaves less of the fabric surface
unquilted.
Today’s quilt exhibition is replete with machine-pieced and machine-quilted
items, representing the vast majority of entries. The State Fair defines a quilt as “a fabric
sandwich held together with hand or machine quilting stitches.”61 Class descriptions
now specify those designated for hand work, and in 2007 the superintendent
distinguished “embroidered by hand” from “embroidered by machine” and included a
“handpieced” class for individual quiltmakers, suggesting that this was a unique
technique worthy of distinction.62 The “Fabric & Threads” display also includes a
longarm demonstration, where visitors can try their hand at the machines. This
interactive feature provides visitors with a greater understanding of both the technology
and craft behind machine quilting and allows them to experience just how difficult
machine quilting can be. It erases any preconceived notions about the instant
gratification and ease of having a machine do the work.
This transformation in the Fair quilting division has not been driven simply by
new sewing technologies or greater access to them. While the State Fair proclaims itself

a venue for technological progress, it is also a more complex space for cultural
negotiations. Iowa women embraced machine piecing and machine quilting at the Fair as
a way of participating in negotiations about the economic and social landscape of Iowa.
Through their quilts, they advocated for new technologies that would bring visual and
tactile changes to both the home and the land. They adopted a process that increased

61 ISFB, Iowa Family Living and Arts Premium List (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 2001).

62 ISFB, 2007 Iowa State Fair Premium Book: Iowa Family Living (Des Moines, 2007),
10-11.
 49

quilting speed, allowed for more uniform stitches, eased repetition, and covered more
quilt surface. The increased prevalence of this process at the Iowa State Fair represents
an embrace of both technology-based production and its attendant aesthetic. State fair
quilts, then, represent Iowa women’s development of and endorsement of an aesthetic
that reaches beyond the Fabric and Threads Department to agricultural processes and to
Iowa’s land.

Collaboration, Professionalization,
and Community Exchange
In addition to changing the physical appearance of quilts, women’s adaptations to
sewing technology have also been inextricably linked to the shared labor evident in so
many state fair quilts. Team or group quilts provided material evidence of rural women’s
cultural negotiations as traditional labor systems and social networks broke down in the
first half of the twentieth century. They are also indicative of women’s growing need to
earn off-farm wages in the post-World War II era and especially during and following the
farm debt crisis of the 1980s. The structure of rural farm communities began to change
most rapidly in the 1920s as families adopted new technologies that changed the nature of
fieldwork. The combine, in particular, disrupted community work systems by enabling
families to harvest and thresh grains with much less labor than earlier. Work that once

required a large crew of neighbors and an elaborate network of social exchange now
required only a machine and three to five people. In addition to minimizing labor and
increasing the scale of farming, combines also altered women’s work. Women no longer
needed to minister to the needs of large numbers of fieldworkers or hired hands, and their
neighboring activities lost much of their significance as social exchange was no longer
integral to the farming process.63

63 See Neth for a detailed description of technological change and community work.
 50

Just as community exchange networks were threatened, fair organizers created the
first quilt class to explicitly recognize quiltmaking’s collaborative nature. The
superintendent added a textile category entitled “Institute, Community and Industrial
Groups Division” in 1927 limiting entries “to church, community, industrial and other
groups and state institutions. Entries must be made in the name of the institution, church
or company, and not that of the individual contributing the article.” These parameters
encouraged women to showcase the networks that persisted in the face of deteriorating
community systems and perhaps represented an effort to strengthen and preserve them—
another example of the negotiations between traditional values and modernizing forces.
Women could compete collaboratively with entries of bedspreads or quilts, hand painted
textiles, crochet work, polychrome work, raffia or reed work, rugs, cross-stitch,
embroidery, eyelet or cut work, knitting, tatting, waxed paper work, or work other than
named.64 Organizers retained this collective category until the State Fair’s hiatus during
World War II. While the new superintendent did not reinstate it when textile
competitions resumed in 1946, neither did she amend the rules to preclude groups from
entering textiles in other divisions. It may be that she anticipated a lack of entries since
many institutions would have redirected their activities during the war. Those that did
continue organized handwork would have initiated projects that supported the war

directly—like knitting or making comforters for the troops.

With the advances in sewing technology after World War II and the addition of
machine quilting competitions in the late 1970s, the number of collaborative quilt entries
increased at the Iowa State Fair. Women with the resources and know-how also began to
contract their machine quilting skills, and professional machine quilting expanded greatly
with the manufacture of the longarm sewing machine in the 1980s. Longarm machines

64 ISFB, Premium List of the Seventy-Third Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State Fair and
Exposition (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1927).
 51

required large work areas and sophisticated technical skills in addition to a significant
capital investment, and entrepreneurial women began to establish businesses to quilt the
tops constructed by other quiltmakers. This was by no means a new concept, as groups
of women had long collaborated on hand stitched quilts, but the increased yield of
machine quilting began to have a significant impact on the overall number of entries and
the percentage completed by groups.
This professionalization represented another major change in the nature of the
fair’s textile exhibition, as superintendents had explicitly forbade professional entries for
much of the division’s history. These rules had been ever more sternly expressed over
the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, and superintendents carefully policed this
boundary. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, premium list rules merely stated that
professional work was allowed only in specifically designated professional categories. A
more detailed rule spelled out the definition of “professionals” by the mid-1940s:
“Those who teach or sell their work shall be considered professionals and can not exhibit
in any class. This rule to apply throughout the department.”65 After several smaller
changes, the 1963 version added further qualifiers and spelled out the consequences for
miscreants: “All articles in this department must be strictly homemade and the work of
the exhibitor. Open to anyone whose exhibit represents a recreational hobby and is not

used as a means of livelihood, or whose exhibit is part of occupational therapy work. All
articles that do not comply with this rule will be disqualified.”66
When Dorothy Faidley became superintendent in 1982, she erased the
professional ban, since she felt it was impossible to clearly define or screen professional

65 ISFB, Premium List of the Eighty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State Fair and
Exposition (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1946).
66 ISFB, Premium List of the 105th Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State Fair (Des
Moines: State of Iowa, 1963) (emphasis in original).
 52

entries.67 Instead, she instituted firm distinctions among quilts completed by one
individual, two individuals, or more than two. The number of group quilt entrants
increased exponentially as women formulated new ways to negotiate the changing social
and economic structures. These entries expressed two distinct strategies women have
developed to shape Iowa’s public culture through their quilt work. First, women
continued to create quilts collaboratively in community organizations, churches, quilt
shops, and needlework guilds—sitting together around a quilt frame and quilting the tops
or negotiating with neighbors and friends for quilting assistance. Through these
activities, women furthered the tradition of “neighboring” and carried on the community
exchange model. Second, women initiated longarm quilting businesses to create viable
sources of income for their families. These ventures sustained their role as an integral,
economically productive force in their families and communities. Women who hire
quilters to finish their tops also maintain their productive status by increasing their quilt
yield. Through these strategies, Iowa women collaborate with one another to create
material objects that manifest the shared labor so central to the state’s agricultural history.

Agricultural Aesthetics
The production processes I have discussed thus far all influence the physical
appearance of the Iowa State Fair quilts and are embodied in the material objects that

grace the exhibition spaces. By creating and circulating quilts women engage in cultural
work that is social and economic but also aesthetic. I conclude my analysis with a focus
on this aesthetic dimension and the history of judging criteria at the Iowa State Fair.
Women have used quilt work to promulgate a specifically agriculture-based “way of
seeing” that reflects—and helps shape—the social, economic, and physical landscape of

67 Faidley, interview.
 53

Iowa. Through the State Fair, quiltmakers enter the arena of aesthetic values that are in
play in the state at large.
Judging criteria for quilts were not printed in the premium books until 1937—
perhaps because they were taken for granted. After all, precision and technical know-
how have been central throughout the Fair and have likely been the standards for textiles
since the Fair’s inception in 1854. Superintendent S. A. Alpin first published these
formal criteria in 1937: “All textiles, including quilts and rugs will be judged by the
following score: General appearance, 30%; design and color combination, 30%;
suitability to occasion, 10%; individuality, 10%; neatness, 20%.”68 The rules changed
slightly in 1947, when Superintendent Mrs. S. N. Van Vliet replaced “design and color
combination” with “newness of design and material” leaving intact the same thirty
percent.69 This new formulation reflected a shifting conceptualization of quilting—
recognizing that quiltmaking is not simply a skill necessary to “make do,” but is one that
requires access to new materials and emerging designs. It mirrored women’s cautious
optimism about the improving post-war economic conditions in Iowa and perhaps greater
access to information about developments elsewhere.
These criteria remained unchanged until 1982, when Dorothy Faidley radically
altered the structure of the textiles exhibition. Because her predecessors had made so few

changes, she felt a need to update the department to better suit the times.70 In doing so,
she experimented with several different strategies before hitting upon a more consistent
system that remains similar today. Faidley created unique judging criteria for each

68 ISFB, Premium List of the Eighty-Third Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State Fair and
Exposition (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1937).
69 ISFB, Premium List of the Eighty-Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Iowa State Fair (Des
Moines: State of Iowa, 1947).
70 Faidley, interview.
 54

specific division, and gave greater emphasis to the technical aspects. In the quilt
division, she apportioned 10% for general appearance, 60% for workmanship, and 30%
for design.71 In 1988, the Fair stopped listing judging criteria in the premium books,
though quilt judges applied the same criteria.72 The Competitive Events office included
judging criteria in the premium book again in 1993, and this criteria applied across
divisions in the “Fabric and Threads” department. These detailed and technical criteria
have changed only slightly since then and remain in effect today as follows:

Table 1: Judging Criteria for “Fabric and Threads” Exhibits73

General Appearance: Workmanship: Finishing:

Cleanliness Neatness Framing
Colors Tension Binding
Design Pattern Execution Fringe
Blocking/Pressing Construction Technique Blocking
Choice of Fibers/Threads Pattern Lines Covered Pillow Form
Choice of Pattern Gauge Seam Finishes
Absence of Knots
Piecing/Appliqué

These remarkably specific criteria continue to emphasize the workmanship and technical
skill that have long been the benchmarks of state fair quality.
The fact that the physical appearance of state fair quilts has changed dramatically
while the judging criteria have remained rooted in the fair’s industrial and scientific

71 ISFB, Iowa Family Living and Arts Premium List (Des Moines: State of Iowa, 1982).

72 Faidley, interview.

73 ISFB, 2007 Iowa State Fair Premium Book, 7.

 55

origins is indicative of the agriculture-based way of seeing at the heart of the quilt
competition. As I have demonstrated, women rooted their quiltmaking processes in their
social and economic contexts and negotiated changes in the production process alongside
changes in the product. While the judging criteria in practice likely remained the same
over time, the processes used to meet those criteria evolved. Women adopted new
technologies and established new models for working collaboratively on quilts. They
changed the surfaces and layers of quilts to include more stitching, new patterns, and
tighter tension, and to do so they employed the careful precision of mechanized tools.
The aesthetic influence of women’s quilt work has extended far beyond material
quilt objects and even beyond the fairgrounds to shape the landscape of Iowa and the
greater Midwest. As Leslie Prosterman has demonstrated in her ethnographic study
Ordinary Life, Festival Days, state and county fairs are an integral part of culture-making
in Midwestern communities and have a broad and significant influence. The processes of
judging and exhibiting serve to “reorder, highlight, and comment on everyday
occupational and domestic experiences.” 74 They provide a forum for cultural
contestations and a space for creating both cultural change and continuity. In a state that
puts so much stake in its annual celebration, women’s longtime quilt work has had a
profound impact on the artistic and creative vision of Iowa, and their aesthetic choices

have set a standard for beauty in Iowa. For contemporary State Fair quiltmakers, judges,
and audiences, ribbon-winning quilts must be amazing technical feats to be beautiful.
The precision, accuracy, and technological magnitude are what make Iowa’s best quilts—
and landscapes—breathtaking.

74 Leslie Prosterman, Ordinary Life, Festival Days: Aesthetics in the Midwestern County
Fair (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 16.
 56

Conclusion
During the more than 150 years of the Iowa State Fair, the people of Iowa have
effected major changes in the state’s landscape. They have negotiated a transformation
from a community-based, rural agricultural society to an urban one largely isolated from
the vast amount of land in cultivation. The rolling surface of the state is now carved with
corn and soy fields, and intensive row crops increase the productivity of the rich soil.
The Iowa State Fair has served as a dynamic venue for Iowans to negotiate these
dramatic changes and to make choices about the future of their state. Through their
textile exhibitions, Iowa women participated in these negotiations and addressed the
state’s changing social networks and labor patterns. They also negotiated their
relationships with emerging technologies, forged new social systems, and instituted
entrepreneurial economic models—while maintaining their commitment to the gender-
integrated community patterns at the core of agricultural societies. Women established
an aesthetic vision for Iowa by collaborating, exchanging, and judging one another’s quilt
work. Through their creation and exhibition of material objects, women helped shape the
social, economic, and physical landscape of Iowa. Looking across the land today, one
can see the quiltmakers’ stitches forming the state’s contours.
 57

CHAPTER TWO:
A MISSION TO STITCH: THE MICHIANA
MENNONITE RELIEF SALE

Mennonites in Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan launched the Michiana

Mennonite Relief Sale in Goshen, Indiana in 1968 as part of their religious commitment
to peacemaking through alms-giving and international relief work. While it has grown
and evolved significantly since its inception, much of the sale at the Elkhart County 4-H
Fairgrounds remains recognizable from its earliest edition. On the fourth Friday in
September, fair organizers ready the fairgrounds and process donations in preparation for
the evening’s “haystack supper,” worship service, and quilt auction preview. Early the
next morning, fairgoers gather for the 6 a.m. breakfast that kicks off the events and
begins the feasting that is integral to the Relief Sale. Throughout the day, volunteers sell
take-away prepared foods like pies, bread, headcheese, and whole-hog sausage. On-site
refreshments include home-made ice cream, apple fritters, strawberry shortcake, and hot
lunches.
The Relief Sale organizes a number of sale booths and auctions for the many
Mennonite, Amish, and non-Anabaptist attendees. An antique auction has been a sale
staple, and other donated goods are offered in booths—from women’s crafts to dried

flowers to bulk fabrics. The most prominent feature of the whole sale is the day-long
quilt auction—with a large venue, marketing prominence, and the greatest percentage of
sale proceeds.1 This auction has consistently generated about 30% of the relief donation,
sustaining approximately 40% from the late 1990s through the early 2000s. At its most
profitable, the auction raised over $174,000 in 1999, when the total donation topped
$461,000. Overall proceeds lessened some at the turn of the twenty-first century, perhaps

1 Site visits by author, Goshen, IN, 21-22 September 2007 and 26-27 September 2008.
 58

due to the economic recession, but the quilt auction continued to raise almost 30% of the
Sale’s nearly $373,000 in profits in 2010.2

Stitching Traditions
Mennonite women have a long tradition of sewing material objects to enact their
faith and cultural heritage. Through church sewing groups, they cultivate fellowship,
practice and share quilting skills, and participate in local, national and international alms-
giving. Mennonite women began organizing church sewing groups in the 1880s to
produce material aid for local families, hospitals, and orphanages as well as missionaries
engaged in aid work. Women’s sewing activities enabled them to be more active in a
church where traditionally they had been “silent partners” with men who took on
leadership and decision-making roles.3 Such sewing was appropriate church engagement
for Mennonite women who typically were associated with the material world of
production in the household —in contrast to Mennonite men, “who were connected to the
intellectual, the spiritual, and the divine.”4 Women could enact almsgiving while still
fulfilling their expected roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers. By the early twentieth
century, women also increased their engagement through teaching in Sunday schools,
attending Sunday school and Bible conferences, writing for major Mennonite periodicals,
and enacting mission work.5 The church accepted women’s contributions in these

2 Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale (MMRS) Annual Reports, 1968-1991, MMRS, VII-
34-1, Mennonite Church USA Archives, Goshen, Indiana (MCA-G); Kathy Leinbach, e-mail
message to author, November 23, 2010.
3 Sharon Klingelsmith, “Women in the Mennonite Church, 1900-1930,” The Mennonite
Quarterly Review 54, no. 3 (July 1, 1980): 163.
4 Marlene Epp, Mennonite Women in Canada: A History (Winnipeg: University of
Manitoba Press, 2008), 227.
5 Klingelsmith, 164-7.
 59

arenas, as long as women did not usurp men’s authority by trying to control and direct
their own activities.6
Women formed what would become the Mennonite Woman’s Missionary Society
in 1911 to coordinate women’s sewing and alms-giving work throughout North America,
but they met with resistance from the Mennonite Church’s General Mission Board. The
Society considered its relationship with the Board to be collaborative, though it did aim
to control its own work. The Board, however, wanted the Society to be subordinate, and
took measures to ensure oversight of women’s alms-giving. By the mid-1920s, women’s
relief organizations in both the United States and Canada were auxiliary to the national
mission boards.7
Regardless of the formal organizations overseeing sewing work, Mennonite
women continued to use their needlework skills to enact almsgiving. Through the 1930s,
they largely produced utilitarian items like clothing and non-quilt bedding. In the United
States, many groups distributed their finished goods through the Mennonite Central
Committee (MCC), an international denominational relief agency. Sewing groups began
to craft more quilts when material-aid demand lessened between the 1930s and 1960s.
As the MCC requested fewer new garments, women’s groups turned to mending and
updating used clothing. These activities were less labor intensive and that freed

additional time for quiltmaking activities. In reorienting their labor, they also
reconceptualized their alms-giving. Rather than prioritizing direct material aid, sewing
groups produced more items—like fine quilts—to sell locally to raise money for aid.8

6 Klingelsmith, 164.

7 Lucille Marr, “’The Time for the Distaff and Spindle’: The Ontario Mennonite
Women’s Sewing Circles and the Mennonite Central Committee,” Journal of Mennonite Studies
17 (1999): 133.
8 Valerie Rake, “A Thread of Continuity: Quiltmaking in Wayne County, Ohio,
Mennonite Churches, 1890s-1990s,” Uncoverings 20 (1999): 31-62.
 60

Mennonite sewing groups’ increased quilt production was unusual at mid-century,

as quiltmaking had waned in popularity throughout North America; but it positioned
them to meet the increased demand for quilts that began building in the late 1960s and
allowed them to adopt church-related leadership roles.9 As the MCC increased its
geographical scope and its clients requested more money and less clothing, the MCC
shifted its aid requests. Mennonite women responded by concentrating more exclusively
on their fine quiltmaking traditions to raise funds. The sewing groups’ quiltmaking
perseverance likewise prepared them for the expansion of Mennonite Relief Sales
benefiting MCC in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Throughout North America,
Mennonite women’s sewing groups had “skilled designers, topmakers, markers, and
quilters available and a training system in place to sustain the level of production needed
to provide quilts for… auctions.”10 They were well-situated to take on a significant role
in these increasingly consequential Mennonite institutions and claimed active leadership
positions in organizing those Relief Sale quilt auctions.
The United States’ 1976 bicentennial fueled the era’s quilt revival, contributed to
the rise in Relief Sale numbers and scope, and ensured that quilt auctions would generate
a significant portion of sale proceeds. As a result, Mennonite women’s creative
production has taken center stage (quite literally) at relief sales throughout North

America. They have leveraged their sewing group networks and quiltmaking skills to
shape relief sales and to forge public roles for their creative production and alms-giving
labor. In doing so, they have participated more visibly in Mennonite faith and culture

9 Women began being ordained as Mennonite pastors in North America in the 1970s,
according to Epp, 17, 121-2. However, a 2009 Women in Leadership audit by the Mennonite
Women USA demonstrated that only 25% of active pastors and about 35% of full-time pastors
are women. Men also outnumber women significantly in organizational leadership positions as
directors and presidents. See Joanna Shenk, “Survey: More Women in Leadership but Still Not
Enough,” The Mennonite 13, no. 3 (March 2010): 46-8.
10 Rake, 32.
 61

while renegotiating the religion’s gender boundaries and hierarchies. In the tradition of
civic housekeeping, Mennonite women have employed “domestic” skills to shape public
culture and create social change.11
Women’s quilt auction labor has served—and continues to serve—as an
exceptional means for women to be much more than “silent partners,” to participate in
the Mennonite church’s public work, and to shape the church’s faith. The Relief Sale has
been an important venue for all members to collaborate across congregations, to negotiate
what it means to live Jesus’ word, and to participate in and strengthen Mennonite cultural
traditions. In their crucial quilt auction work within the sale, women serve as leaders in
these negotiations—both through their creation of material quilt objects and through their
management of the auction.
In their stitches, Mennonite women create material objects that embed and
circulate their religious values. By requiring all Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale quilts to
be hand quilted, they also underscore their long quilt traditions and dramatize their
exceptional talents. They police the quilts’ aesthetic boundaries and organize the auction
processes to reinforce and promulgate cultural traditions and religious values both within
and beyond the Mennonite community. Through these activities, they set their own
priorities, making objects and decisions that emphasize three key values. First, and most

obviously, they push congregants to enact peacemaking through alms-giving. They also
demonstrate the Mennonite principle of giving “first fruits,” ones that reveal how Jesus’
word can live in material objects. Finally, they remind the faithful of the importance of

11 Jane Addams and other Progressive Era women utilized the concept of civic
housekeeping to frame their public work in a socially acceptable manner. For a more detailed
analysis of this technique, see especially Shannon Jackson, Lines of Activity: Performance,
Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
Sharon Klingelsmith refers to this strategy for Mennonite women’s work as “educated
motherhood” in “Women in the Mennonite Church, 1900-1930,” 177.
 62

exceptionalism—the separatism that has long defined the Mennonite faith and that ties
them to those for whom they provide relief.

Anabaptist Traditions
The Mennonite Church’s history reveals the roots of key Mennonite values and
beliefs and elucidates the significance of women’s creative and cultural work within it.
Defiance, persecution, and displacement are themes that recur in Mennonite history;
these have shaped the religion and continue to inform how Mennonites live their faith in
the world. The Mennonite Church grew out of the 1517 Protestant Reformation, as
groups of dissident Christians agitated for a more substantive break from the Roman
Catholic Church and the state. Reformers enacted adult baptism as a rejection of the
dominant state theology—a physical act that marked a conscious emphasis on Jesus
Christ’s teachings and a disavowal of secular religious authority. Mennonite popular
history identifies pastor Ulrich Zwingli as the earliest adult baptism leader, as theology
students in 1525 Zurich baptized one another under his tutelage.12 These adult baptizing
reformers’ teachings and philosophies spread throughout Europe during the early
sixteenth century, particularly among German and Dutch speakers. Within the movement
itself, disagreements about its tenets continued in Switzerland, along the Swiss-German
border, in Central and South Germany, into Moravia, and in the Netherlands.

Adult baptism was a criminal act, even a capital offence, in Europe during the
sixteenth century, as it represented a civil defiance as well as a religious one. Persecutors
called these radicals “Anabaptists,” or rebaptizers, because they had already been
baptized into the state church as infants. As early as 1525, Roman Catholic governments

12 Cornelius J. Dyck, An Introduction to Mennonite History, 3rd ed. (Herald Press:

Scottsdale, PA, 1993): 36-41. Dyck corroborates this popular history, but also adds that Ulrich
Zwingli ultimately recanted his radical beliefs and conformed to the State Church—making him
less of a hero than popular histories would suggest.
 63

executed Anabaptists for sedition and perjury, and state authority continued to harass
them thereafter.13 As a result, Anabaptist families, communities, and leaders moved
frequently throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, seeking
refuge from persecution.
In the midst of Anabaptists’ doctrinal disputes, physical upheaval, and personal
danger in the mid-1500s, Menno Simons became an influential figure for those in the
Netherlands. It was under his leadership that the faithful took on their name of
“Mennonites.” Other Anabaptist sects would grow out of this movement as well, with
the Hutterites, Amish, and Brethren enduring today. Early sixteenth century Anabaptist
refugees established the Hutterite movement in Moravia, living communally and sharing
common property as they sought safety from persecution.14 The Amish Anabaptist
branch formed much later when Swiss church members following Jakob Ammam split
with the Mennonites in 1693.15 The Brethren in Christ formed around 1780 in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania as a separate revival movement.16
Mennonites began emigrating to North America as early as 1644. Dutch,
Prussian, and Russian Mennonites initiated the early migrations to the British colonies
and were followed by a large number of immigrants from Switzerland and South
Germany. The Quaker sympathizer William Penn welcomed German Mennonites into

Pennsylvania in 1683, where they remain a prominent presence alongside Amish families
in Lancaster County. Swiss and German Anabaptists settled largely in Maryland,
Ontario, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, while

13 Dyck, 53-4.

14 Ibid., 70-5.

15 Ibid., 153.

16 Ibid., 313-16.
 64

Dutch, Prussian, and Russian Mennonites concentrated themselves in communities in

Manitoba, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas in the late 19th century.
Mennonites established themselves near Goshen, Indiana in Elkhart County beginning in
1840, and this is now the site of the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale.17
Most contemporary United States Mennonites are organized within the Mennonite
Church USA. Twenty-one regional conferences represent nearly 940 congregations with
over 109,000 members.18 The Mennonite World Conference organizes congregations
internationally and estimated in 2009 that there were over 1.6 million Mennonite and
Brethren in Christ members worldwide.19 Mennonites share a common commitment
with the Hutterites and Amish to “community, nonresistance, simplicity, service to the
needy, justice, humility, [and] stewardship of the land.”20
Mennonites’ history of persecution and dislocation has profoundly affected the
commitments and traditions of the Church and its congregants. This history underlies the
faith’s emphasis on peace, alms-giving, and outsider status—or living “in the world, but
not of it.”21 Mennonites condemn violence as a major cause of dislocation, hunger, and

17 Dyck, 195-213. Several United States communities densely populated with

Anabaptists have established museums to teach about the religious beliefs and lifestyles. Menno-
Hof: Amish-Mennonite Visitors’ Center in Shipshewana, Indiana is one example. See Menno-
Hof, Tour Guide: See & Hear the Amish-Mennonite Story (2007), which briefly describes
Anabaptist history. For a scholarly overview of Old Order Anabaptists, see Donald B. Kraybill
and Carl Desportes Bowman, On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites,
Amish and Brethren (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
18 Mennonite Church USA, “About Mennonite Church USA,” accessed May 21, 2010,
http://www.mennoniteusa.org/Home/About/tabid/55/Default.aspx.
19 Mennonite World Conference, “Mennonite, Brethren in Christ & Related Churches
World Membership 2009,” accessed May 21, 2010, http://www.mwc-mm.org/en15/files
/Members%202009/World%20Membership%20summary.doc.
20 Menno-Hof.

21 This New Testament precept has been used to describe the Mennonite commitment to
living separate from worldly secularism. Epp, 13.
 65

poverty, and connect their own persecutions with those who are presently victims of
violence. Alms-giving and the redistribution of wealth are thus core tenets of the
Mennonite faith and are integral to the nonviolent practice and peace work to which
congregants are called. Their long refugee history also makes Mennonites distrustful of
mainstream culture and society; while most Mennonites are more acculturated than other
Anabaptists, including the Amish or Hutterites, many still conceptualize themselves as
living distinctly as “outsiders” in their faith and enactment of Jesus’ word. They
prioritize faith, family, and community over the worldliness, consumerism, and excesses
of modernity.22
The most public way that the Mennonite Church enacts its commitment to Jesus’
word is through the Mennonite Central Committee’s relief work. North American
congregants formed this independent non-profit organization in 1920 to feed the hungry
in the Soviet Union, and it has expanded significantly since. In fiscal year 2009/2010,
MCC expended $69,506,000 to support relief personnel in 49 countries, provide material
and/or food assistance in 24 countries, and grant financial support to the needy in 62
more.23 Its international efforts include direct material aid, healthcare, emergency
assistance, peace work, and community development. Congregants support MCC’s work
through direct service, financial contributions, and fundraising. These activities are

inextricably linked to the Mennonite faith, signifying their dedication to Christ’s words in
Matthew 25:35-36: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty
and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed

22 For a thorough discussion of Anabaptists, gender, and antimodernism, see Jane Marie
Pederson, “’She May Be Amish Now, but She Won’t Be Amish Long’: Anabaptist Women and
Antimodernism,” in Strangers at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History, ed. Kimberly
D. Schmidt, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Steven D. Reschly (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2002), 339-63.
23 Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Fact Sheet 2009/2010 (Akron, PA: Mennonite
Central Committee, 2010).
 66

clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you
came to visit me.”24

Early Mennonite Relief Sales

After the Russian initiative, congregations throughout North America began to
pool their talents and resources to organize regional relief sales to raise funds for MCC’s
expanded relief efforts. These annual events became ever-more important means for
Mennonites to bear public witness to their belief systems and sustain their cultural
identity—as well as to support MCC’s work. Though they directly benefit MCC, they
are independently organized with little MCC oversight or input; only since 1980 has there
even been any regional network of relief sale organizers.25 Forty-four of these one- or
two-day events raised $5,370,000 (roughly 6.5%) of MCC’s fiscal year 2009/2010
$81,982,000 income.26
Perhaps because Mennonite relief sales are grassroots, community-based projects,
no consensus exists regarding their origins. Historians and relief sale participants
regularly cite three different events as the first relief sale. In part, these inconsistencies
result from conflicting opinions about what constituents a “relief sale” and how that sale
relates to MCC. In any case, each event represents a significant moment in the evolution
of today’s MCC Relief Sales.

Mennonites in Reedley, California organized the earliest event retrospectively

defined by some as a “relief sale.” Reverend M.B. Fast initiated a donated goods sale to

24 Reprinted in MCC, In the Name of Christ: 2007/2008 Mennonite Central Committee

Annual Report (Akron, PA: Mennonite Central Committee).
25 MCC initiated regional meetings like the Great Lakes Region to help local sales share
their resources – as noted in Minutes of Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale (MMRS) Board, April
3, 1980, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 4, File 29, Relief Sale, 1980, Minutes, MCA-G.
26 MCC, Fact Sheet 2009/2010.
 67

benefit Mennonite communities dislocated by the Russian Revolution. Rather than

raising funds for MCC, as contemporary relief sales do, Fast actually raised funds to fill
perceived gaps in MCC’s relief efforts. He was concerned about remote Siberian refugee
communities whose material needs were being neglected by MCC’s focus on the Ukraine
and Crimea. Little documentation exists about this 1922 sale, so it is impossible to know
how much money it raised.27
The second major occasion cited as the first relief sale relates more directly to
MCC. This event was solely an auction and did not include the more extensive activities
later associated with relief sales. In November 1948, Mennonite, Old Order Amish, and
Beachy Amish churches near Gap, Pennsylvania pooled resources for a relief auction to
support MCC’s relief activities among displaced persons from World War II. Auction
items included quilts, farm equipment, household goods, and food, and netted $5,008.28
The first relief sale to both benefit MCC and include other fundraising activities
besides an auction was the Tri-County Relief Sale just outside Morgantown,
Pennsylvania. Ford Berg, pastor of the nearby Zion Mennonite Church, organized it in
1957 to provide money to MCC for the distribution of surplus food supplied by the U.S.
federal government. Berg emphasized that the sale would multiply the contribution of
individuals and churches. According to his sale bill: “For every dollar presently given

for relief work under this arrangement, it is possible to receive about $20.00 worth of
surplus food at no cost.”29 His projection of the multiplication of contributions would
become repeated theme in subsequent Mennonite relief sales, and the sale’s structure

27 MCC Correspondence Files, 1987, IX-6-3, Reel 115, Relief Sales, MCA-G.

28 Steven R. Estes, Love in Action: The Story of Thirty Illinois Mennonite Relief Sales
(Illinois Mennonite Relief Sale Association, Inc, 1989), 5; Erma Kauffman, Shared Blessings:
Origins and History of the Gap Relief Sale, 1929-1998 (Pennsylvania, 1998), 7.
29 Noah B. Good, In the Name of Christ: The Beginnings of the Pennsylvania MCC
Relief Sale (Akron, PA: Mennonite Central Committee, 1998), 10.
 68

would also influence other events. In addition to the usual auction, the Tri-County Relief
Sale expanded into a full festival—with food sales, singing groups, merchandise, and an
annual banquet.30
The Tri-County Relief Sale became a model for Mennonites to raise funds for
national and international relief and as a way to bear witness tangibly to several key
Mennonite beliefs. For congregants, relief sales represent a practical means for enacting
their commitments to alms-giving and the redistribution of wealth. These events provide
a unique venue to participate in alms-giving regardless of congregants’ own material or
financial means. A successful sale obviously requires bidders and salegoers who can be
generous with their money on sale day. But, it equally requires numerous volunteers to
stitch quilts, bake pies, set up the fairgrounds, call the auction, and organize the day’s
activities and labor. So while an individual may not have $1,500 to bid on a quilt, she
can contribute her time and talent, and many Mennonite women do so by joining their
church sisters in quiltmaking.
The sales serve a significant role in sustaining and strengthening the Mennonite
faith and culture. They raise awareness of MCC’s philanthropic mission, strengthen local
commitments to relief work, and build fellowship among congregations. They also
provide a space for maintaining the continuity of Mennonite folkways—in the creation of

traditional foods, the hand-stitching of quilts, the ritual of auctioneering, and the
manufacture of physical embodiments of faith. Mennonite scholar Ervin Beck suggests
that the relief sale is best understood as a “folk festival,” “an unself-conscious expressive
performance by Mennonites of their ethnic identity.”31

30 John Landis Ruth, The Earth Is the Lord’s (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001), 1070.

31 Beck cites the definitions of “folk festival” put forth by folklorists Alan Dundes,
William Bascom and Elliott Oring. Ervin Beck, “The Relief Sale Festival” in MennoFolk
(Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 2004), 189.
 69

Despite the convergences between relief sales and the Mennonite faith, not all
North American congregants have been quick to embrace them. Some members have
resisted or outright opposed the sales, citing perceived conflicts between the sale
structure and church belief systems. Their objections have focused on the sale’s carnival-
like atmosphere and ostentatiousness. Some congregants have disavowed the overly
public display of alms-giving; others initially worried that church members would stop
donating time and money to local congregations and other longstanding relief
commitments. Relief sale proponents have disputed those objections, arguing that sales
represent an opportunity for voluntary, generous giving, stimulate business, provide
different means for making donations, and accrue benefits to those in need.32 The relief
sale debates demonstrate Mennonites’ commitment to deliberativeness to keep the sales
congruent with their faith and culture. Relief sale organizers have ensured that these
events are not simply fundraising activities or folk festivals, but represent a true
investment of faith and enactment of belief.

Organizing the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale

In the spring of 1968, Mennonites from northern Indiana congregations met at
Goshen’s Plain and Fancy Restaurant for their first official “Executive Committee”
meeting to organize a regional relief sale that would amend several congregationally-

based fundraising activities. The meeting was convened mostly to consider logistical
arrangements and what fundraising items to feature, but it had a more overarching
purpose as well: MCC’s Director of Material Aid, John Hostetler, came from
Pennsylvania to review the underlying philosophy of sales, discuss the relationship
between MCC and regional planners, and more generally lend support to the committee.

32 J. Winfield Fretz, “Ethics of Relief Sales,” The Mennonite, May 14, 1968, 347,
MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 14, Relief Sale, 1968, Clippings and Miscellaneous, MCA-G.
 70

As organizers conceptualized the first sale, they emphasized three structural

considerations—ones that endure as key components today: collaboration across
congregations, exceptional quality, and women’s leadership. First, while the organization
should embrace “anything that works,” it needed to involve participation by as many
local congregations as possible.33 This stipulation spelled out the sale’s collaborative
spirit and its commitment to cooperating across diverse congregations and the Mennonite
and Amish faiths. Through such unified work, the sale builds fellowship among local
Anabaptists and reaffirms their shared beliefs and values.
The organizers also strove to “involve as many people as possible” and include
“no junk.”34 The relief sale’s success is only possible with a combination of donated
goods and substantial donated labor. Participants hold innumerable meetings and
gatherings to organize the event, plan its layout, stitch quilt tops, can meat, bake pies, and
grow plants. At the same time, individuals and families work independently to produce
goods or organize specific food booths and activities. At this work’s heart is a
commitment to quality—a quality that is crucial for the sale’s reputation and its ability to
bring top dollar. Sale visitors travel to Goshen expecting this scrupulousness and bid
generously with an assurance of quality. Furthermore, this quality physically manifests a
commitment to exacting standards appropriate to acting on Jesus’ word and in His name.

Mennonites cite Colossians 3:17 as the framework that integrates their faith with their
actions: “And whatever you do, in word and deed, do everything in the name of the Lord
Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”35

33 Northern Indiana MDS Executive Committee, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 1, Relief
Sale, 1968, Correspondence, MCA-G.
34 Ibid.

35 Reprinted in MCC, In the Name of Christ: 2007/2008 Mennonite Central Committee

Annual Report.
 71

Finally, committee members declared that “ladies should be involved,” and

opened the sale’s organizational structure for women’s exceptional involvement. Women
quickly undertook a number of essential roles, making prepared foods and baked goods,
and organizing “women’s activities,” which included the production and sale of
needlework and other handcrafts. These activities would become defining relief sale
features—and key money makers. Women now organize the majority of activities, claim
a prominent public presence at the sale, and generate the largest proportion of sale
proceeds, all in exception to their traditional roles as “silent partners” in the church.
The first sale in 1968 was an overwhelming success with the women’s quilt work
dominating the proceedings. Overall, the inaugural Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale
generated more relief proceeds than any other first relief sale in the U.S. or Canada. The
event at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds on September 21 drew over 10,000 people and
netted $50,000 for the MCC. Of that total, the auctioning of donated quilts, comforters,
and afghans raised $14,000, over one-quarter of the proceeds.36 A local newspaper
noted that the hand-stitched quilts were “among the most eagerly sought items at the
sale.”37 Michiana Mennonite women had quickly developed a new audience for their
ongoing sewing circle work and a new public venue to enact their faith and shape their
church community.

36 Record of Michiana Relief Sale, September 21, 1968, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 9,
Relief Sale, 1968, Newspaper Pictures, MCA-G. Though comforters and afghans have always
been included in the sale, they typically bring lower bids and are not the auction’s focus.
Organizers rarely mention these items and focus their attention on the “quilt” aspect of the “quilt
auction.”
37 “Relief Sale at Goshen Nets More Than $50,000,” unidentified newspaper clipping,
MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 9, Relief Sale, 1968, Newspaper Pictures, MCA-G.
 72

Relief Sale Weekend

The Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale has retained many features from its original
1968 sale, and the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds buzz with activity every fourth
weekend in September. The quilt auction continues to draw large crowds and produce a
significant portion of sale proceeds. While the auctioneers do their work, sale attendees
also feast on homemade baked goods, sandwiches, and entrees, purchase take-away
prepared foods, bid at the antique and farm equipment auctions, and peruse the many
handmade crafts for sale. This festive sale has become an important community tradition
among the local Mennonites, Amish, and non-Anabaptists, and its generous proceeds
continue to benefit the international relief work of the Mennonite Central Committee.
Structural changes initiated by organizers since the sale’s first edition have been
intended either to expand the sale’s scope (and profits) or to highlight the religious
mission that inspires the sale and unites the congregants’ work. But for organizers, these
two goals are indivisible: for them, it is only natural that increased profits and increased
spiritual benefit go hand-in-hand. To maximize fund-raising they began inviting visitors
to the fairgrounds on Friday evening rather than Saturday morning. The Executive
Committee initiated a Friday-evening auction item preview in the first couple of years
and began hosting a traditional Haystack Dinner that evening in 1997. For out of town

attendees, it opened fairground space for a campground in the mid-1970s that now hosts
nearly 100 overnight visitors—all of whom are ready to spend money as early as the first
6:00 am breakfast, if they have not already the night before.38
Committee members have also taken significant strides to increase the visibility
of the mission that is the reason for the sale’s festivities, adding some very prominent
worship opportunities to the Sale. In the second sale, it instituted a Noon Meditation

38 Site visits by author; Leinbach, e-mail message to author.

 73

during the brief lunchtime pause in the Quilt Auction.39 It also added a Friday worship
service for the fifth annual sale in 1972—a service that coincides with the auction
preview and Friday evening food offerings. Because this service now shares facilities
with the quilt auction, attendees are reminded to temporarily suspend their quilt
previewing and be “reverent and as quiet as possible” during this service.40
The Sale organizers also fine-tuned publicity materials to inform attendees about
the Sale’s mission, MCC’s relief work, and the Mennonite faith—increasingly targeting
those who are not Anabaptists. Since the first Relief Sale, print materials have outlined
its purpose and urged attendees to bid liberally and contribute generously. The publicity
materials became more specific about MCC’s work in the 1970s, when fairgrounds maps
included a brief MCC history and an overview of “Your Dollars At Work Through
MCC.”41 By 1977, the map and welcome message included less about MCC, but more
about the Mennonite faith: “The Mennonite church, named after the Anabaptist leader
Menno Simons, sprang from the Reformation in Switzerland. Separation of church and
state, adult baptism, and nonresistance are central to Mennonite faith.”42

Negotiating Public Quilt Space

The quilt auction has always been a defining feature of the Michiana Mennonite
Relief Sale—with a large venue, marketing prominence, and the greatest percentage of

sale proceeds. In addition to their quiltmaking work, women exercise significant control

39 Relief Sale Committee Meeting, August 22, 1969, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 21,
Relief Sale, 1969, Committee Meeting Minutes, Dec 1968-October 1969, MCA-G.
40 MMRS, Quilt Auction Program: 41st Annual Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale
(Goshen, IN: Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale, 2008).
41 MMRS, Welcome… (Goshen, IN: Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale, 1970), MMRS,
VII-34-1, Box 9, File 25, Records 1968-70, Relief Sale, 1970, Clerk Sheets & Bidders, MCA-G.
42 MMRS, Welcome! (Goshen, IN: Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale, 1977), MMRS,
VII-34-1, Box 2, File 17, Records 1973-78, Relief Sale, 1977, Publicity, 1977, MCA-G.
 74

over the event by serving on the Quilt Committee and managing the auction entries and
proceedings. They also influence the auction and Sale as a whole by participating in its
organizing committee. True to its initial vow, the Executive Committee has long
designated a seat for the Women’s Activities Co-ordinator. Women serving in this
capacity have also risen to positions as Secretary and Vice-Chair.
The Executive Committee meeting minutes are a rich source for reconstructing
the decision-making processes and how they are shaped by Mennonite principles.
Meticulous notes reflect the Committee’s dedication to the annual sales’ details and its
intense logistical involvement. From the earliest meetings, the Committee sought to fine-
tune the sale in order to create the optimum circumstances for raising relief funds and
encouraging communion. The quilt auction’s prominence in minutes mirrors its
prominence on sale day. These documents spell out the Committee’s collaboration with
the Quilt Committee and Women’s Activities volunteers in determining the most
appropriate auction building, the best methods for displaying quilts before and during the
sale, and the most successful auction logistics. While the Executive Committee has
exercised final authority over most sale decisions, quilt auction organizers substantially
shaped those decisions through their input and actions.
The physical auction facilities have been a continuing item of concern and an area

in which quilt auction volunteers have exercised considerable influence. By consistently

creating and soliciting the quality quilts that are essential for a financially successful
auction, women gained the clout to demand changes in the auction space. Quilt
Committee members leveraged their authority to gain increasingly larger, more
appropriately appointed shelters for previewing and auctioning their quilts. In doing so,
they ensured a better quality experience for auction-goers and bidders—thereby
increasing the auctions’ status and financial success as well as the reach of the women’s
cultural quilt work.
 75

For the first auction, sale organizers rented the Arena at the fairgrounds, and by
the third year, the Quilt Committee Chair was already lobbying for more space and more
quilt racks. After some deliberation, the Executive Committee agreed to dedicate a large
tent to the auction that would provide, it said, “ample space.”43 Despite this increased
size, minutes throughout the 1970s reflect the Quilt Committee’s dissatisfaction with this
arrangement. They struggled to effectively display the quilts for preview and to open the
aisles for auctioneers and buyers who needed to navigate the space more freely.
The Executive Committee provided the auction with a larger tent in 1982, but the
tent’s green nylon top brought new dissatisfaction. Despite the organizers’ best attempts
to artificially light the quilts, the fabric roof bathed the tent in a greenish tint. With all the
quilts taking on a green hue, it was impossible for buyers to distinguish their true colors.
Though this liability did not seem to adversely affect sales, it frustrated organizers,
auctioneers and bidders alike. It served as a catalyst for further negotiations about the
auction’s physical space and spurred creative suggestions for more appropriate display.44
The Executive Committee approved an innovative building plan for the next
year’s quilt auction that acknowledged its centrality and stature. The committee entered
into an agreement to collaborate with the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds for a new
permanent 120 x 250-foot cement block building. The Relief Sale solicited donations for

the project, and in three months contributed over $30,000 to it, the equivalent of $11,303
in donated labor and $22,532 in cash. For its part, the Fairgrounds set aside land on
which to build and provided the Relief Sale a 10-year lease.45 This 30,000 square foot

43 Minutes of Meeting, August 27, 1968, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 12, Minutes of
the Executive Meetings of the first Michiana Relief Sale, MCA-G; MMRS Recap, October 9,
1969, Ibid.
44 MMRS Board Minutes, September 24, 1982 and September 26, 1982, MMRS, VII-
34-1, Box 4, File 5, Relief Sale, 1982, Minutes, MCA-G.
45 MMRS Board Minutes, January 13, March 24, July 21, 1983, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box
8, File 8, Relief Sale, 1978-1984, Sale Board Minutes, MCA-G.
 76

building remains in use today, and quilt auction volunteers express pride in the space and
in the quilt auction’s success that required constructing a building dedicated solely to it.
The building is the fairground’s largest and is the focus of activity on sale day.
Quilt Committee members manage the logistics of displaying the quilts for
preview as well as oversee the auction proceedings on sale day. In making their
decisions about these matters, volunteers strive for a quality experience for auction-goers
that also does justice to Mennonites’ distinctive quilt-making traditions. They bring their
faith to bear on their decisions and aim to promulgate that faith through their actions. As
a result, even small decisions often involve important negotiations related to Mennonite
belief systems. The quilt auction serves as a dynamic venue for women to practice what
they believe it means to act in Jesus’ name.
So that auction-goers may preview quilts satisfactorily, organizers have
established a display system that balances accessibility with security. Since the very first
sale, organizers have protected the quilts with transparent plastic sheets—a practical
means for both preventing soiling and emphasizing the value and preciousness of each
item. Volunteers from local congregations process the quilts by pinning them into the
plastic before hanging them over specially built wooden racks for preview. On sale day,
volunteers remove the plastic, unveiling the items for the auction stage and bidding

process.46
In preparing the quilts for auction, volunteers also label each one, and this process
has been another cause for debate and negotiation. In the earliest sales, Quilt Committee
members labeled the quilt’s name and that of the church that produced the quilt. Relief
Sale participants expressed concern about identifying the churches, however—due to the
practice’s competitive potential. The Committee temporarily suspended the inclusion of

46 Site visits by author.

 77

church names to honor the sale’s spirit of cooperation and fellowship.47 But by 1975,
auction attendees were lobbying the Quilt Committee and Executive Committee to
reintroduce church names, presumably so bidders could be assured of the quilts’
reputations. Committee members reached a compromise for 1976 that attempted to
reconcile the traditional emphasis on communion with the economic need to
acknowledge the distinctive labor of individuals and churches. They decided to place
makers’ names on the quilts but not to announce them in the auction “in the interest of
time.”48 With individual and or church names on the quilts, bidders may now seek items
from congregations or individuals renowned for their quilting skills.49 In this case, the
nominal guarantee of quality and the priorities of fundraising have taken precedence over
Mennonites’ ideology of cooperation and resistance to expressions of pride.
Women’s performative auction roles are indicative of the gender negotiations that
are part of their quilt work. Mennonite women draw on their traditional, domestic roles
to influence public culture but have not forsaken their commitment to the gender
dynamics central to the faith. In the auction men take the most visually and
performatively dominant roles—as auctioneers. They take the stage to encourage bidding
and work the crowds while women largely run the show. Women move the quilts to the
stage, announce their qualities over a public address system, and display the quilt

numbers and final bids on an overhead projector. They also perform the actual quilt
showcasing—draping the quilts on a rotating platform and turning down a corner to

47 Minutes of Michiana Relief Sale Committee, October 31, 1974, MMRS, VII-34-1,
Box 6, File 1, Relief Sale, 1975, Correspondence and Other, MCA-G.
48 Minutes of MMRS, Board Meeting, October 16, 1975, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 5, File
7, Relief Sale, 1976, Main File, MCA-G.
49 Norma Schrock, interview by author, Goshen, IN, March 20, 2008.
 78

reveal the quilts’ back sides. In many cases, however, they conduct this more visually
prominent work as part of a couple—with their husbands at their side.
Committee women realized that appearing center stage could be a bold,
untraditional behavior, and they eased their way into public auction roles by first
featuring more traditionally dressed women in the most prominent roles. Executive
Committee minutes from 1970 reflect how they strove to temper this unorthodoxy: Quilt
Committee Chair Berdean Wogoman “mentioned she would be only using Conservative
or Amish girls for helping to display the quilts.”50 The following year, Mrs. Wogoman
specified “the girls may wear long dresses or long wrap-around skirts.”51 Today’s
female auction participants represent the full range of Mennonite and Amish dress—from
traditional plain Amish clothing to mainstream contemporary outfits.

Peacemaking and the Value of Alms-giving

Many of the logistical decisions women make regarding the auction relate to their
most evident motivation for engaging in this quilt work—peacemaking through alms-
giving. They manage the auction items and proceedings for an optimum bidder
experience that will produce maximum bids. Throughout the day, auctioneers remind
bidders of the sale’s mission and encourage them to feed the hungry in Jesus’ name.
While Anabaptist buyers must demonstrate their commitment to relief through generous

bidding, they must also embody modesty and humbleness. This tension is constantly at
play in the Quilt Building, and Quilt Committee members attempt to manage it. In a faith
that prizes both generosity and modesty, quilt volunteers encourage the faithful to be
more generous and disregard concern about ostentation.

50 Relief Sale Committee Meeting, June 25, 1970, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 21,
Relief Sale, 1969, Committee Meeting Minutes, MCA-G.
51 MMRS, Executive Committee, September 2, 1971, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9b, File 5,
Relief Sale, 1971, Minutes, 1970-71, MCA-G.
 79

One strategy women have adopted to encourage generous bidding is the

publication of an annual “quilt book.” It lists the quilts’ names, construction techniques
(e.g. pieced, appliqué, preprint design), makers’ names, and places of origin. It
determines the auction order and allows audience members to anticipate upcoming items
and plan their bidding. The book also provides space for them to take meticulous notes
about final bid amounts. Elaine Frey, Quilt Committee Chair from 2001 through 2009,
says that she strives for an array of different types of items on each catalog page and a
distribution of “the nice ones” throughout the course of the auction. The auction
typically features one special commemorative quilt created to mark that specific year, and
Frey aims to auction it near the noon hour when the quilt building is overflowing with
bidders. In order to time the auction accordingly, Frey estimates that each program page
requires approximately 20 minutes of auctioning.52 Obviously, when audience members
know what to expect, they can plan their bids; but the careful bid-tracking also raises
audience members’ competitive spirits. The audience notices which churches’ and
individuals’ quilts bring top dollar and which bidders take home the most quilts and the
most expensive quilts.
The Quilt Committee and Executive Committee also altered the auction space to
raise additional money and encourage more generous bidding. They began to sell front-

row auction seats in 1984, offering 100 front and center seats for $10 per chair.53 It was
so successful that they added more reserved seats the following year and continued to
increase the number.54 The auction now features two tiers of reserved seats with the

52 Elaine Frey, interview by author, Goshen, IN, September 21, 2007.

53 MMRS Board Minutes, June 14, 1984, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 8, File 8, Relief Sale,
1978-1984, Sale Board Minutes, MCA-G.
54 MMRS Board Minutes, September 29, 1985, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 11, File 14,
Relief Sale, 1985, Minutes, MCA-G.
 80

closer seats more expensive than those a couple of rows back. Committee members also
recognized the importance of keeping bidders near the auction for its many-hours
duration, and decided to move the “Sausage Sandwich” concession closer to the quilt area
along with “other quick pick-ups for eating too.”55 By 1976, the Board was
orchestrating coffee for the quilt tent: “It was noted that if we had it there all the time
there would be less tendency for people to leave.”56
Women are also meticulous about quilt selection and include commemorative or
“traveling” quilts to raise additional funds. Bidders certainly respond to quality quilts
and pay more for stronger workmanship, original patterns, striking colors, or quilts made
solely by one woman. Auction organizers ensure that bidders remember the relief that
their bidding supports, however. They have included traveling quilts as one tactic for
promoting mission-driven bidding. With such quilts, bidders do not actually receive a
quilt for their donation; after its Michiana appearance the quilts travel to other auctions
for additional rounds of bidding. In 1981, for example, the Shipshewana Auction, a
longtime major bidder, donated $1,500 for a quilt depicting the emblems of 23
Mennonite Relief Sales throughout the United States and Canada, after which it
continued onward to additional sales.57
Bidders follow the lead of the Quilt Committee and the spirit of the day’s

proceedings by innovating new methods for raising additional relief funds themselves.
For example, bidders have donated a quilt they just purchased at one auction to be sold at
a future one. Executive Committee minutes from 1980 highlight a quilt donation by a

55 Relief Sale Committee Meeting, June 11, 1970, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 9, File 21,
Relief Sale 1969, Main File, MCA-G.
56 Minutes of the MMRS, September 26, 1976, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 5, File 7, Relief
Sale, 1976, Main File, MCA-G.
57 “Raise $285,000 at Mennonite Relief Auction,” The Farmer’s Exchange, October 2,
1981, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 8 File 4, Relief Sale, 1981, Clippings, MCA-G.
 81

bidder who had purchased it for a $2,800 bid. This donor hoped it would bring an even
higher bid in the next year’s auction, but the Committee made no guarantee.58
The Quilt Committee and Executive Committee encourage this creativity and
defend bidders accused of ostentation. A 1983 bidder caused controversy when he bid
$6,000 for a quilt and then immediately donated it for re-auctioning at the same sale; the
second round of bidding brought $2,500.59 Board minutes note: “There was a slight
negative reaction to the buying and re-donating of quilts; most of it was attributed to
jealousy about the publicity it received.”60 Press accounts indeed did highlight this
moment in the sale, naming the bidders and the prices.61 The Board made it clear that
the donation of a bought quilt was a positive gesture to be encouraged rather than
rebuked: “There is no doubt that it marked a turning point in the auction. Afterwards,
interest was up and bids were higher. We need to do something right at the beginning to
spark this reaction.”62
Perhaps in response to that lesson, organizers began to launch the auction with the
sale of two bread loaves in 1989.63 In the almsgiving context, it is clearly a reference to
the New Testament story of Jesus feeding the masses by multiplying two loaves into
many. This symbolic opening reminds bidders of the auction’s purpose and encourages
immediate generous bidding. In 2007, the loaves generated donations of $1,500 and

58 Minutes, Michiana Relief Sale Board Meeting, Sept 12, 1980, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box
4, File 4, Relief Sale, 1980, Minutes, MCA-G.
59 “$310,000 is Realized at Mennonite Sale,” The Farmer’s Exchange, Sept 30, 1983.

60 MMRS Board Minutes, October 20, 1983, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 8, File 8, Relief
Sale, 1978-1984, Sale Board Minutes, MCA-G.
61 “$310,000 is Realized.”

62 MMRS Board Minutes, October 20, 1983.

63 Leinbach, e-mail message to author.

 82

$1,000.64 Bidders engaged in similarly ostentatious bidding when a fire destroyed

several fairground buildings the night between the Relief Sale’s setup and opening.
Smoke damage rendered all of the homemade pies inedible, so auction organizers
brought 25 empty pie boxes into the quilt hall for auction. Bidders set aside their
modesty to raise nearly $5,000.65
Despite its willingness to push the traditional boundaries of Mennonite modesty,
the Quilt Committee is also cognizant of community dynamics and the central value of
building fellowship. The women are hesitant to adopt tactics that might disrupt the
relationships among individuals and congregations that are crucial to the Mennonite faith
and the Sale’s success. The ultimate goal of the sale, however, is to raise funds for relief.
A good example of negotiating this line is the Committee’s decision to include an annual
commemorative sale quilt depicting the sale logo and date. The Executive committee
initiated this concept in 1984 in spite of hesitations from Nila Kauffman, longtime
Women’s Activities Coordinator. Mrs. Kauffman predicted that choosing the
quiltmaking individual or congregation to be honored would be too competitive and that
the fervor surrounding the high bid price would cause hard feelings. The Executive
Committee decided to proceed anyway, noting that “as leaders we must be willing to
stick our necks out on occasion or we will never make any progress.”66

These examples point to the very complex public role that women fashioned for
themselves in managing the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale quilt auction. Their success
within the sale—at both claiming a public role and raising significant funds—is due to

64 Site visit by author.

65 Ibid.; “Four Food Buildings at Fairgrounds Destroyed in Blaze, Five More Damaged,”
Goshen News, last modified September 23 2007, http://goshennews.com/local/x395794897/
Four-food-buildings-at-fairgrounds-destroyed-in-blaze-five-more-damaged.
66 MMRS Board Minutes, April 19, 1984, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 8, File 8, Relief Sale,
1978-1984, Sale Board Minutes, MCA-G.
 83

their careful negotiation of the ethical difficulties inherent in the relief sale. In making
decisions about the auction’s content, structure, and logistics, they seek a crucial balance
between their commitment to traditional Mennonite values and their desire to optimize
profits for relief. They find ways to push their community’s giving and to leverage their
exceptional traditions. The women fulfill an unusual public role in shaping their
community’s belief system as they embrace this important decision-making process and
enable community members to appropriately enact their faith.

The QUALITY of First Fruits

While peacemaking through alms-giving is the most obvious value at work for
quilt donors and auction organizers, they also focus intently upon strengthening and
expanding the Mennonite commitment to quality. On the one hand, quality quilts
promise return audiences and premium bids. But, they also mean much more to auction
organizers; organizers tie quality to their long hand-quilting cultural traditions and to
their belief in presenting efforts and talents worthy of Jesus’ name. As longtime sale
organizer George Hartzler wrote in his 1973 description of the sale, “the board stresses
that the success of the sale depends upon the contribution of high quality items,
consistent with the principle of giving the ‘first fruits’ in the Lord’s service.”67
Organizers remind donors that to give anything less than their best does a disservice to

Jesus’ teachings and example.

Whether in the interest of first fruits, reputation, or high bids, early quilt auctions
were likely inspired by other successful sales’ emphases on quality. In preparation for
the first annual Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale, the Executive Committee shared a
hand-out from Pastor Roy Bucher of Metamora Mennonite Church in Illinois, “MCC

67 MMRS, 1973, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 1, File 5a, Records 1968-79, Annual Reports,
1973, MCA-G.
 84

Relief Sales, Ten Guidelines to Properly Conduct Them.” He suggested: “This should
not be a case of cleaning out our attics and providing items that have no value but rather
people should be challenged to give such items that are worthy of a good witness.”68
Thus, quality items embody the act of honoring Jesus’ precepts.
Auction organizers have created several stop gap measures to ensure a level of
quality that does service to Jesus’ teachings and example, narrowly defining what types
of items may be entered, promulgating specific quilting criteria, and screening donations
as they arrive. First and foremost, all quilts must be hand-quilted to be eligible. For
auction organizers, quality is primarily a matter of fine workmanship. Quilts should be
neatly and accurately pieced; quilting stitches should be even on the front and back;
colors should coordinate. Organizers also want items that are clean, use contemporary
fabrics, and are the appropriate measurements for use. Ideally, they will receive a
number of quilts made by a single quiltmaker—the most prized among bidders, and will
offer several that represent original patterns. While the quilt’s beauty is important, if it is
not well-constructed, it is not a quality quilt.69
This bottom line of hand-quilted quilts is strictly enforced because it links
contemporary Mennonite women with their cultural traditions and sets a distinctive
boundary for the auction. For these Mennonite women, hand-quilted quilts are

qualitatively superior to those that are machine-quilted—in part because of the tradition
behind each stitch. Elsie Miller, who has been active in the Relief Sale since its
beginning, says, “we feel that people… come in, that will spend big money for the quilts,
[and] want something that can be passed on to the next generation—maybe the two

68 Roy Bucher, MCC Relief Sales: Ten Guidelines to Properly Conduct Them, MMRS,
VII-34-1, Box 9, File 1, Relief Sale, 1968, Correspondence, MCA-G.
69 Elsie Miller, interview by author, Shipshewana, IN, March 22, 2008; Schrock,
interview.
 85

generations down. And a hand quilted quilt will have more value than a machine quilted
quilt will.”70 A hand quilted quilt embodies the time and talent of Mennonite quilt
traditions and physically passes along both its material value and its values. An heirloom
quilt carries spiritual values across space and time.
Additional quality enforcement takes place behind the scenes, via word-of-mouth,
in sewing groups, in notices and newsletters, and just before the quilt auction. The Quilt
Committee frequently sends a letter reminding donors of the upcoming auction and
including guidelines for entries. The 1975 letter for instance, reiterated the long-time
insistence on quality and also designated desired quilt patterns. The Quilt Committee
emphasized two key points: “1. Use new and good quality material. 2. Check carefully
the design markings to see that all lines are quilted.” As for fashions that would make for
a successful sale, “Solid color quilts, marked with design in center, on border and
pillows, filled in with diamond squares, have sold successfully.” And in regards to quilt
size, “Each year we find a few more people that are interested in our King and Queen
sizes, but we must also remember there are always requests for single and twin sizes
along with our regular quilts.”71
Part of the challenge of maintaining quality is balancing traditional techniques
with contemporary trends, and the Quilt Committee frequently communicates with

quiltmakers regarding fashionable colors and desirable patterns. In the 1980s, for
example, Shirley Lambright included detailed quilt-making recommendations in the
Sale’s annual report. In the 1988 publication, she urged quiltmakers: “For the
September, 1989 relief sale, let’s continue to keep QUALITY a top priority in all phases
of preparation of items. This is an excellent way of saying THANK YOU to the buyers.

70 Miller, interview.

71 Your Quilt Committee to Madam, 1975, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 3a, File 16, Relief
Sale, 1978, Forms – Mailings, MCA-G.
 86

Again this year, we would encourage you to concentrate on larger quilts, wall hangings,
baby items, afghans, and comforters. This is the apparent order of importance to
buyers.”72 She reiterated this plea in 1989, speculating more about the reasons for
buyers’ preferences and the specific details that might sell a quilt: “Our buyers continue
to purchase our quality quilts for family heirlooms or personal use. Intricate small quilts
and larger size quilts are in greatest demand. Therefore, we want to continue our top
quality pattern and fabric selection, color coordination, and quilting.”73
Once the quilts arrive at the fairgrounds, the Quilt Committee takes responsibility
for monitoring quality. Beginning in 1975, it instituted a process for “inspecting” each
quilt for quality control.74 Before the Committee admits any item into the auction,
volunteers check for fiber content (double-knit fabrics, while popular in the 1970s, do not
pass muster), and they look for hand quilting on each item. Several women carefully
scan each quilt for any missed stitches where quilters did not fill in lines in the quilting
pattern and also check for stains or soiled areas. Skilled quilters are at the ready to
correct any errors in the quilting, and other volunteers hand wash small surface stains. If
volunteers cannot remove a stain, they revise the quilt tag to warn potential bidders of the
imperfection.75
These visual and structural evaluations are important to organizers, but as Quilt

Committee notices suggest, use value is also critical. Before displaying the items for

72 Annual Report of the MMRS, 21st Sale, September 24, 1988, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box
1, File 5a, Records 1968-79, Annual Reports, 1969-72, 1980-82, 1984-85, MCA-G.
73 Annual Report of the MMRS, 22nd Annual Sale, September 23, 1989, MMRS, VII-34-
1, Box 1, File 5a, Records 1968-79, Annual Reports, 1969-72, 1980-82, 1984-85, MCA-G.
74 Minutes of MMRS, Board Meeting, October 16, 1975, MMRS, VII-34-1, 5, File 7,
Relief Sale, 1976, Main File, MCA-G.
75 Site visits by author.
 87

preview, volunteers measure each quilt and note the exact measurements on the tag.76
Buyers can be assured that the quilt will fit standard-sized beds or at least know the
dimensions of a throw. That insistence on maintaining the link between aesthetics and
utility is particularly noteworthy given the fine art world’s increased emphasis on valuing
quilts as purely aesthetic artifacts since the 1970s. Mennonite women certainly recognize
and prize their quilts’ aesthetic qualities—as evidence by their careful use of color,
elaborate quilting designs, and increased production of wallhanging quilts. However,
auction organizers take deliberate measures to signal that quilts are fundamentally linked
to their utility. In addition to providing bidders with specific dimensions, they also show
the quilts on a large bed-like display platform as they auction them.
Auction organizers emphasize quilts’ utility in their rhetoric surrounding the sale,
and buyers frequently put the quilts to use in their own homes, give them to friends and
family, or donate them to those in need, furthering their alms-giving. These material
objects embody quality witnessing, and this witnessing lives in the quilts as they circulate
and are used. As Elsie Miller articulates: “There are always disasters. There’s always
hurricanes. There’s always fires. There’s always places you can give another quilt.
And, you know, when you’ve had a disaster and then some kind lady comes up with a
quilt from the church, it’s pretty precious. It’s very precious.”77

An Exceptional Reputation
The Relief Sales’ careful and deliberate emphasis on impeccable quality and
hand-quilting has successfully created a national reputation for Mennonite and Amish
quilting. Moveover, the women’s long tradition of relief-based quilt-making meant they
were well-situated for the 1970s/80s quilt revival—not only had they maintained their

76 Site visits by author.

77 Miller, interview.
 88

fine quilt traditions but also created an infrastructure capable of producing a significant
number of quilts. Collectors across the country began to seek new quilts and hunt for top
quality collectibles as quilts gained stature throughout North America. Jonathan
Holstein’s 1971 Whitney exhibition, Abstract Design in American Quilts brought quilts
to the attention of the fine art world; the 1976 United States bicentennial invigorated
Americans’ interest in their national quilt heritage.
As quilt collecting and quilt making grew in popularity, the Mennonite women
involved in the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale made the deliberate choice to continue to
auction only hand-quilted quilts and to emphasize the traditional quilting techniques
central to Mennonite faith and culture. By doing so, they strove to set themselves apart
from the increased production of machine-quilted quilts and to underscore their
remarkable talents. In part, they were motivated by a desire to bring higher prices for
their unique quilts, but more importantly, they recognized that quilts offered a tangible
means for emphasizing their “outsider” status, their exceptional sectarianism, and their
anti-modernism—three interconnected commitments in the Mennonite faith.78 By
drawing on and strengthening their hand-quilting skills, Mennonite women could
demonstrate their commitment to their faith’s exceptionalism and underscore the
inextricable links between exceptionalism and peacemaking. Thus, women’s exceptional

quilt work binds them to those who suffer throughout the world and to those for whom
they provide relief.
Auction organizers have very deliberately framed their quilt work as
exceptional—through both their material creations and their rhetorical choices. In large
part, this exceptionalism is a matter of uniqueness. Early organizers looked to Illinois

78 Epp argues more broadly that because Mennonite women have been associated with
the material aspects of homemaking, their work has “enabled Mennonites to maintain their
distinctiveness vis-à-vis the world around them,” Mennonite Women in Canada, 228.
 89

Pastor Roy Bucher’s advice about this when planning their first sale: “The Mennonite
people have continued to cultivate some of the arts that have been lost and it seems to me
that we can share such items as quilts, needle work, home made foods that will be unique
in themselves and which we are proud to present and people are happy to buy.” 79 The
notion of uniqueness, then, is framed as a way to distinguish traditional Mennonite skills
from the technological embrace of modernity and the more mainstream shift from
production to consumption. These unique, handcrafted objects manifest the spiritual joy
Mennonites experience when they put their faith and alms-giving before worldliness.
Through the objects, they wish to pass this joy on to others and generate relief for those
who suffer.
The quilts created for the Relief Sale embody exceptionalism in their physical
substance and manifest traditional, anti-modern techniques and designs. They reflect the
Mennonite dedication to traditional skills and crafts that defy modernity’s emphasis on
progress and excess. Beyond the fact that all of the quilts are hand-quilted, the majority
of the auction quilts also share distinctive qualities. Though they do vary in design and
fabric choices, they generally reflect traditional piecing patterns or represent new takes
on those patterns. The most prevalent quilts include star patterns, Log Cabins, Four
Patches, and Nine Patches. These and other auction patterns emphasize symmetry and

balance and include geometric shapes and lines. Color combinations are typically
complementary and harmonious rather than contrasting or garish. The slow—often
communal—process of crafting these traditional quilts shows in their surface designs and
their hand-quilted textures.80

79 Bucher.

80 Site visits by author.

 90

Since the very first Relief Sale, organizers have played up the uniqueness and
anti-modernism of the sale—and the quilt auction in particular. In a press release
following the successful first Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale, sale organizers described
the quilt auction scene: “The crew of auctioneers in their own peculiar jargon were
calling for higher and higher bids on an amazing array of quilts representing hours and
hours of labor and a skill which is fast disappearing from the modern woman’s
accomplishments.”81 Mennonite women possess distinctive skills that are traditional
rather than modern; they self-consciously perpetuate and strengthen those skills in the
face of modernity. By doing so, they both distinguish themselves from non-Anabaptists
and increase their production’s economic value.
The auction’s revenues speak to the women’s overwhelming success, but so do
many personal letters and press accounts preserved in the Relief Sale Treasurer’s archival
records. Correspondents and journalists repeatedly refer to the entire event as the “quilt
auction,” reflecting its prominence in the yearly Relief Sale, and many quilt collectors
and retailers have contacted the Sale with inquires about Mennonite handiwork, its cost,
and how to purchase it. One letter of many that testifies to Mennonite women’s quilt
reputation came in 1973 from Howard and Sherri Krakow of Chicago.

Dear Sirs,
My wife and I have suddenly discovered a great fascination
with patchwork quilts.
Since we understand that you are the renowned experts in
this area, we would appreciate it if you could provide us with some
information.

81 MMRS, Shopping Spree with A Difference, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 1, File 5a,
Records 1968-79, Annual Reports, 1969-72, 1980-82, 1984-85, MCA-G.
 91

Specifically, how and when can we view your quilts?

Although we are located in Chicago, we would be quite willing to
travel in order to purchase them.82
At this early date in the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale’s history, the Krakows
apparently did not know of the event because they sent their inquiry to the MCC
headquarters in Akron, Pennsylvannia, where staff forwarded it to Michiana officials for
reply. But if the Krakows were yet unaware of this nearby venue for Mennonite and
Amish quilts, they were certainly aware of the quilts’ reputation for excellence—perhaps
from fine art quilt exhibitions such as the one sponsored by the Whitney Museum of
American Art two years earlier. While calling Mennonite women “the renowned experts
in this area” may have been a gesture of flattery, the Krakows were no doubt sincere
about their willingness to travel for “renowned” quilts.
Retailers also contacted the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale with inquiries.
Likely responding to the bicentennial-inspired fervor for traditional American quilts,
JoAnn Bacus, a Sales Manager from Chicago’s Marshall Field and Company inquired
about acquiring new quilts for resale in 1976 in “an area in the store where we carry old
quilts from the 1800’s and new quilts which are all hand quilted.”83 Her inquiry suggests
that quilts had become increasingly prized as collectibles, that the Mennonite reputation
for superior quilt work was a national phenomenon, and that the Michiana event had
become recognized as a leading venue for the quilts. Secretary Gregory Hartzler could

not resist boasting about the superior quality of the Sale’s quilts which, he implied,
outstripped those Marshall Field might be selling: “It is our general impression that the
quilts sold at the sale are of unusual quality and great emphasis has been placed upon that
point in securing them.” He then politely rejected Bacus’s inquiry on the grounds that the

82 Howard and Sherri Krakow to Mennonite Central Committee, April 22, 1973, MMRS,
VII-34-1, Box 1, File 11, Records 1968-79, Relief Sale Correspondence, 1973 Sale, MCA-G.
83 JoAnn Bacus to Mr. Beachy, June 3, 1976, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 5, File 6, Relief
Sale, 1976, Publicity, MCA-G.
 92

basis of the Michiana sale was not commercial but philanthropic: “All of the quilts and
other items sold at the sale are donated, and are sold at auction. Not being familiar with
any concept of wholesale or retail in dealing with quilts, we do not know how our prices
would compare.”84
Other Chicagoans organized group trips to Goshen to take in the festivities and
collect quilts. Ms. Marie Wierzbicki of Quilt Craft in Chicago coordinated group
excursions to the sale for at least five years in the mid-1970s. When she requested
information about the 1975 quilts, Harzler encouraged her visits and emphasized the quilt
auction’s exceptional qualities. He guaranteed that the quilts “are often folk art in the
best sense, representing the original designs of their makers.” Yet he emphasized their
utilitarian functions as well: “We request that all quilts be standard sizes (twin, crib,
double, queen, king) and of high quality.”85 Mennonites continued to stress the balance
between quilts’ aesthetic qualities and the tangible warmth they provide.
Inquiries were not confined to those from Chicago or the Midwest. From
Binghamton, N.Y., Selma Kaplan inquired in 1976: “I am interested in buying a hand-
made quilt and saw your organization among those listed in the Whole Earth Catalog as a
possible source. Could you please send me information about your quilts?”86 Rolling
Stone asked to include the sale in its Book of Days, a listing of “any outdoor event of

unique character that recurs at the same time every year,” such as “Fairs, Rodeos, Sheep

84 Gregory Hartzler to JoAnn Bacus, June 24, 1976, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 5, Folder 10,
relief Sale, 1976, Inquiries, MCA-G.
85 Greg Hartzler to Marie Wierzbicki, August 9, 1975, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 6, File 9,
Relief Sale, 1975, Information Requests, Publicity, MCA-G.
86 Selma Kaplan to Mennonite Relief Committee, February 24, 1976, MMRS, VII-34-1,
Box 5, File 10, Relief Sale, 1976, Inquiries, MCA-G. The Whole Earth Catalog was the defining
publication for the back-to-the-land movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and featured
tangible tools and skills for countercultural, self-sufficient living. Their choice to publish
information about the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale is indicative of the shared countercultural
stance of these seemingly disparate groups.
 93

Dog Trials, Lamb Scrambles, Crab Races, [and] Jumping Frog Jubilees.”87 The 1978
minutes indicate the hazards of such national recognition: “A lady from California was
on the grounds to solicit ‘Quilters’ to make quilts for her business. We do not condone
this and will discourage goods and labor being detracted from the sale.”88
The distinctive reputation and “othering” associated with Anabaptist women’s
quiltmaking imbues their production with greater value and underscores their cultural
traditions—whether it comes from within or without. A 1982 Chicago Tribune story
provides perhaps the most blatant example of the “othering” that non-Anabaptists
frequently engage in when they describe the Relief Sale and quilt auction. The Tribune
featured a lengthy article in its “Weekend Getaways” section headlined “An Older Way
of Life Flowers at Quilt Auction.” Its artwork—representations of an Amish family of
three superimposed on an idyllic landscape overarched by a pieced quilt “sky”—
establishes the tone of anachronistic otherworldliness the article itself assigns to the sale
and its contributors. Readers are first introduced to one of the quiltmakers in her home
preparing her contribution to the auction: “The farmhouse is dark, except for one room.
That’s where Fannie Fry makes her quilts. And except for the steady hissing of a gas
lantern in one corner, the room is quiet. An artist is taking stock of her work.”89 Mrs.
Fry, in this rendition, is the epitome of a pre-modern (and by choice, anti-modern)

woman, entirely removed from contemporary culture and the faithful bearer of ancient,
quaint traditions.

87 Robert Kingsbury, January 15, 1975, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 6, File 9, Relief Sale,
1975, Information Requests, Publicity, MCA-G.
88 Minutes of MMRS Board, September 24, 1978, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 3a, File 19,
Relief Sale, 1976, 1977, 1978, Annual Reports, MCA-G.
89 Richard Phillips, “An Older Way of Life Flowers at Quilt Auction,” Chicago Tribune,
September 17, 1982, MMRS, VII-34-1, Box 8, File 5, Relief Sale, 1982, Clippings, MCA-G.
 94

According to the Tribune, the Sale itself provides urban attendees, like the
newspaper’s Chicago readers, with the opportunity to escape into an old-fashioned
atmosphere comparable to Mrs. Fry’s quilting room: “If it isn’t the quilts, afghans and
comforters that beckon [visitors] into northern Indiana farm country, 140 miles east of
Chicago, it’s fresh farm food such as shoofly pie and whole-hog sausage, or wood crafts
brought from Mennonite communities throughout the world. As much as anything,
though, it is the simple rural life of Amish folk that draws city dwellers to the land around
Goshen.”90 And, the Tribune claims, those city-dwellers who make the trip to Goshen
will reap therapeutic benefits: “It’s the kind of place that refreshes the spirit. For just
when it seems humanity has been utterly seduced by selfishness and quest for power,
along comes this reminder that some folk still abide by old values.”91 The article
includes many hokey descriptions and over-romanticizations, but also captures in some
way how quilt auction organizers hope visitors will conceptualize and experience the
sale. Michiana Mennonite quilt auction volunteers have cultivated a certain mythos
surrounding their skills and traditions. While outsiders’ pastoral tales of Mennonite and
Amish humble quiltmaking sometimes reach a hyperbolic level, they do provide a
significant means for these Anabaptist communities to retain the separation from their
contemporaries that allows them to focus on their family, faith, and community.

The emphasis on separateness and exceptionalism also represents women’s

intervention in the Mennonite Church. This tenet has been ongoing point of tension and
debate within the Church and women have used their quilts to negotiate their position.
Some Mennonites contend that physical separation is necessary for peacemaking through
simple living and religious practices. Others believe that through a greater integration

90 Phillips.

91 Ibid.
 95

with the dominant culture and outreach to it Mennonites will be more effective in
peacemaking. Through their deliberate hand stitches and quiltmaking in fellowship,
auction participants propose a model for mindful separation that draws from Mennonite
tradition and preserves exceptionalism in material objects yet interacts with the larger
world. They literally stitch together their otherness and peacemaking and pass them on
through their quilts—to generate relief funds, to warm physical bodies, and to be shared
in communion.

Conclusion
The Mennonite women who in communion stitch quilts, sit on committees, gather
donations, set up reserved seats, and post bid numbers for the quilt auction work aspire to
maintain their traditions that place faith, family, and community first in their lives. By
doing so, they strive to create change in the world, drawing on their distinctive skills and
church-based networks to model faith in action and to provide international relief to those
in need. As public figures at the Relief Sale, they are constantly renegotiating the
gendered expectations of the church, the tensions that arise between modesty and
generosity, what it means to act in Jesus’ name, and how to maintain their commitments
in their daily lives. Together they have shaped the quilt auction to be a monumental
event in their personal lives and the lives of their church and community. They certainly

have chosen an influential and effective venue for their work: forty-four of these one- to
two-day North American relief sales raised over $5.5 million in 2008.92 With their quilt
work, women extend their faith beyond their locale to places they will never travel and
strive to make peace in those communities as well as their own.

92 North American Mennonite Relief Sale Board, Find a 2010 MCC Relief Sale Near
You! (Akron, PA: Mennonite Central Committee, 2009).
 96

PART TWO:
NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND
THE BALANCING OF UTILITY AND AESTHETICS
 97

CHAPTER THREE:
HOW TO DISPLAY AN AMERICAN QUILT:
QUILTS AND THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery dedicated its three
first-floor rooms to pioneer quilts for its major 2007 exhibition, Going West! Quilts and
Community. The meandering galleries with their lofty ceilings, muted colors, and
continuous chair rail suggested an elegant Victorian era home—suited to the traditional
quilt patterns on display, yet far removed from the covered wagons that carried so many
of the quilts westward. The Renwick showcased fifty-one loaned quilts in its first
exhibition of “classic nineteenth-century quilts,” all either carried to Nebraska during
western journeys or created shortly after the makers’ arrival.1 Their vintages spanned
nearly a century with the earliest from 1857 and the most recent from 1935. Many
represented classic traditional patterns including crazy quilts, autograph quilts, Wagon
Wheels, Log Cabins, LeMoyne Stars, and other star variations. Some were made by
individual women, while others were community efforts—for advertising, fundraising, or
mementos.2
While the quilts themselves formed a fairly cohesive historical narrative, the
exhibition design and gallery layout indicated a more formalist approach. The majority

of the quilts were hung on the gallery walls or on large white vertical planes constructed
at a slight incline, so that the quilts tipped away from the viewer at their tops. They were
interspersed among looming white structures that suggested minimalist interpretations of

1 Elizabeth Broun, acknowledgements in Going West! Quilts and Community, by Rodney

Kiracofe and Sandi Fox (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2007), 12.
2 Site visit by author, Washington, D.C., January 14, 2008; Going West! Quilts and
Community, The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, October 5, 2007–
January 21, 2008.
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the western landscape; posts and rails echoed the shape and lines of stock-pen fences to
establish the boundary between the viewers and the quilts, and horizontal tubes hinted at
oil barrels and served as props for several draped quilts. The quilts’ vertical mounting
and the structures’ minimalist lines framed the quilts through a fine art perspective, where
aesthetics dominated over function and their visual elements were more significant than
their historical ones.3
The exhibition’s wall text grappled with the quilts’ social and cultural
significance but settled most frequently on their visual attributes. Two introductory
panels provided a context for the exhibition and established the quilts’ artistic merit—
with a map of the 1854 Nebraska and Kansas Territories the only major concession to
historical context. The text focused on the quilts’ formal qualities, linking the
exhibitions’ quilt designs to graphic patterns employed by Druids, Aztecs, and Egyptians,
and describing the crazy quilts on display as “a more ‘modern’ free-for-all expressionism
of texture, exuberance, and embroidery.” It specifically claimed that the quilts displayed
were not utilitarian objects: “The fine state preservation of many of these unusually fine
quilts is evidence that they were cherished as treasures in frontier homes rather than
treated as utilitarian goods.”4
The accompanying text did indicate some social context, noting that if the quilts

were not “brought as cherished treasures” they were “created in new settlers’
communities,” where “quilting was often a social activity, producing objects for fund-

3 I was able to interview the exhibition’s curator, Sandi Fox about her contributions to
Going West!, and she told me that she conducted much of the background research and gathered
the quilts but was not involved in the final creation of the text or design. She described her
conflicts with Smithsonian American Art Museum Director Elizabeth Broun over the exhibition’s
overall structure and interpretive content—with Fox having a greater commitment to the quilts’
social history and Broun taking a more formalist critical approach. Because Broun did not
respond to my requests for an interview, however, I have omitted any further details of that
conflict since I am unable to make a disinterested judgment about it.
4 Going West!, Renwick Gallery.
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raisers and farewell gifts.” But even this minimal and fairly obvious cultural information
was made to serve an aesthetic end. It is only thorough “the vivid expressiveness of their
surviving works” that the pioneer women who made them gained a contemporary
identity, and “these remarkable artworks restore vivid color to our own understanding of
history and experience.” In other words, the quilts’ artistic superiority is inseparable
from the historical circumstances of their making, obviating the necessity of any
significant attention to the specificities of their makers’ “history and experience.”5
The label text accompanying most of the individual quilts told a more balanced
tale of the items’ social and cultural history alongside accounts of their construction
processes and visual effects. Individual women made the majority of the exhibition
quilts, and historical society documents frequently recorded their names. As such, an
entry for an individually-made quilt often included some biographical notes alongside
more contextual information and a detailed description of the piecing or quilting on the
item. For example, the text accompanying Savilla M. Fox’s “Savilla Fox’s Pomegranate
Quilt” from 1866 read:

As they journeyed west, a substantial number of pioneer women

botanized across the country, their diaries, journals, and letters rich
with their observations. In 1853, traveling from Wisconsin to
Oregon, Clarissa E. Taylor posted a letter to her friend Mrs.
Hadley, describing “the most beautiful and splendid, the grandest
specimens of the floral kingdom.” On her own vibrant quilt,
Savilla Fox chose to stitch a series of stylized pomegranates, the
clusters of curving sprays arranged geometrically with simple,
undulating borders. In small stitches of white thread, she quilted
her name, the date, and, tucked between petals and leaves, a
sentimental series of tiny hearts.6

5 Going West!, Renwick Gallery.

6 Ibid.
 100

Some of this label provided a geographical context for the quilt and attempted to draw
out the material object’s cultural resonance. In its conclusion, however, it concentrated
on the quilt’s formal design.
The labels for quilts constructed or quilted by women’s groups focused even more
on the social and cultural context, usually giving some background information about the
group itself as well as the quilting traditions represented. The Ladies Aid Society of the
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church’s “The Omaha Commerce Quilt” of 1895 provides a
characteristic example:

Omaha Commerce Quilt shows how quilting could involve an

entire community. The piece is a group effort, a fundraising quilt
made by the members of the Ladies Aid Society of the Grace
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Omaha. Local businesses
“purchased” advertising space on its surface, each design drafted
and stitched by a different woman, which is obvious from the
varying levels of skill. The resulting quilt was undoubtedly
displayed, thus providing mini-billboard publicity for the donating
commercial enterprises. Afterward, it might have been either
auctioned or raffled to raise additional funds or presented to a civic
leader.7
This label gave the visitor some sense of how women made the quilt and circulated it
long before it graced the gallery walls. Yet it also built the case that art museums are
employing appropriate techniques when they hang quilts vertically on their walls—since
women created this quilt specifically for public display over a century ago.

Despite the more complex narratives of some of the exhibition labels, the physical
display techniques lent a cool, objective air to the exhibition. The introductory wall label
may have been accurate in noting that the quilts were prized treasures rather than heavily
used items, but the fine art display techniques still pulled the quilts far from their makers
and their original context. They reduced the quilts to the qualities of two-dimensional
paintings framed on firm stretchers; they belied quilts’ distinct tops and backings, fiber

7 Going West!, Renwick Gallery.

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battings, textural dimensions and their soft, supple fibers. Though the quilts may not
have been utilitarian in function, they were utilitarian in form—a rich reality lost in the
quilts’ gallery-style mounting.

Crossing Disciplines: Quilts’ Utility and Aesthetics

The tensions within the Renwick Gallery’s exhibition are indicative of the
longtime contentiousness between utility and aesthetics at the Smithsonian Institution.
The national museum’s roots in science and natural history have fundamentally shaped its
methods of artifact collection and display, and it has traditionally focused on objects’
utility rather than their aesthetic or artistic merits. Such a production-based philosophy
has influenced how the Smithsonian has interpreted artistic objects as well as how it has
allocated resources and exhibition space.
Fine arts advocates struggled for the better part of a century to separate aesthetic
art objects from the larger Smithsonian and extract them from the interpretive focus on
science, production, and progress. When the institution finally opened what would
become the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in 1964, the new facility
cemented the disciplinary boundaries between the institution’s paintings, sculpture, and
works on paper and its applied art objects that remained in what is now the National
Museum of American History (NMAH). The SAAM—and even the Renwick Gallery, its

craft museum—has remained steadfast in its commitment to visual aesthetics. In

contrast, the NMAH maintains a commitment to the Smithsonian’s tradition of
interpreting applied art objects through a science-based lens.8

8 Throughout this chapter, I use the term “applied art” to refer to objects like quilts,
ceramics, and graphic art. Given the politics and power dynamics that inform artistic hierarchies,
there is no perfect term to use that is not problematic in some way, but it is necessary to make a
distinction in order to trace the Smithsonian’s treatment of these objects. “Applied art” captures
the objects’ utility without employing the often demeaning term “decorative.” For a thoughtful
discussion of the hierarchy of craft and art as relates to fiber, see Elissa Auther, String, Felt,
Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2010).
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As a multi-disciplinary institution with the world’s largest museum complex and

research organization, the Smithsonian has the potential to display similar objects in
discrete environs that employ differing interpretive theories and methods. Venues are as
varied as the American Art Museum, National Museum of the American Indian, Air and
Space Museum, Natural History Museum, National Museum of American History,
Cooper-Hewitt (specializing in design), and African Art Museum.9 Despite that
multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary potential, however, its methodological history and
longtime institutional culture inhibit unconventional approaches to collection
management and interpretive display. Rather than achieving a synthesis, the Smithsonian
has leapt from one pole to the other in interpreting art objects as either utilitarian or
aesthetic and has maintained a strictly disciplinarian approach.
In the struggle between the Smithsonian’s roots in production and progress and its
embrace of newer art critical perspectives, quilts have been a major flashpoint. Their
capacity to transverse disciplinary boundaries has placed them at the center of cultural
debate—as they appear in history museums, fine art galleries, and craft galleries. The
intramural tensions at the Smithsonian are indicative of extramural debates about how to
display and interpret quilts, what weight to give their utility, workmanship, or visual
appeal, and how much to foreground their social and cultural histories. The stakes are

especially high at the Smithsonian, however, because it holds a unique position in the
American imaginary and very deliberately works to maintain its historical precedence as
the national museum and the “nation’s attic.” On a conceptual level, the Smithsonian
holds the United States’ memories and artifacts in trust—it is the symbolic keeper of the
nation’s cultural history. And on a more practical level, it answers to the federal

9 The Smithsonian Institution currently includes 19 museums, 9 research centers, and the
National Zoo; the majority of these facilities are located in Washington, D.C. Smithsonian
Institution, “Visit,” Smithsonian Institution, accessed February 3, 2011, http://www.si.edu/Visit.
 103

government—for fiscal support and administrative oversight. As the controversies

surrounding the Enola Gay and the West as America exhibitions demonstrated, the
American people and the U.S. Congress see themselves as stakeholders in the collections,
content, and interpretive activities of the Smithsonian museums.10 Similarly, those with
a vested interest in quilts see themselves as stakeholders in the institution. So while the
Smithsonian may not be the most significant or authoritative quilt museum, its internal
contradictions regarding taxonomy and interpretive approaches carry weight far beyond
its walls.
Quilts form a relatively minor proportion of the Smithsonian Institution’s 137
million artifacts. The Smithsonian houses the majority of them in the NMAH’S textile
collection; in a museum that holds 126 million artifacts, only about 400 are quilts.11 The
NMAH has primarily displayed quilts in the context of their production as an element in
textile manufacturing history. But it has also curated a handful of exhibitions that focus
primarily on quilts as discrete objects and has negotiated some significant controversies
regarding its treatment of quilts—particularly when it contracted for licensed
reproductions of several collection quilts in the 1990s. The NMAH’s quilts reside in its
Division of Home and Community and include renowned quilts like Harriet Powers’
“Bible Quilt” and Ellen Harding Baker’s “Solar System.” Despite its relatively small

size, the Smithsonian’s collection is well regarded by quilt scholars for its number of

10 The Air and Space Museum significantly revised plans for a 1995 exhibition that
included the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, after critics
protested initial interpretive text that questioned the decision to bomb Japan and focused on the
devastation caused by the bombing. The SAAM garnered similar outrage for its 1991 exhibition
The West as America, which interpreted frontier images through an imperialist lens.
11 The Smithsonian Institution, “Smithsonian Collections,” Smithsonian Institution,
accessed January 24, 2011, http://www.si.edu/Collections; National Museum of American
History, “Textiles,” National Museum of American History, accessed January 24, 2011,
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/subject_detail.cfm?key=32&colkey=30.
 104

finely crafted, well-preserved quilts from the late 18th and the 19th centuries. It boasts the
title of the “National Quilt Collection.”
The SAAM holds a less significant number of quilts—only 86.12 Its craft
museum, the Renwick Gallery, however, has hosted the majority of the Smithsonian’s
quilt exhibitions—far more than the NMAH. The Smithsonian created the Renwick in
the 1970s as a space to re-vision its collection of applied art and to provide a more art
critical perspective on material objects from throughout the institution’s collection. In
this venue, it has largely abandoned concerns regarding production and workmanship in
favor of a fine art interpretive approach—as indicated in Going West! and in earlier
displays like its very first quilt exhibition, Jonathan Holstein and Gail van der Hoof’s
American Pieced Quilts. These exhibitions have granted quilts an imprimatur as fine art
objects and elevated their stature in the powerful (and wealthy) fine art world. In doing
so, they have also stripped the quilts of much of their resonance—their ability to
communicate something significant about the cultural context in which they originate.13
The rift between these two museums’ approaches is indicative of the
Smithsonian’s inability to fulfill its interdisciplinary potential in regards to quilts, but it
also demonstrates a much broader interpretive failure that extends beyond the
Smithsonian. The institution’s prominence makes it a powerful case study for

understanding how and why many institutions fall short when interpreting quilts. There
is a general tendency to narrow quilts’ complex meanings and rob them of their depth
when placing them on display for public education and consumption. Because the
Smithsonian is so powerfully linked to American cultural identity, administrators,

12 This total includes both the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its craft museum,
the Renwick Gallery. Marguerite Hergesheimer, e-mail message to author, March 4, 2011.
13 Stephen Greenblatt developed this concept of resonance in exhibitions in “Resonance
and Wonder,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp
and Steven D. Lavine (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 42-56.
 105

curators, patrons, and quilt enthusiasts have responded to its failures in very public
ways—doing battle both inside and outside the institution in attempts to negotiate a more
meaningful, nuanced approach to these uniquely complex artifacts. An examination of
these prominent debates reveals the philosophies and cultural stakes that undergird
displays beyond the Smithsonian as well.

The Smithsonian’s Philosophical Foundations

Establishing the Smithsonian Institution was a rocky process—plagued by
mistrust, uncertainties, and controversies that would determine its structure and focus. It
began when the Englishman James Smithson drafted his will in 1826. He bequeathed his
substantial property to his nephew, but stipulated that should his nephew die without his
own will, it would go to the United States of America. In that case, even though
Smithson had no relationship to the United States nor had even set foot on its shores, his
estate was “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an
Establishment for the increase and diffusion of Knowledge among men.”14 The nephew
died intestate only three years after receiving the generous bequest, and in 1835 the
property reverted to Smithson’s executors to carry out his instructions.15
Andrew Jackson was president when Smithson’s executors notified the
government of this unusual gift of over $500,000. Jackson’s combined distrust of the

English and opposition to intellectualism in politics made him leery of this sum
bequeathed by a scholarly scientist with no discernible ties to the United States. Jackson
passed responsibility on to Congress to determine how to proceed. Former president
John Quincy Adams, then in the House, took leadership on the issue and appointed a

14 Qtd in Nina Burleigh, The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy
Adams, and the Making of America’s Greatest Museum, The Smithsonian (New York: William
Morrow, 2003), 168.
15 Ibid., 192.
 106

representative to travel to London to retrieve the funds. More than two years of legal and
bureaucratic negotiations were necessary to secure them, but by late summer 1838, they
were deposited in the U.S. Treasury.16
With the money finally in the bank, Congress began wrangling. Southern
congressmen shared Jackson’s distrust of these English funds designated for the
“diffusion of Knowledge” and opposed the establishment of an institution in Washington.
For them, it represented an expansion of federal power as against state’s rights—the very
rights that sanctioned their ownership of slaves. For eight years, congressmen and
senators argued about whether the government should even accept the money and if so to
what use it should be put. They endured 401 discussions on the matter on the Senate
floor and 57 in the House. In 1846, they finally passed a bill authorizing “a Smithsonian
Establishment.”17
The prolonged debate surrounding the establishment of the Smithsonian
Institution reflected the conflicting visions of America’s cultural future. Some legislators
wanted a learned library to promote intellectual development while others proposed a
more populist initiative like a school, museum, or working farm. The final bill
represented a compromise that would set the tone and tenor of the nation’s primary
federal cultural institution. It directed a governing board and a secretary to find a site,

establish a building, and “make accommodations for a museum, library, art gallery,
chemical laboratory, and lecture rooms.”18 Congress’ directive tried to balance
intellectual pursuits with public access, hoping to sharpen America’s intellectual edge
with facilities in advanced studies while simultaneously strengthening its moral fiber with

16 Burleigh, 181-205.

17 Ibid., 206-51.

18 Ibid., 248.
 107

public education. Of course, this was an immense proposal given the realistic limitations
of funding. While Smithson’s $500,000 gift was generous, it was unlikely to be
sufficient to build a new facility and support all of these initiatives.
Despite the broad congressional directive, the Smithsonian’s secretary, Joseph
Henry, focused the nascent institution solely on scientific research. His background was
in the sciences with particular emphasis on physics and electricity as a professor of
natural philosophy at what would become Princeton University. He wanted the
Smithsonian to be a center of scientific excellence conducting research and disseminating
scholarship, and succeeded so well that the Smithsonian’s mission and structure would be
emulated by later U.S. natural history museums like New York’s American Museum of
Natural History (1869) and Chicago’s Field Museum (1893). Henry’s emphasis on
scientific research, however, came at the expense of more populist and accessible
strategies for diffusing knowledge as he—likely deliberately—neglected the legislative
mandates for a library, museum, art gallery, and public lectures.19
Henry’s elite vision for the institution was first challenged by the designs for the
Smithsonian National Museum Building. James Renwick’s ornate architectural plans
accommodated gallery space and lecture halls but designated little space for scientific
research labs.20 The turrets and crenellations on what is now called the Smithsonian

Castle contrasted with the handful of classical buildings already constructed in central
Washington. The federal government had restored the Capitol after the British burned it
in 1814 to stand in embodiment of neoclassical design with a symmetrical, colonnaded
exterior and a copper dome. This substantial structure grounded one axis of the
developing Mall and the neoclassical White House grounded the cross axis. As the

19 Burleigh, 254-5.

20 Ibid., 255.
 108

Smithsonian’s Romanesque Castle was being erected, so was the Washington

Monument’s classical marble obelisk facing the Capitol Building.21 Amid so much
classical design, the neo-medieval Smithsonian Castle certainly did not project the
austere faith in rationality that would have seemed appropriate for a center of intellectual
learning. This was just the beginning of several major disappointments for Henry.
Henry’s vision for the institution was further challenged by the responsibility of
housing a vast collection of objects from the U.S. Patent Office.22 For nearly a half
century prior to Smithson’s gift and Congress’ disposition of it, federal authorities had
gathered, managed, and displayed to the public in the Patent Office Building these
documents and objects derived from government-sponsored expeditions, the Patent
Office, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, including drawings and models of patent
applications, Indian portraits, ethnological objects, and natural specimens. Arranged as
cabinets of curiosity, the exhibits demonstrated the era’s integrated sense of knowledge—
one that emphasized the interconnections among art, science, and nature.23 For Secretary
Henry, management of these documents and objects represented a distraction from the
research and publications at the heart of his agenda for the Smithsonian. Under
Congress’s orders, however, Secretary Henry received the bulk of these objects in 1858
for integration into the new National Museum. Henry did succeed in persuading

Congress to transmit to the Smithsonian only those items that had been collected on

21 Michael J. Lewis, “The Idea of the American Mall,” in The National Mall: Rethinking
Washington’s Monumental Core, ed. Nathan Glazer and Cynthia R. Field (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2008), 11-25.
22 Steven Lubar and Kathleen M. Kendrick, Legacies: Collecting America’s History at
the Smithsonian (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 11.
23 Lois Marie Fink, A History of the Smithsonian American Art Museum: The
Intersection of Art, Science, and Bureaucracy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
2007), 21.
 109

expeditions or were products of scientific research; those of primarily historical or

cultural significance remained behind at the Patent Office.24

Textiles Among the Smithsonian’s Art(ifacts)

The Smithsonian utilized a cabinet of curiosities organizational structure when it
received the large influx of Patent Office Building objects, and the art objects that
reached the National Museum became part of this schema that kept an eye toward
scientific theory and method. Alongside natural history and ethnological objects, artistic
objects provided evidence of human workmanship and insight into material practices.
Collections of paintings, sculptures, engravings, casts, and other objects d’art served as
material manifestations of production, use, and cultural progress.25 For example, its
collections of ceramics and glass emphasized the technological processes of creating and
manufacturing those objects and the improvements made in the efficiency and accuracy
of those processes.26 When the Smithsonian collected and displayed objects, it did so
from the perspective of industry, utilitarianism, and manufacturing. That approach would
become increasingly contentious as fine art advocates developed new ideas about how art
objects should be collected, interpreted, and displayed.
The earliest influx of textile specimens followed the dismantling of the 1876
Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and the transfer of the artifacts displayed at it to the

National Museum.27 This early collection did not contain quilts, but focused more on the
tools, implements, fibers, and processes for creating textiles like needles, looms, spinning

24 Lubar and Kendrick, 11.

25 Fink, 17.

26 Ibid., 26.

27 National Museum of American History (U.S.) Division of Textiles, Records, circa

1947-1982 Finding Aid, Smithsonian Institution Research Information System, Archives,
Manuscripts, Photographs Catalog, accessed March 6, 2009, http://siris-archives.si.edu.
 110

wheels, and sewing machines employed in textile production in both the home and
industrial settings. As such, it fitted naturally within the existing collection and
connected appropriately with existing taxonomic and interpretive philosophies.
The Smithsonian expanded into a new, larger National Museum Building in 1881
and retained its scientific approach to collections management.28 Assistant Director
George Brown Goode articulated the aims behind the museum collection’s taxonomy:
“[E]xamples of every kind of object known to man may be acquired, and… this museum
may be able, by means of a thorough classification… to illustrate the history of human
culture better than has ever been done.”29 In this schema, Goode classified artistic
objects under the rubric of Anthropology and then three subcategories. Graphic arts,
modern pottery, and bronzes he put under Art and Industry with an emphasis on the
technological processes and manufacturing of these artistic objects. Ethnological objects
illustrated the Races of Men, with Goode conceptualizing them according to a cultural
evolutionary schema and as evidence of cultural hierarchy. Finally, he grouped ceramics,
casts, and sculptures under Antiquities, likely perceiving them as historical evidence of
evolving workmanship.30 By organizing series of objects, Goode strove to make evident
“development of the race along the various lines of cultural progress, each series
beginning with the inceptive or lowest stages and extending to the highest.”31 It is likely

that Goode categorized textile-related objects under either Anthropology’s Art and
Industry category or in the separate Exploration and Experiment category under this
schema.

28 This building is now known as the Arts and Industries Building.

29 Fink, 39.

30 Ibid.

31 Lubar and Kendrick, 128.

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The Smithsonian established a specific division for textile-related objects in 1883

and delineated them within the Section of Foods and Textiles. Two scientists headed the
division—one a microscopist and chemist and the other a food analyst.32 The
Smithsonian’s decision to group textiles with food indicates its participation in the new
and burgeoning field of domestic science, which strove to introduce the rationality,
methodology, and efficiency of science into the home. This categorization also signaled
the era’s transfer of the production of household commodities from the private, domestic
sphere into the public, industrial sphere.33 The Smithsonian aspired to be a research and
teaching institution expediting progress in industrial textiles and food production.
Textiles became firmly entrenched in the institution’s scientific taxonomy just as
fine arts advocates began to appeal for a separate national gallery within the Smithsonian.
Senators started agitating for this change in the mid-1880s and private individuals and
artists followed up with similar lobbying efforts in the early 1900s.34 Artists clearly had
their self-interests in mind, but other motivations were likely behind this advocacy as
well. Leading nations like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom had national
galleries of art, while the United States, which was beginning to think of itself as a world
power, did not. Major fine art galleries were also opening in other locations in the United
States in the late 19th century—like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, both founded in 1870. This growing desire for a separate fine art
space was driven by efforts to promote U.S. art, showcase masterpiece collections, and
transform pedagogical processes.

32 National Museum of American History (U.S.) Division of Textiles, Records, circa

1947-1982 Finding Aid.
33 For a thorough history of domestic science and food, see Laura Shapiro, Perfection
Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (New York: Modern Library, 2001).
34 Fink, 52-3.
 112

What seemed like a victory for fine arts advocates did come in the early 1900s
when a major gift forced the Smithsonian to reconsider its identity and articulate its
philosophy toward art. Harriet Lane Johnston of Washington bequeathed her collection
of art and historical artifacts to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, but with the provision,
however, that it should be transferred to “the national gallery of art” if one were
established by the U.S. Government in Washington D.C.35 Given the likelihood of
needing to surrender the collection, the Corcoran declined the bequest, but Johnston’s
executors did not believe that any institution fulfilled her requirements as a National Art
Gallery. Without a proper gallery, her will would require the executors to oversee the
collection’s sale with proceeds benefiting a children’s home. The executors filed an
“amicable suit” with what was then called the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia
in January 1905 for clarification regarding whether or not the Smithsonian could be
considered a National Art Gallery. The U.S. Attorney General—at the request of
President Theodore Roosevelt—petitioned the court on behalf of the U.S. Government
and the Smithsonian. In July 1906, the court decreed that Johnston’s collection be
delivered to the Smithsonian Institution, as it did, in fact, include a National Art
Gallery.36
The contentiousness of Johnston’s gift was reminiscent of the tenor surrounding

Smithson’s original offering. Nevertheless, the Smithsonian demonstrated a commitment

to fine art in accessioning the significant collection of paintings and sculpture. The
court’s ruling also gave it national stature as a fine arts institution. It prompted the
official establishment of an Advisory Board that consisted of artists rather than

35 Fink, 56.

36 Homer T. Rosenberger, “Harriet Lane Johnston and the Formation of a National

Gallery of Art,” in Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 69/70
(1969/1970): 411-24.
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scientists—a board undoubtedly cognizant of the pressure to live up to this designation,

lest others call its bluff. After all, little space or resources had been designated for this
“national gallery” in the past. The Advisory Board of the newly designated National
Gallery of Art began to immediately define the specializations of the gallery’s
collections.37 They decided to demarcate its boundaries tightly, to place greater
emphasis on “fine art” with painting and sculpture forming the collection’s bulk. Other
artistic genres were to remain in the areas of anthropology, ethnology, and industrial
arts.38
The textile division actually ceased to exist administratively between 1890 and
1912—just as the Smithsonian was dedicating more attention to establishing its stature in
relation to fine art. The textile objects remained within the National Museum, however,
and the Smithsonian received its first quilt donations during this time.39 John Brenton
Copp of Stonington, Connecticut donated three quilts as part of a larger gift of household
items and costumes in the 1890s. Today, these quilts are rare and treasured items dating
from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and are among the few surviving
American examples from the eighteenth century.40 At the time of their donation, the
Smithsonian prized the Copp’s household items as relics of the cultural elite and
representations of the values and taste at the core of the national culture.41 The museum

37 It is important to note here that this National Gallery of Art is not the precursor to the
National Gallery on the National Mall today. Today’s National Gallery was established by
Andrew Mellon in 1937 in a contentious battle with arts advocates at the Smithsonian Institution.
See Fink for a more extensive discussion of the establishment of that institution and its claim to
its name.
38 Fink, 60.

39 National Museum of American History (U.S.) Division of Textiles, Records, circa

1947-1982 Finding Aid.
40 Doris M. Bowman, American Quilts (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution,
1991), 8.
41 Lubar and Kendrick, 176.
 114

collected objects like these to construct narratives of social and cultural progress—
important themes to bolster its celebration of scientific and industrial progress.
When the Smithsonian constructed an even newer National Museum Building on
the National Mall in 1910, it made a significant break from its earlier stance towards
artistic objects. Along with its natural history collections, it moved those objects deemed
fine art under the National Gallery of Art to the new National Museum Building, while
retaining practical, applied art objects in the former building, now reframed as the Arts
and Industries Building.42 The latter collections included textiles, graphic arts,
photography, ceramics, glass, and “objects of everyday life” as well as medical
implements, military memorabilia, furnishings, and musical instruments.43 With the
natural history collection and fine art objects gone from the building, the Smithsonian
reestablished the Division of Textiles in 1912 and indicated its scientific context by
assigning oversight of the medical collection to the textile curator in 1916. From 1931 to
1938, the institution actually categorized and administered the collections in the Division
of Textiles and Medicine, likely seeing parallels in the many tools, implements, and
contraptions employed by both industries. The museum subsequently moved textiles into
the Division of Crafts and Industries and then reestablished it as its own division in
1957.44

While this reorganization distinguished industrial and applied arts from fine art,
the new National Museum Building continued to display fine art surrounded by
anthropological, ethnological, and natural objects—and, ironically, removed it from the

42 This building now houses the National Museum of Natural History.

43 Smithsonian Institution Archives, “History of Smithsonian,” National Museum of

American History, accessed March 6, 2009, http://siarchives.si.edu/history/SImuseums
.html#NMAH.
44 National Museum of American History (U.S.) Division of Textiles, Records, circa
1947-1982 Finding Aid; Smithsonian Institution Archives, “History of Smithsonian.”
 115

museum that actually had “Art” in its title. Despite its firm assertion in a public
courtroom to be the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian made no plans to develop a
separate building for the fine art collection, and the National Gallery of Art remained
administratively housed within Anthropology.45 Even in the face of that space
limitation, the newly established Advisory Board and gallery staff were determined to
move forward and improve its collections and exhibitions. The Gallery gathered
momentum and in 1920, successfully became its own bureau separate from
Anthropology. That distinction was still largely administrative, however, and the bureau
would need to wage a long battle for more appropriate physical space.46 The
Smithsonian missed many opportunities for major art collection gifts as a result of its
inadequate physical conditions.47

Drawing the Line for Fine Art

The Smithsonian radically reorganized its collection and building spaces in the
mid-twentieth century, ratifying its longstanding preferential treatment of industrial and
applied art objects over fine art objects. Though the fine arts commissioners had fought
for more than half a century for a grand new building on the National Mall, Congress
granted it only the old Patent Office Building in 1948.48 This neo-classical building—
located about a half mile from the Mall—required extensive renovation and remodeling

before it could house the collection and exhibitions that had been renamed the National
Collection of Fine Art (NCFA). This process would take twenty years before the

45 Fink, 62-5.

46 Ibid., 73.

47 Rosenberger, 430-1.

48 This is where the collection resides today in what is now called the Smithsonian
American Art Museum. The SAAM underwent additional major renovations from 2000-2006,
and now features open storage displays and a visible conservation laboratory.
 116

building was ready for its new occupant.49 At the same time, the Smithsonian
determined to retain the majority of its industrial and applied art objects on the Mall as it
planned a new Museum of History and Technology to open there in January 1964.50
This large, prominently located museum would privilege the artistic objects that fitted
best with the institution’s emphasis on manufacturing processes and technological
progress, including textiles, ceramics, European graphic arts, and photographs. Only
ceramics and graphic arts donated as part of larger gifts remained within the fine art
collection.51
This reorganization drew an even firmer dividing line between the paintings,
sculpture, and drawings of the NCFA and the applied objects in the History and
Technology Building. Even while the Smithsonian’s administrators prepared to move
fine art off the Mall, the NCFA’s staff began to expand its fine art collection and
programming in anticipation of its move to their first designated building. It launched
several exhibitions in the early and mid-60s in the National Museum Building to generate
interest in its future home scheduled to open in May 1968. Much of its collecting and
display in this period focused on contemporary modern art—a whole new arena for the
NCFA and one that signified that the collection’s sights were on a dynamic future free of
its science-based past. It sponsored major one-person shows of such modernists as Stuart

Davis and Jasper Johns as well as an ambitions group exhibition of paintings and
sculpture by forty-one American artists including Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Joseph
Stella, and Max Weber.52 The NCFA was striving to catch up with other major art

49 Fink, 118.

50 This museum is now named the National Museum of American History.

51 Fink, 120-1.

52 Ibid., 129-30.
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institutions and become a leading player of the fine art community. Its status would be
cemented by its move into its own dedicated building even if the larger Smithsonian
Institution signaled its uninterest in the collection by moving it away from the Mall’s
concentrated activity.
In contrast to the NCFA’s reformulated emphasis on the autonomy of the object,
genius of its maker, and aesthetic significance, the new History and Technology Building
continued to employ the Smithsonian’s traditional rhetoric of progress in interpreting
artistic objects. Displaying them as material evidence of America’s social and
technological culture, it emphasized utilitarianism and manufacturing. Outlining their
vision of what they hoped the new Hall of Textiles would achieve, museum officials
wrote: “No one who thinks of our modern world can fail to realize the role that the
sewing machines of factory and home have played in the emancipation of women from
monotonous toil…. The thoughtful visitor who studies them learns not only a mechanical
but also a sociological lesson of importance.”53 Perhaps they also hoped that textile
displays would give aesthetic pleasure to viewers, but if so, did not believe it worth
mentioning. The History and Technology Building’s exhibitions underscored the
intersections among science, industry, and daily life to demonstrate the liberating nature
of technological ingenuity and progress. Applied art objects formed a linear narrative of

social and cultural progress that dramatized science’s forward march in America.

A New Approach to Applied Art: The Renwick Gallery

To establish a meeting place between its science-based interpretive past and its
new ways of framing fine art, the Smithsonian in 1967 began renovations on the former
Corcoran Gallery Building to open its doors in 1972 as the Renwick Gallery, a craft
museum with concentrations in applied arts, design, and architecture. It would not

53 Lubar and Kendrick, 212.

 118

emphasize collecting but rather would host temporary exhibitions and display objects
loaned by other branches of the Smithsonian or external artists, collectors and museums.
It provided a venue for the Smithsonian to interpret its vast artifact collection in new
ways, particularly applied, utilitarian, and industrial objects from its Museums of Natural
History and History and Technology. With the Renwick, the Smithsonian kept pace with
contemporary trends of interpreting applied arts through a fine art lens rather than their
customary ones of natural history and anthropology. As Fink argues in her history of
these developments: “Objects originally studied as cultural artifacts in the science
collections could be viewed in these exhibits with the same sense of appreciation and
enjoyment as works of art in the painting galleries, for the modes of display and the
nature of modern art and theory had eroded distinctions between contrasting definitions
of these two types of objects.”54 The Renwick was intended to bridge the gap that the
Smithsonian had established so deliberately between its painting and drawing collections
and its anthropological, ethnological, and industrial collections.
While the Renwick gallery was designated a “craft” museum, it has largely been
guided by an art critical perspective that privileges form over function during its nearly
four decades of exhibiting woodworking, ceramics, textiles, fibers, architecture, glass,
and metalwork. Most of its exhibitions have featured United States artists and artifacts,

but some have showcased creative works from Asia, Europe, and South America. Most
exhibitions have also been thematic—grouping similar pieces from a number of artists—
with occasional solo exhibitions or retrospectives. It has striven to provide a mix of both
historical and contemporary exhibitions.55

54 Fink, 160.

55 Marguerite Hergesheimer, e-mail message to author, January 13, 2009.

 119

Under the purview of the NCFA (which became the National Museum of
American Art in 1980 and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2000), the Renwick
exhibitions have successfully liberated the Smithsonian’s applied arts from the science-
based, progress-oriented contexts that defined them for so many decades. At the same
time, however, the Renwick has embraced an art critical perspective that frequently
ignores the process, workmanship, and use value associated with these objects. It has
cast aside the artifacts’ resonance in favor of celebrating their form, visual aesthetics, and
individual expressiveness.
Since its establishment in the 1960s, the Renwick Gallery’s treatment of textiles
has stood in stark contrast to that of the Textile Department of the History and
Technology Building (now the National Museum of American History). The Renwick
has framed them through an aesthetic lens rather than a historical or technological one. It
placed quilts at the forefront of its formulation of applied objects as fine art when it chose
Jonathan Holstein’s and Gail Van der Hoof’s American Pieced Quilts to be one of the
first major exhibitions in its new building in 1972.56 The Smithsonian embraced the
Renwick’s fine art-based exhibition so warmly that when it closed, it took it on the road
through its Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), signaling its
place on the leading edge of what would become an explosive quilt revival.

This quilts-only exhibition was not only a major breakthrough for applied art at
the Smithsonian, but reflected a radical new approach to quilts in the larger fine art world
as well. It was an outgrowth of Holstein’s and Van der Hoof’s much-discussed Whitney
Museum of American Art exhibition, Abstract Design in American Art, which was the
first major quilt exhibition to display these usually utilitarian items as fine art—hanging
them on gallery walls like large-scale modern art pieces. As the exhibition’s title

56 Jonathan Holstein, American Pieced Quilts (Lausanne: Éditions des Massons; New
York: Distributed by P. Bianchini, 1972).
 120

suggests, Holstein and Van der Hoof drew parallels between the quilts and abstract
paintings. The New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer commended the “dazzling
sensibility for color and visual construction that the execution of these designs… display
with such appealing vigor.” He noted that before the “self-conscious invention of
pictorial abstraction in European painting” American quiltmakers created “a remarkable
succession of visual masterpieces that anticipated many of the forms that were later
prized for their originality and courage.”57 This exhibition was all about quilts as art.
By mounting American Pieced Quilts at the Renwick, the National Collection of
Fine Arts signaled its determination to reinforce its break with the institution’s
conservative past and its roots as a cabinet of curiosity. It had successfully removed
paintings and sculptures from their anthropological taxonomy and reinterpreted them
with an art critical perspective. Now it also joined a nascent movement to
reconceptualize quilts as aesthetic objects without regard to workmanship, use value, or
social context. In the Renwick’s catalogue to American Pieced Quilts, Holstein made it
abundantly clear that he and Van der Hoof had collected and arranged the quilts for their
visual effect: “This is an exhibition of American pieced quilts, chosen in a particular
way: all elements of craft expertise, all consideration of age, condition, historical or
regional significance have been disregarded, and we have concentrated only on how each

quilt works as a ‘painting’.”58 Holstein’s concentration on pure visual form could not
have been further from the Textile Division’s 80-year thematic and conceptual approach
to quilts. And despite the Renwick’s designation as a “craft” museum, this early
exhibition blatantly and unapologetically rejected the significance of craft in favor of art.

57 Hilton Kramer, “Art: Quilts Find a Place at the Whitney,” New York Times, July 3,
1971.
58 Holstein, 7.
 121

Since this initial exhibition, the Renwick has organized a number of exhibitions
focusing solely on quilts and has included them within other exhibitions of craft objects
treated as fine art as well. Though American Pieced Quilts was a major success, the
Renwick waited until the quilt revival was firmly established to make a significant
commitment to quilt display and then hosted quilt exhibitions nearly every year from the
late-1980s to the mid-1990s.59 Two of those mid-1990s exhibitions specifically featured
contemporary “art quilts” and are indicative of the Renwick’s interpretive approach. In
the first, Full Deck: Art Quilts, quilt artist Sue Pierce invited leading quiltmakers to
create 54 individual quilts inspired by a playing card deck. The broad range of
contemporary artists created quilts indicative of the painterly style, dyeing techniques,
and figurative tendencies of art quilts of the 1990s. In its accompanying catalogue,
Renwick Curator-in-Charge Michael W. Monroe described the ways that the exhibition
intentionally stripped quilts of their utility:

Because of the diminutive size (28 x 18 in.) of these fifty-four

interpretations, we immediately abandon the notion of
functionality associated with full-scale quilts. By doing so, we are
free to quickly move toward the power of the visual impact
achieved by idea, color, material, composition, form and texture,
much as we would when confronting a print, drawing, or
painting.60

59 Hergesheimer, e-mail message to author. Major quilt exhibitions have included

Indiana Amish Quilts: Pottinger Collection, February 6, 1987 – June 1, 1987; Slave Quilts from
the Ante-Bellum South, October 4, 1989 – January 1, 1990; Improvisation in Contemporary
African-American Quilts, September 27, 1991 – January 5, 1992; Full Deck: Art Quilts, March
17, 1995 – April 30, 1995; Nancy Crow: Improvisational Quilts, August 25, 1995 – January 1,
1995; Calico and Chintz: Antique Quilts from the Patricia Smith Collection, September 13, 1996
– January 12, 1997; and Spirits of the Cloth: Contemporary Quilts by African American Artists,
and Amish Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown, October 6, 2000 – January 21,
2001. Their most recent quilt exhibition was Going West! Quilts and Community, October 5,
2007 – January 21, 2008.
60 Michael W. Monroe, foreword in Art Quilts: Playing with a Full Deck, by Sue Pierce
and Verna Suit (Rohnert Park, California: Pomegranate Communications, 1994), 5.
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The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) intensified this visual interpretation of
quilts as art by touring the exhibition for three years.61
In Nancy Crow: Improvisational Quilts, the Renwick further emphasized quilts’
aesthetic artistry over their utility. Reviewing the one-woman exhibition in Fiberarts,
Susan Tamulevich stated: “What Nancy Crow does, almost better than any of her
contemporaries, is to build upon the best practices of traditional quilting with the
sensibilities of a contemporary artist… But it is her painterly eye that gives the works
their modernity.”62 The Renwick underscored its commitment to the art quilt movement
and an artistic interpretation of quilts by displaying the work of one of the foremost art
quilters.
Even on the rare occasion that the Renwick has hosted historical exhibitions, it
has held steadfast to the art critical interpretation that has distinguished the SAAM from
the institution’s scientific traditions. For example, it launched Calico and Chintz:
Antique Quilts from the Collection of Patricia S. Smith in 1996, displaying quilts made
from circa 1790 through 1845 that incorporated the British and French glazed and printed
cotton prized by that era’s elite. Despite the objects’ vintage and historical significance,
the curator emphasized their visual design. In an article for Smithsonian Magazine, she
wrote: “When blocks of multicolored chintzes with large floral motifs are juxtaposed

with patches of densely patterned, polychromatic calicoes, the effect can be spectacular,
almost kaleidoscopic.”63 This artistic perspective on historical quilts also characterized
the Renwick’s conflicted 2007 Going West! Quilts and Community exhibition, which

61 For a full analysis of the art quilting medium as represented in this exhibition, see
Verna Suit, “Playing with a Full Deck,” Fiberarts 21 (1995): 52-6.
62 Susan Tamulevich, “Nancy Crow: Improvisational Quilts at The Renwick Gallery,”
Fiberarts 22 (1996): 62.
63 Diane M. Bolz, “Antebellum Quilts,” Smithsonian 27, no. 8 (November 1996): 95.
 123

struggled to contend with the quilts’ social and cultural significance while focusing on
their visual qualities.

The Tradition Continues:

Quilts at the National Museum of American History
While the Renwick’s approach to quilts reinforces the fine art collection’s break
from the Smithsonian’s scientific, historic, and ethnographic collections, the majority of
the institution’s quilts remain inextricably linked to those traditional collections and their
longstanding interpretive approaches. The Smithsonian has generally categorized quilts
as items of utilitarian and technological significance and displayed them primarily in its
history museum alongside the tools and materials used to craft and manufacture textiles
and to create new products from them. As public interest boomed with the 1970s and
1980s quilt revival, the stakes for the Smithsonian’s collection and display of quilts
correspondingly became greater. A growing number of quiltmakers, collectors, and
scholars demanded that the public institution address the increasingly complex
conceptions of quilts and quiltmaking as a traditional American medium and
distinguished art form. For the Smithsonian, quilts became a flashpoint in the 1990s
when its commission of Chinese-made reproductions of several collection quilts drew
significant protest. This increased attention was indicative of broader cultural conflicts

about how to define, interpret, and display quilts—as well as how to market and sell
them.
Since the Smithsonian granted textiles its own division within the History and
Technology Building (which became the National Museum of American History in
1980), it assigned it to several departments including the Department of the History of
Science and Technology and the Department of Social and Cultural History. These
different categorizations demonstrated yet again that textiles were considered variously as
specimens of production and/or ethnographic artifacts. Today the textile collection is
 124

assigned to the Division of Home and Community, a location more suggestive of textiles’
domestic roots than with their relationship to technological innovation or the Industrial
Revolution but still linked to issues of utility and production.64
As the unsettled administrative homes for the textiles division suggest, the
National Museum of American History (NMAH) has organized textiles and textile-
related objects conceptually rather than adopting taxonomic structures more common to
fine art. It has not employed the art museum’s usual chronological, formal, regional, or
media groupings, nor has it emphasized the textiles’ aesthetic qualities. Since the
Smithsonian separated the historical collections from the natural history collections, its
aim at the NMAH has been to present historical narratives that impart visitors with a
broad survey of American material development and cultural experience. It uses quilts,
then, as material evidence of textile technologies and trends, and it collects and
categorizes them with other fibers, textile tools, and machines. This object grouping now
constitutes approximately 50,000 artifacts—ranging from fibers, fabrics, and coverlets to
needlework tools, thimbles, and sewing scissors to looms, sewing machines, and the
cotton gin.65 The thematic approach to collection and exhibition has meant that quilts
have rarely taken center stage in public exhibition spaces within the museum. They have
been displayed, instead, as objects in conceptual groupings to illustrate a historical theme,

exemplify a certain time period, or represent technological production and progress.66

The quilts in the NMAH’s textile collection may not have had much time in the
public eye, but when the museum licensed Chinese-made reproductions of several prized

64 National Museum of American History (U.S.) Division of Textiles, Records, circa

1947-1982 Finding Aid; Smithsonian Institution Archives, “History of Smithsonian.”
65 National Museum of American History, “Textiles,” National Museum of American
History, accessed October 20, 2008, http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/subject_detail
.cfm?key=32&colkey=30.
66 Doris M. Bowman, interview by author, Washington, D.C., January 15, 2008.
 125

quilts in the early 1990s, the “National Quilt Collection” made headlines, and the
museum’s decision incited fervent controversy. Quilt advocates rallied against the
reproductions and used them as an opportunity to raise important questions about quilts’
relationship to aesthetics, aura, resonance, use value, labor, and heritage. The
reproductions provided a locus for heated discussions that revealed the shortcomings of
the Smithsonian’s bifurcated approach to quilts. Those discussions demonstrated quilts’
complex nature and highlighted the conflicted rhetoric among quilt advocates regarding
how to define and frame quilts.
Throughout the controversy, it was clear that the NMAH saw its quilts in a very
different light than quilt advocates did. The museum administrators conceptualized them
as historical, educational objects. They believed that their replication would provide
greater access to the objects and their histories and hoped that their sale would produce
much-needed profits for collections care. In a museum dedicated to technological
progress and industrial innovation, they saw little harm in reproducing examples of
American production. Quilt advocates, on the other hand, were outraged by the NMAH’s
actions. To them, reproductions denigrated the original objects’ unique cultural
significance, and the Chinese labor to duplicate them represented an assault on the
American tradition of hand-quilted quilts. They also saw the quilts as one-of-a-kind

national art treasures with sacred auras.

The NMAH’s product development and licensing division contracted the U.S.
company American Pacific Importers to oversee Chinese reproduction of several quilts
from its collection in July 1991. The initial run included four designs: an 1851 Maryland
Bride’s Quilt, an 1850 Sunburst, an 1830 depiction of the Great Seal of the United States
by Susan Strong, and Harriet Powers’ 1886 Bible Quilt. The Smithsonian marketed these
machine-pieced and hand-quilted quilts for distribution through catalogues and
department stores, accompanying each quilt with a registration card and a “certificate of
authenticity.” In catalogues like Spiegel’s and Robert Redford’s Sundance, the
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“authentic” reproductions retailed for between $200 and $400, prices that were
significantly below the market rate for mosthandmade American quilts at the time.
Domestic quiltmakers might have charged upwards of $750 for their work in the early
1990s.67
Quiltmakers, collectors, and scholars quickly organized in spirited opposition to
the Smithsonian’s actions. They launched a public education campaign through quilt-
related newsletters and magazines, pursued media contacts, and secured extensive
coverage in The Washington Post. They coordinated targeted letter-writing campaigns to
Smithsonian officials, key legislators, the Federal Trade Commission, and companies
selling reproductions in their catalogues. They also picketed the NMAH for the first
annual National Quilt Day on March 21, 1992, wrapping themselves in handmade quilts
as they rallied on the National Mall. Through their multipronged campaign, they reached
the nation’s growing number of quilt enthusiasts and capitalized on formal networks that
had been building since the early 1970s—through organizations like the National
Quilting Association and the American Quilt Studies Group, publications like The
Quilting Quarterly and Quilters’ Newsletter, and annual quilt shows and festivals.
In all of their correspondence and protests, quilt advocates employed a rather
conflicted rhetoric as they sought to balance concerns about quilts’ social, cultural, and

political heritage with their newfound stature as fine art. They voiced three central
concerns in their protests: the quilts represented an affront to historical quiltmaking
traditions, threatened the livelihoods of contemporary quiltmakers and shop owners, and
sanctioned human rights violations in China. Quiltmakers, collectors, and scholars also
returned time and time again to the relationship between quilts and art. They were

67 Judy Eisley, “The Smithsonian Quilt Controversy: Cultural Dislocation,” Uncoverings

14 (1993): 119-21; Jura Koncius, “The Quilts That Struck a Nerve: Smithsonian Reproductions
Spark a Passionate Protest,” Washington Post, March 19, 1992.
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confident that by 1990 quilts had been elevated to a comparable stature as painting and
sculpture in major museums like the Whitney and the Smithsonian’s own Renwick
Gallery. The Smithsonian’s reproductions ignored the artistic status as unique objects
that quilts had achieved and represented a rebuff to women’s art.
When quilt advocates charged the Smithsonian with undervaluing and
undermining historical quiltmaking traditions, they made their strongest arguments by
citing the reproduction of Harriet Powers’ famous “Bible Quilt.” Powers, a former
Georgia slave, crafted the quilt in the late 1800s and displayed it in the 1886 Athens
Cotton Fair. A local white artist named Jennie Smith wanted to buy it. Powers initially
refused to sell it, but several years later agreed to it when her family was suffering
financial hardship. She asked ten dollars for her prized quilt, but Smith claimed she
could only afford five.68 According to Smith, Powers was heartbroken by the sale and
even visited the quilt after it was in Smith’s possession.69 Reproduction of Powers’ quilt
was especially contentious due to the rarity of surviving nineteenth century African
American quilts and Smith’s exploitation of Powers’ poverty. According to its critics,
the NMAH ran roughshod over the social, cultural, and political resonance of this
powerful piece of American history.
Other objections to the reproductions focused on the livelihoods of contemporary

quiltmakers and shop owners as well as on human rights violations in China—two

closely interrelated issues. As the most prominent keeper of American cultural traditions
and a symbol of American values, such criticism maintained, the Smithsonian had
followed the path of U.S. industry too closely when it exploited cheap overseas labor.
The Quilting Quarterly included a number of articles detailing objections to the

68 Bowman, American Quilts, 81.

69 Pat Ferrero, Elaine Hedges, and Judy Silber, Hearts and Hands: The Influence of
Women and Quilts on American Society (San Francisco: The Quilt Digest Press, 1987), 47.
 128

reproductions, including one the editors titled “Economic Lessons.” They cited
comparative wage data for the U.S. and China to demonstrate the exploitative nature of
the Smithsonian’s production decision: “Average hourly wage in the U.S.: $14.77.
Average hourly wage in the U.S. for a textile worker: $6.08.... [Average wage] in China:
25 cents an hour.”70 Beyond these wage numbers, editors made the case that the Chinese
wages are not without additional costs: “The Chinese government, the world’s last major
communist regime, is able to stay in power because since 1979 it has encouraged free-
enterprise zones that have become enormously profitable… Manufacturers are able to
run factories without regard to worker safety, child-labor laws, copyright infringement
laws or any other restrictions.”71
Quilt advocates also called upon the critical language of art to explain how the
reproductions affected quilts’ value and quiltmakers’ status. In her 1993 article about the
Smithsonian controversy, quilt scholar Judy Eisley cites Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” to argue that the Smithsonian’s en masse
reproductions reinscribed quilts in the category of craft. As Eisley saw it, the problem
was that: “As a craft rather than an art, the artist or, more particularly her, the quilter,
becomes less significant, and in the case of the imports, is erased entirely from the
quiltmaking process. The maker becomes dislocated from the product he or she

makes.”72 Eisley’s argument clearly privileges art above craft—even though art critical
perspectives are the very ones that so often have extracted quilts from their social and
cultural context.

70 National Quilting Association, “Economic Lessons,” The Quilting Quarterly (Summer

1992): 13.
71 Ibid.

72 Eisley, 128.
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Though the quilt advocates’ rhetoric was sometimes conflicted in how they
defined and defended quilts, they were successful in raising their concerns with
legislators who oversee the Smithsonian. Their lobbying was particularly persuasive
when they addressed human rights and economic and trade implications. Senator Al
Gore spoke with The Washington Post about the use of Chinese labor:

The [National Museum of American History’s] goal is profits, but

they are earned by undermining the market for American crafts.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, it brings business to the People’s
Republic of China, which has a record of human rights abuses and
trade infractions sorry enough to convince Congress to vote against
extension of Most Favored Nation trading status. The
Smithsonian, of all places, should never have put itself in that kind
of position.73
While Gore demonstrated his contempt for the Smithsonian’s actions, he did not raise the
issue of quilts as art, clearly finding the human rights implications a more pressing issue.
In correspondence with quilt advocates and the media, Smithsonian Institution
officials defended the quilt reproductions on financial and educational grounds. They
cited a need for additional funds to preserve the textile collection and argued that the
reproductions helped fulfill the institution’s educational mission. NMAH Director Roger
G. Kennedy drafted a form letter that the institution mailed in response to complaints. In
it, he emphasized the importance of accessibility:

We treasure our collections and wish to share them more

broadly—not everyone can get to Washington and not all objects
are on display. When we authorize such products, our goal is to
heighten awareness of our collections and to educate about a
particular culture, technique or art form. We seek to reach the
largest possible audience.74
His hope that a populist appeal would resonate with quilt advocates was clearly
misguided. While the advocates certainly supported broader education about quilts, they

73 Koncius, “Quilts That Struck a Nerve.”

74 National Quilting Association, “Smithsonian Responds to Quilters’ Protests,” The

Quilting Quarterly (Summer 1992): 24.
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would not support products that undermined American quiltmakers and diluted their art
form through mass production. They were fighting simultaneously for acknowledgment
of quilts’ heritage and a higher, more elite stature for them.
Representatives from both sides gathered in Washington D.C. on April 10, 1992
to discuss the then very public controversy. Fifteen U.S. quilt community members
voiced their objections to six Smithsonian staff members. The quilt community chose six
individuals to vocalize their complaints: Bonnie Leman, Editor of Quilters Newsletter
Magazine, Viola Canady, founder of Daughters of Dorcas, Lee Porter, member of the
American Quilt Study Group, Judy Elwood, past president of The National Quilting
Association, Karey Bresenhan, director of the Houston Quilt Market and Festival, and
Fred Calland, quilter.75 Many of these individuals represented organizations and
publications responsible for sustaining the quilt revival and supporting new research and
scholarship regarding quilts and quilt history.
These quilt advocates articulated two key demands: that the Smithsonian cancel
its contract with American Pacific and that it label existing quilts with the phrase “Made
in China” in indelible ink. The Smithsonian officials were unwilling to cancel the
American Pacific contract, citing the contractual obligation it had made for the
production of four lots of quilts per year for three years. The institution assured quilt

advocates that it had already begun stamping quilts with “Smithsonian Institution, 1992.
Made in China” and would soon begin embroidering quilts with “Copyright 1992,
Smithsonian Institution, Made in China.” NMAH Director Kennedy promised that the
Smithsonian would enforce greater control over marketing, require catalogues to delete
any language about “heirlooms” or “American heritage” and remove potentially

75 Marie Salazar and Judy Elwood, “Report of the Meeting Between the American Quilt
Community and the National Museum of American History,” The Quilting Quarterly (Summer
1992): 11.
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misleading registration certificates. To further conciliate the group, Kennedy suggested

the Smithsonian would dedicate all licensing proceeds to the Textile Division and would
develop a permanent display area in the NMAH for quilt collection items.76
The Smithsonian’s assurances did little to appease quilt community
representatives, who wanted the federal institution to put an end to future Chinese
reproductions. Speaking to The Washington Post after the meeting, Karey Bresenhan
said, “This is a billion-dollar-a-year industry and this institution, which is 85 percent
supported by our tax dollars, is cutting our throats having these quilts made offshore for
rock-bottom prices.” Bonnie Leman argued that the mass marketed reproductions would
cause American quilts to lose their iconic magic: “They are a link between generations,
but will young people be as thrilled to get a quilt Mom made if they see a big sale down
at Sears with quilts marked down to $100?”77 To them, as long as the reproductions
continued, both historic and contemporary quilts would be devalued—then and into the
future.
The NMAH was likely resistant to renegotiating, much less cancelling, its
contract because the sale of its first four reproductions was a major success. In the first
year, it sold 23,000 of American Pacific’s Chinese-made quilts.78 While it is difficult to
know the buyers’ motivations for purchasing these mass-produced quilts or their

relationships to them, they likely put them to use in their everyday lives. Buyers
probably valued the connection between the object they owned and the Smithsonian
originals—a connection that gave them a sense of ownership over the American quilt

76 Salazar and Elwood, 12.

77 Patricia Dane Roger, “Quilters’ Protest Answered; Smithsonian Agrees to Label

Imports,” The Washington Post, April 11, 1992.
78 Jura Koncius, “The Power, the Glory, the Quilts,” The Washington Post, March 11,
1993.
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tradition and a tie to the cultural capital of the national museum. Some may have even
prized the quilts’ hand-stitched workmanship and were certainly drawn to the striking
piecing patterns of the specific objects chosen from the collection. No matter how
nuanced the buyers’ relationships with the reproductions, the Smithsonian’s critics
decried the whole exchange as problematic. The Smithsonian’s marketing of
reproductions marked a profound shift in the control of quilts away from their producers
and was thus an affront to women’s labor and history.79
Smithsonian Secretary Robert McCormick Adams and five members of the quilt
community, designated the American Quilt Defense Fund, did finally sign a
memorandum of understanding in March 1993. While it would not cancel its American
Pacific contract, the Smithsonian agreed that after three additional overseas
reproductions, the final four contracted reproductions would be produced in the United
States. While representatives of the American Quilt Defense Fund signed off on this
agreement, not everyone in the larger quilt community accepted it. A number of quilt
advocates vowed to keep fighting for a more substantive agreement. They lobbied the
U.S. Congress to tie the Smithsonian’s budget allocations to a restriction on foreign
reproductions.80 There is no evidence to suggest that they were successful, however, and
the American Quilt Defense Fund agreement stood as the formal resolution to the

controversy.
In keeping with its promise to find an American producer, the Smithsonian
contracted with Cabin Creek Quilts in West Virginia to reproduce “Harvest Sun,” a 19th
century Kentucky quilt from the NMAH’s collection. This sold for $800 in Land’s End’s
Coming Home Catalogue—significantly more than the Chinese reproductions on the

79 Eisley articulates this shift most eloquently.

80 Jura Koncius, “Quilts; The Smithsonian’s Truce; Imported Copies Spark

Agreement—and Protest,” The Washington Post 25 March 1993, T6.
 133

same pages. Representatives from Land’s End emphasized the differences between the
American and Chinese products in interviews with The Washington Post. They touted
that the American quilts represented finer workmanship—more accurate piecing and a
greater number of quilt stitches per inch. Land’s End did not stop selling Chinese
products, however, but played up the advantages of the lower quality quilts. Anita
Iodice, product manager for the Coming Home Catalogue argued: “For those who can
afford to buy an $800 quilt, they may also want to buy a less expensive quilt that they can
put where it can get dirty and their heart doesn’t stop. They can put it in the washing
machine.”81
As a result of the negotiations with quilt advocates, the Smithsonian Institution
also agreed to hold a quilt symposium and construct a permanent case for quilt display in
the NMAH. The Smithsonian and the NMAH organized the symposium with input and
financial support from the American Quilt Defense Fund, bringing together quilt scholars
for two days in March 1995 to explore the theme “What’s American about American
Quilts?”82 The Smithsonian’s goal was to affirm its commitment to America’s quilting
tradition and to mend its relationship with quilt advocates. Symposium presenters and
attendees addressed American quilts’ regional characteristics, ethnic and geographical
influences, and immigrant traditions. Hoping to smooth over the divisiveness and distrust

the reproduction controversy had engendered, its Director of Development, Ruth Sexton
hopefully if blandly asserted to The Washington Post: “This is an example of the positive
activity that can happen when you… coordinate resources and use energies in a positive

81 Koncius, “The Power, the Glory.” Iodice may or may not have known the how
significant this comment was; quiltmakers and collectors consider the washing machine to be the
ultimate enemy to quilts.
82 Shelley Zegart, “The Quilt Projects: Fifteen Years Later,” Folk Art 21, no. 1 (Spring
1996): 36.
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way.”83 Her word choice revealed the continuing tensions, however, as her emphasis on
the “positive” nature of the Smithsonian’s actions implied that the quilt community was
responsible for bringing negativity to the conflict. Ultimately, the symposium was a one-
time affair to appease the affronted quilt community, and the Smithsonian never
sponsored another.
The NMAH did follow through on its promise to dedicate a display case
specifically to quilts in its gallery space, but this seeming victory was a small one. The
museum showed little commitment to the project since it accepted funds raised by the
quilting community for it. The American Quilt Defense Fund raised $25,000, and
$13,000 went towards a rosewood Quilt Legacy Case.84 Specially constructed for textile
display, the case included fiber-optic lighting that maintained the low temperature and
light levels required for sensitive fibers. Those charged with the textile collection’s care
began using the case to rotate individual quilts for approximately six months in the
Textile Hall, which was essentially a hallway. The quilts represented a range of eras and
included brief information about the quilt’s maker, the history of its design, and its donor.
When possible, curators included narrative stories related to the quilts and tried to choose
quilts that matched other exhibition themes throughout the museum.85 While the case
did provide a designated public space for interpreting the quilts’ social and cultural

significance, it did not elevate them to the artistic status touted by quilt advocates during
the heated controversy nor did it signal a much greater commitment to displaying the
national collection.

83 “Patching Things Up,” The Washington Post, March 16, 1995.

84 Jura Koncius, “Last Stitch in the Smithsonian Quilt Saga,” The Washington Post,
March 21, 1996.
85 Bowman, interview.
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Since the controversy waned, quilts have received little attention in the NMAH,
receding back to being contextual objects in thematic displays about American history.
As part of the Division of Home and Community, quilts are conceptualized alongside
broad, miscellaneous divisions that include Information Technology and
Communications, Medicine and Science, Military History and Diplomacy, Sports and
Entertainment, Politics and Reform, and Work and Industry.86
The NMAH dismantled the much-fought-for quilt case during the years-long, $85
million renovation it completed in 2008, and quilt advocates lost their fairly minimal
recompense for damages done by the museum’s reproduction scheme. In the grand, new
museum space, the NMAH did reserve a specific display area for rotating quilts in its
new “artifact walls” that line the wide hallway to the museum shop. It has once again
integrated quilts into a series of interrelated, thematic objects rather than granting them
space to stand on their own. When the New York Times critic Edward Rothstein reviewed
the renovation, he described these artifact displays as “an array of curiosity cabinets
loosely organized by subject.” “The objects fascinate,” he wrote, “but the miscellany is
so deliberate, it is as if variety itself were the subject.”87 A quilt displayed in the NMAH
is just one among an array of discrete objects without further interpretation or explanation
to contextualize it. The object wall is organized so randomly that it defies both fine art

display techniques and the Smithsonian’s traditional emphasis on science and ethnology.
The quilts have neither an autonomous, aesthetic privilege nor a productive
interpretation.

86 National Museum of American History, “Museum Departments,” National Museum of

American History, accessed September 16, 2008, http://americanhistory.si.edu/about/departments
.cfm.
87 Edward Rothstein, “American’s Attic, Ready for a Second Act,” New York Times,
November 21, 2008.
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The NMAH’s approach is dissatifying for quilt enthusiasts and for the curators
who oversee the Division of Home and Community Life. Audiences get only occasional
opportunities to see quilts and textiles in the public thematic displays, and the
arbitrariness of their showings offers no promise that future subject displays will feature
quilts. A desire for more quilt displays has been the first or second most-frequent request
of museum attendees.88 The curators who oversee the Division of Home and
Community Life seem frustrated by their marginalization—especially when the public
expresses such interested in their collection. In response, they are fighting within the
NMAH hierarchy to get it seen. They now see themselves as “keepers of the collection,”
continuing behind-the-scenes research, preserving the artifacts, and finding new ways to
allow the public to interact with the collection.89
Doris Bowman, Associate Curator for the Division of Home and Community
Life, has led the campaign for greater collection access—fighting for more public space
for quilts and innovating new programs for quilt access. Behind-the-scenes tours provide
the most popular access for quilt enthusiasts, and—true to its scientific roots—the
NMAH boasts an up-to-the-minute collection storage room. Every other Tuesday by
appointment, visitors can see the quilts laid flat in shallow, individual, pullout drawers.
Docents show visitors a photograph of the overall quilt and a portion of the actual textile;

they also itemize the quilt’s physical characteristics and its history. For those who cannot
make it to the museum for tours, the curators are working to post images and research
regarding each quilt on the NMAH’s website. Bit by bit, they work to share their
collection and their research that is frequently buried in the sprawling historical museum.

88 Bowman, interview.

89 Ibid.
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Newer methods for providing access to the National Quilt Collection begin to
reveal the social and cultural complexity of quilts in ways that past Smithsonian
exhibitions have not—neither in the Renwick nor in the NMAH. For example, an entry
in the online collection describes the Copp family indigo wool quilt that was donated as
one of the first groups of quilts in the collection. Text accompanying the quilt’s image
describes the Copp Collection, gives background about the family, estimates the date the
quilt was created, details the quilt’s pattern and dyeing techniques, and describes the
tradition of whole cloth quilts. The text balances the quilt’s visual and aesthetic qualities
with its social and cultural attributes. However, the quilt’s photographic images are fairly
poor quality, and it is difficult to get a sense of the fabrics’ colors, textural qualities, and
the actual quilting while viewing them on a computer screen. The online collection also
makes no links among individual objects so that it is a series of discrete exhibits rather
than an interpretive exhibition.90 While it may provide greater access for quilt
enthusiasts and also a more flexible platform for interpretive text, it certainly does not
address all of the challenges of the institution’s disciplinary rifts.

Conclusion
The fervor and fiery rhetoric surrounding the Smithsonian’s quilts has died down
since the heated debates of the 1990s, but neither the Smithsonian nor quilt advocates

have come to an easy settlement regarding how to define and frame quilts. Visitors to the
Smithsonian encounter quilts in markedly different contexts as they move from one
museum to another—from the behind-the-scenes storage drawers and miscellaneous
artifact wall of the National Museum of American History to the Victorian gallery walls
of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery. Each museum space

90 National Museum of American History, “National Quilt Collection: 1750–1800 Copp

Family’s Indigo Wool Quilt,” National Museum of American History, accessed February 3, 2011,
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&gkey=169&objkey=9544.
 138

reveals a different perspective on the quilts’ significance—from their construction and

social and cultural history to their inclusion in American material culture to their formal
and visual attributes. Throughout the Smithsonian, disciplinary traditions and
defensiveness define how quilts are displayed and interpreted for the public.
The controversies spurred by the Smithsonian’s treatment of quilts demonstrate
that quilt advocates themselves grapple with how to celebrate quilts’ cultural heritage,
honor their personal significance, and still tout their more elite, artistic status. Achieving
an interdisciplinary perspective on quilts—and the rhetoric to match it—is complicated
by the issues of gender, labor, and cultural hierarchy that also converge in quilts. By
understanding the long traditions that inform contemporary interpretive exhibitions and
broader conversations about quilts, however, quiltmakers, collectors, and curators can
begin to find methods for displaying and defining them that do justice to their
complexity.
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CHAPTER FOUR:
CONTESTED QUILTMAKING:
THE AMERICAN QUILTER’S SOCIETY

The Iowa Events Center bustles with quilt lovers for four days each October when
the American Quilter’s Society Show & Contest comes to Des Moines. The over 96,000
square-foot convention hall with soaring 35-foot ceilings is the heart of activity. Nearly
200 vendors fill much of the hall, their crowded, vibrant booths presenting the latest and
greatest in quilting techniques, tools, and materials. Vendors travel to Iowa from across
the United States to showcase bolt after bolt of fabric, reveal creative, new quilt kits, and
promote fashionable threads. They entice quiltmakers to try out innovative measuring
and cutting tools, test-run advanced long arm sewing machines, and thumb through
recently-published quilt books.
The real draws of the expo—the contest quilts—fill the vast hall’s corners. Fabric
Art quilts are closest to the entrance, while attendees must wind their way through the
vendor rows to find the other winning quilts hanging on black-curtained panels.
Arranged in zigzag patterns, the panels display more than 200 quilts deemed worthy of
presentation—with twnty-four bearing prized ribbons. White-gloved local guild
members stand guard in the aisles, acting as hosts and answering viewers’ questions.

Women—and a few men—slowly pace the aisles, frequently stopping to admire and
critique. Usually in small groups, they talk extensively about the design and construction
of the quilts that intrigue them most, trying to puzzle out how they were cut, assembled,
quilted, embellished, or finished. Their conversations are part technical problem solving
and part creative wonder.
Quilt show attendees have ample further opportunities to engage with quilts and
quiltmaking. The AQS arranges for special exhibitions like 2009’s New Quilts from an
Old Favorite: Burgoyne Surrounded by the National Quilt Museum, Quilts by
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Prizewinning Quiltmaker Millie Sorrells, The Quilting Tradition—Amish & English

curated by Marilyn Woodin, Appliqué and Piecing: A Perfect Union by Darlene
Christopherson, Mid-Nineteenth Century Red and Green Quilts from the Collection of
Anita Shackelford, and Artfull Bras by Quilters of South Carolina. It also hosts the Des
Moines Quilters Guild display of over 450 additional quilts, a quilt raffle, and a silent
auction of small quilts. Outside the expansive convention hall, the AQS orchestrates
dozens of classes and special events throughout the four days. Women haul their quilting
supplies to adjacent classrooms for hands-on classes in topics like Appliquéing Perfect
Points, Denim Divas, Simply Amazing Nesting Spirals, or Design-O-Rama for
Beginners. They settle in for lectures and trunk shows featuring tips for getting published
by AQS, the history of the American feedsack, or beading by machine. Those who want
to venture away from the Events Center can take shuttles to local quilt attractions like the
Des Moines Botanical and Environmental Center’s quilt-themed gardens and quilt
displays or neighborhood quilt walks in Des Moines’ Historic East Village or West Des
Moines’ Historic Valley Junction.1
The Des Moines show is just one of four shows that the AQS organizes each
year—with others in Knoxville, Tennessee; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Paducah,
Kentucky. It has been putting on its Paducah show since 1985. As vast and lively as the

Des Moines show is, it pales in comparison to the scale and vibrancy of its longstanding
Paducah counterpart. More than 30,000 quilt lovers take over the city of 26,000 as spring
arrives in Kentucky.2 With dogwoods in bloom, visitors peruse award-winning quilts,

1 Site visit by author, Des Moines, Iowa, October 28, 2010; American Quilter’s Society,
Des Moines Quilt Expo Registration Guide, 2009 (Paducah, KY: American Quilter’s Society);
American Quilter’s Society, Des Moines Quilt Expo 2009 (Paducah, KY: American Quilter’s
Society).
2 Josh Noel, “Paducah Paints a Portrait of Itself,” Chicago Tribune, May 17, 2002,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0517-paducahmay17,0,2703025.story.
 141

attend classes and presentations, visit the National Quilt Museum, scour the expo vendor
areas, and meet up with sisters, mothers, daughters, and friends to share in the joy of
quiltmaking.3 The Paducah show is legendary among quiltmakers for its vastness and its
sheer festivity, and through its shows and publications, the AQS has established itself as a
major force in the contemporary quilt revival.

Symposia, Conferences, Expositions & Contests

Quilts and quiltmaking have been growing in popularity since late 1960s and
early 1970s, when the contemporary revival began. The renewed interest in handwork
that developed as part of the back to the land movement of the 1960s and the celebration
of the United States bicentennial spurred several symposia and conferences in the mid-
1970s. Organized on the regional level, these were indicative of the quilt revival’s local
spontaneity. The Tompkins County Quilters Guild organized the first major quilt event
in August 1976, the Finger Lakes Quilt Exhibit in Ithaca, New York. The Guild
displayed over 600 quilts and organized a quilting bee, quilt demonstrations, a slide
show, workshops, and a lecture series. The Lincoln, Nebraska Quilters Guild—unaware
of the Ithaca event—organized their major Quilt Symposium ’77 “Fine Art–Folk Art” for
the following summer. They coordinated an exhibition, presentations, a quilt block
contest, a slide show, quilt dealers, and vendors selling books, patterns, and supplies.

Three similar regional events took place in 1978: The First Continental Quilting
Congress in Arlington, Virginia, The Kansas Quilt Symposium in Lawrence, and The
West Coast Quilter’s Conference in Portland, Oregon.4

3 Bonnie Browning, telephone interview by author, February 25, 2010.

4 Carolyn Ducey and Mary Ellen Ducey, “Quilt Symposium ’77: ‘Fine Art–Folk Art’ at
Lincoln, Nebraska,” Uncoverings 24 (2003): 80.
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As quilt scholars Carolyn Ducey and Mary Ellen Ducey have demonstrated, some
of the quilt revival enthusiasts were committed primarily to traditional quiltmaking
techniques and shared the long-time goal of creating “an object of beauty whose
underlying purpose was function.” Other emerging artists—often with formal art
training—were redefining quiltmaking as “a medium for exploring aesthetic elements of
light, depth, surface pattern, and texture in new ways.”5 These divergent approaches to
quiltmaking—and the tensions between them—would remain a constant in symposia and
conferences into the twenty-first century.
Three major nonprofit quilt organizations that grew out of the early quilt revival
decades remain prominent and influential today. Each of these claimed its niche in the
quilt world. The member-based National Quilting Association dedicated itself to
quiltmaking traditions and expertise; Quilt National formed to promote the growing field
of art quilts; and the American Quilt Study Group became the foremost scholarly
organization for exchanging and publishing quilt-related research. Each of these
organizations has its own distinct agenda and has promoted it both internally and through
external programming, shows, and publications.
The American Quilter’s Society emerged as the most significant and influential
for-profit quilt organization. While it has always focused on current quilt production, it

has cast a wide net within the contemporary quilt world, welcoming both traditional and
innovative quiltmakers, teachers, authors, shop owners, and industry members. Its all-
encompassing reach has allowed it to become a significant facilitator for dialogues within
the quilt world—including conversations about appropriate judging criteria for design
and workmanship, precise categorization and definition of quiltmaking styles, the
designation of quilts as art, and the distinctions between formally and informally trained

5 Ducey and Ducey, 88.

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quiltmakers. These ongoing debates would shape the twentieth- and twenty-first-century
quilt revival and help determine its technical and aesthetic paths.

Grounded in Tradition: The National Quilting Association

A group of traditional quiltmakers established the National Quilting Association
as an early initiative in the quilt revival. The organization began with a small meeting in
a member’s living room in January 1970, and launched its first quilt show in a Maryland
public library that fall.6 It has since expanded into a national, chapter-based institution
with approximately 5,500 members and 200 chapters in 33 states. As a member-driven
organization, it strives to provide resources, support, training, and recognition to those
enrolled in local chapters.7 Its grassroots beginnings are evident in its early “Patchwork
Patter” newsletters—humble documents that NQA leaders typed, mimeographed, and
hand-collated during its first decade or so, starting in 1973. The newsletter focused on
practical matters including NQA news, quilt class postings, want ads, a swap shop, a list
of quilters available for quilting tops, speakers bureau information, and a quiltmakers
bibliography.
The NQA has always been firmly rooted in practical quiltmaking and education.
In its nascent years, volunteers provided practical, hands-on demonstrations during
Jonathan Holstein and Gail van der Hoof’s 1972 American Pieced Quilts exhibition at the

Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. They brought a sense of traditional quilting

patterns and techniques to the visually-oriented, vertical display of American quilts.
While Holstein aimed to focus visitors’ attention on the graphic qualities of his collection
quilts in the downstairs galleries, the NQA set up quilting frames in the upstairs Grand

6 Penny Rigdon, “Penny Rigdon Reflects on NQA’s Beginning,” The Quilting Quarterly
23, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 12.
7 The National Quilting Association (NQA), “About the NQA!,” NQA, accessed January
26, 2010, http://nqaquilts.org/about-history.php.
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Salon. They demonstrated quilting on traditional patterns including the Star of LeMoyne,
the Churn Dash, Grandmother’s Fan, and Bow Tie. They also “offered people the
opportunity and materials to trace whatever they wished from [their] books and pattern
collections at hand, and gave whatever advice [they] could.”8
In its own early quilt shows, the NQA maintained this sense of practicality and
tradition. It included both recently made quilts and antique ones in its displays. Unlike
the large gallery exhibitions like Holstein’s, the NQA would only hang about 10-12 show
quilts (out of around 125). Instead of unfurling the quilts on vertical planes, it arranged
most quilts on large tables, folding the quilts into eighths and placing them side-by-side
along the length of the tables. NQA members would be available to unfold quilts upon
request—without even using the white gloves that are required at today’s quilt shows.
Penny Rigdon, the first NQA president reminisced about these shows upon the NQA’s
25th anniversary, stating: “Everyone would gather round while [the quilt] was open and
exclaim. It was then folded again. Often these quilts were prized antiques, which had
never left home before. People were so happy that someone was interested.”9 NQA
members valued the opportunity to examine and learn from treasured quilts from the past.
Unlike many of the quilt shows and expositions that would grow out of the quilt
revival, NQA has remained committed to awarding ribbons without cash prizes. Again,

the organization established and maintained this policy to keep its emphasis on
quiltmaking traditions rather than on commercialism or flashy showwomanship, and it
has been a point of pride for NQA leaders. Imagining the future of NQA from a 1994
perspective, Rigdon wrote: “Considering the creativity, artistry, and perseverance
required of us in our craft, I believe that as long as we never strive in NQA for money

8 Penny Rigdon, “NQA at the Renwick,” Patchwork Patter: The Quilting Quarterly 1,
no. 1 (February 1973): 9.
9 Rigdon, “Penny Rigdon Reflects,” 13.
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prizes, but continue to work as an old-fashioned, honest, friendly business, we will surely
last another 25 years.”10
In addition to its emphasis on practical quiltmaking and member-driven
programming, the NQA has been a major force in setting high standards for the
quiltmaking community. Its elite Master Quilters Guild, rigorous Certified Teachers
Program, and prestigious Certified Judges Program reward dedicated, knowledgeable and
skilled quilt community members. The NQA began formulating its Quilters Guild early
in its organizational lifetime, drafting guidelines in 1973.11 The goal was to recognize
NQA members who were “true craftspeople in the field of quilting.”12 The initial
process for becoming a Master Quilter was so rigorous and cumbersome that only one
quiltmaker, Thelma Barr, achieved this status in the first seven years of the program.
Twenty-two additional quiltmakers joined the Master Quilter ranks through 2008.13
Under the revised system, quiltmakers submit what they consider their best quilts to the
NQA for consideration. Five NQA Certified Judges determine whether the quilt is
worthy of Masterpiece status—and therefore, whether the quiltmaker is a Master Quilter.
Certified Judges evaluate each quilt both while hanging and when laid on a judging table,
using exacting criteria for design, piecing, appliqué, quilting, and finishing.
The Master Quilter’s Guild goals remain similar to those that inspired its

establishment in 1973: “to award formal recognition to members who have mastered the
skill of quiltmaking” and “to recognize quilts which exhibit a high degree of skill in

10 Rigdon, “Penny Rigdon Reflects,” 14.

11 NQA, “NQA Quilters Guild,” Patchwork Patter: The Quilting Quarterly 1, no. 1
(February 1973): 14.
12 NQA, “Master Quilters Guild,” Patchwork Patter: The Quilting Quarterly 2, no. 3
(August 1974): 5.
13 NQA, “List of Master Quilters,” NQA, accessed August 5, 2010, http://nqaquilts.org
/master/list.php.
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workmanship and design.” The program aspires to be an educational force as well. It

strives “to define masterpiece qualities that quilters can use to evaluate their work” and
“to encourage quiltmakers to strive to improve their workmanship and design.”14 It is
intended both as a reward system and as a source of guidance and inspiration.
The NQA’s Certified Teachers Program and Certified Judges Program also extend
the influence of the NQA throughout the quilting community. They make a major impact
on the standards of quality, workmanship, and design at other shows, contests,
expositions, workshops, and classes. For the Teachers Program, candidates work with
individual mentors and share their resume, teaching objectives, course outlines, and
teaching aids. They must also demonstrate their own quiltmaking skills by submitting
samples of their work. When a candidate’s mentor deems these materials complete and
satisfactory, the candidate schedules a formal meeting with three Certification Panel
members who then determine the individual’s suitability for certification.15 NQA
Certified Teachers are well-regarded in the quilting community and can advertise
themselves as NQACTs. They form an elite group of just under 65 individuals.16
The process for becoming an NQA Certified Judge is also rigorous and involved,
but once certified, NQACJs are much sought after for contests and shows throughout the
United States—from the American Quilter’s Society expos to state fairs and regional and

national contests. There are only about 75 NQA Certified Judges nationwide.17 A

14 NQA, “Master Quilter Program: Master Quilters Guild,” NQA, accessed February 1,
2010, http://nqaquilts.org/master/MasterQuilter.pdf.
15 NQA, “Certified Teachers Program: What to Expect,” NQA,” accessed February 1,
2010, http://nqaquilts.org/teachers/teachers-expect.php.
16 NQA, “NQA Certified Teachers,” NQA, accessed February 1, 2010, http://nqaquilts
.org/teachers/alpha/teachers.php.
17 NQA, “Certified Judges Program: NQA Certified Judges,” NQA, accessed February
1, 2010, http://nqaquilts.org/judges/alpha/judges.php.
 147

candidate has five years to achieve certification from the time she enrolls in the program.
Before even applying for candidacy, an individual must have had at least three
experiences closely related to judging within the past five years—experiences that allow
her to either personally judge or witness the judging process for a full day. At least one
of these experiences must have involved observing an NQA Certified Judge. Candidates
must also have “judged at least 35 quilts at a single show in the previous five years” and
must be a member of the NQA. Once enrolled in the program, candidates are required to
aid judges at a minimum of two NQA Annual Quilt Shows and attend the NQA’s
“Introduction to Quilt Judging” seminar, held for two days during every NQA show.18
While fulfilling all of these requirements and suggested training opportunities,
candidates for certification also complete two major evaluative stages: Paperwork and
Panel Review. For the Paperwork component, candidates draw on their hands-on judging
and additional research to respond to a series of detailed questions about quilt judging
and techniques. Through this process, the NQA expects candidates to gain a
“comprehensive understanding” of quilt making, design, and critique—three key
elements of quilt judging. If the panel of three Certified Judges determines the candidate
has passed the Paperwork component, it then recommends the candidate for Panel
Review. For the review, a candidate must meet with a different panel of three Certified

Judges and perform a mock judging for the panel.19

The NQA fulfills the traditional standard-bearer role of formal quilt organizations
through its commitment to conventional quiltmaking techniques and stringent teacher and
judging certification. It focuses resolutely on quality quiltmaking that meets very
specific—and quite static—criteria, and it strives for a purity that is not sullied by the

18 NQA, “Certified Judges Program: Requirements for Candidacy,” NQA, accessed

February 1, 2010, http://nqaquilts.org/judges/judges-candidates.php.
19 Ibid.
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flashy cash prizes of shows like the American Quilter’s Society. It is very much a
professional organization that trains and vets teachers and judges to meet its exacting
standards and high expectations.

Quilts as Art: Quilt National

While its founders established the NQA to promote traditional quiltmaking,
quiltmakers in Athens, Ohio established Quilt National in 1979 to advocate for the
growing art quilt movement. In the late 1970s, quiltmakers who considered themselves
art quilters had very few venues to display and disseminate their work. The majority of
art quilters turned to general fiber art or mixed media shows, since their work did not fit
within the parameters of more traditional quilt shows and exhibitions. Quilt artists Nancy
Crow, Françoise Barnes, and Virginia Randles recognized the need for a distinct venue
for their own work and that of other quilt artists. As they were formulating ideas for the
creation of this new exhibition space, local residents in Athens, Ohio were also seeking to
rescue an endangered 1914 dairy barn. Citizens successfully preserved the barn by
securing its placement on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and
establishing The Dairy Barn Arts Center. This venue then became the biennial home of
Quilt National, an internationally renowned juried art quilt exhibition.20
Quilt National juries and promotes quilts created specifically for viewing on a

vertical plane. Its purpose is “to carry the definition of quilting far beyond its traditional
parameters and to promote quiltmaking as what it always has been—an art form.”21
While pushing the limits of quiltmaking, Quilt National is also very deliberate in

20 Quilt National, “History: Quilt National,” The Dairy Barn Art Center, accessed
February 2, 2010, http://www.dairybarn.org/quilt/index.php?section=226&page=236. For more
about the art quilt movement’s roots in Ohio, see Gayle Pritchard, Uncommon Threads: Ohio’s
Art Quilt Revolution (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006).
21 Quilt National, “Background & Purpose: Quilt National,” The Dairy Barn Art Center,
accessed February 9, 2010, http://www.dairybarn.org/quilt/index.php?section=226&page=242.
 149

emphasizing that entries must meet the basic definition of a quilt. According to its
guidelines, a quilt “must be predominantly fabric or fabric-like material and must be
composed of at least two full and distinct layers—a face layer and a backing layer—that
are held together by hand- or machine-made functional quilting stitches or other elements
that pierce all layers and are distributed throughout the surface of the work.”22 This
definition varies slightly from other competitions and shows in that it requires only two
layers. Most traditional shows require that quilts also include a layer of batting between
the quilt top and backing. This is a minor distinction, however; though Quilt National
might be radical in separating quilts’ artistic excellence from functional usage, its
definition is essentially conservative in preserving the basic components for what a quilt
is and what it is not.
Organizers held the first 1979 Quilt National when the Dairy Barn was still very
obviously a barn—with concrete, trenched floors, bare windows, and even flies.23 When
juror Gary Schwindler wrote the introduction for that year’s program, however, he
anticipated the prestige that Quilt National would gain and the profound influence that it
would have on the quilt world and the fine art world. He wrote: “By its size and the
breadth of its representation, Quilt National ’79 has immediately assumed the status of a
milestone in the history of American Art Quilting.”24 196 quiltmakers from 43 states

entered 390 quilts into the first exhibition, and jurors chose 56 quilts by 44 artists to hang
in the exhibition.25 Quilt National awarded no ribbons or prizes; quiltmakers were

22 Quilt National, “FAQ: Quilt National,” The Dairy Barn Art Center, accessed February
9, 2010, http://www.dairybarn.org/quilt/index.php?section=226&page=259#Whyquilt.
23 Quilt National, “The First Quilt National: Quilt National,” The Dairy Barn Art Center,
accessed February 2, 2010, http://www.dairybarn.org/quilt/index.php?section=226&page=238.
24 Gary Schwindler, “Quilt National 1979 Exhibition Notes,” The Dairy Barn Art
Center, accessed February 2, 2010, http://www.dairybarn.org/quilt/index.
php?section=226&page=292.
25 Ibid.
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sufficiently honored by being provided public exhibition space for their unconventional
quilts.26
Many quilts in Quilt National’s first decades had obvious roots in traditional
quiltmaking and some made gestures to other folk art media, whereas the twenty-first
century quilts have been more pictorial or abstract.27 These changes reflect the
dynamism of the art quilt movement and speak to Quilt National’s success in expanding
notions of what constitutes a quilt. It has made its influence felt for the successful artists
it displays every year and for its significant audience. Since its beginnings in 1979, Quilt
National has exposed over 70,000 viewers to its art quilts at The Dairy Barn itself and has
also displayed its traveling exhibitions at about 80 locations around the world.28 It
publishes a full color catalogue to accompany each show, providing yet another way for
the public to interact with the art quilts.

Quilt Scholarship: The American Quilt Study Group

In addition to providing a space for negotiating the terms of traditional quilts and
emerging modern aesthetics, the symposia and shows of the 1970s also established the
foundation for academic quilt scholarship. The American Quilt Study Group (AQSG) is
presently the most significant academic organization for quilt study, and it grew out of
these mid-1970s symposia.29 Sally Garoutte founded AQSG in 1980 in Mill Valley,

California as a small, rather informal group.30 AQSG has expanded to over 1,000

26 Quilt National, “The First Quilt National.”

27 Sandra Sider, “30 Years of Quilt National,” FiberArts 36, no. 1 (Summer 2009): 40-5.

28 Ibid.

29 Ducey and Ducey, 81.

30 American Quilt Study Group (AQSG), “Welcome!” AQSG, accessed September 22,
2009, http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/.
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members internationally—from quiltmakers to quilt enthusiasts, appraisers, dealers,

educators, folklorists, historians, and museum professionals. As its mission states, it
“establishes, sustains, and promotes the highest standards for quilt-related studies. [It
aims to] stimulate, nurture, and affirm engagement in quilt studies, and provide
opportunities for dissemination.”31
AQSG has held an annual seminar since its founding, and it publishes the premier
academic journal for quilt studies, Uncoverings, which includes papers presented at each
year’s seminar. It also publishes Blanket Statements, a quarterly newsletter with one or
more research articles, a listing of upcoming quilt-related events, major quilt world news,
information about important research in progress, and organizational updates. Members
communicate extensively via the AQSG listserv, assisting one another with quilt
identification, posting information about quilt exhibitions, and responding to queries
about quilt research. The scholarship of the AQSG focuses almost exclusively on quilt
history—as opposed to contemporary quiltmaking, though the majority of AQSG
members are also current quiltmakers themselves. By providing several venues for peer-
reviewed scholarship, the AQSG has contributed toward quilt studies’ growing
acceptance as a legitimate academic field.

In the Quilt Show Business:

The American Quilter’s Society

While each of these major quilt nonprofits occupies a distinct niche within the
quilt world, the for-profit American Quilter’s Society (AQS) aspired to appeal to quilt
enthusiasts regardless of their affinity for traditional quilts or modern aesthetics. As
such, AQS shows, contests, and publications have been an important venue for
negotiations regarding what constitutes a good quilt, how to define traditional versus

31 AQSG, 2009 Membership Directory (Lincoln, NE: AQSG, 2009).

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contemporary or innovative quilts, and which quilts qualify as art. AQS has positioned
itself at the leading edge of these debates, evolving to stay current and to distinguish itself
as contemporary—while still cultivating a sense of involvement and belonging among
members. Its mission statement foregrounds this commitment by emphasizing “today”:
“The American Quilter’s Society is dedicated to TODAY’s quilter.” It continues:

Inspired by the enduring creativity and importance of quilts and

quiltmaking, our objective is to provide a forum for quilters of all
skill levels to expand their horizons in quilt making, design, self-
expression, and quilt collecting. Through our books, magazines,
product offers, quilt shows and contests, workshops and other
activities in the world of quilting we strive to inspire, instruct and
nurture the art and skill of quiltmaking. We endeavor to carry this
theme through all of our relationships, be they with customers,
authors, vendors or colleagues.32
Its goal is to cultivate quiltmaking in today’s culture and to preserve today’s quilts for
future generations.
When husband and wife partners Bill and Meredith Schroeder established the
AQS in 1984, they entered the show arena with a splash, drawing 1,500 charter members
within their first year and organizing the first major show and contest in Paducah,
Kentucky in April 1985. The Schroeders’ show and contest was a blockbuster event,
distinguished by large cash prizes—with $10,000 for the first annual Best of Show.
5,000 avid quilters attended the inaugural three-day show, launching a major force in the

contemporary quiltmaking world.33 The AQS now hosts four annual shows throughout
the United States, distributes a bi-monthly magazine, American Quilter, publishes
approximately 130 quilt-related books and more than a dozen software programs, and

32 American Quilter’s Society (AQS), “About AQS: Mission,” AQS, accessed August
19, 2009, http://www.americanquilter.com/about_aqs/mission.php (emphasis in original).
33 AQS, “About AQS: How Did AQS Get Started?,” AQS, accessed September 9, 2009,
http://www.americanquilter.com/about_aqs/history.php.
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administers the National Quilt Museum in Paducah. It now boasts about 50,000 members
worldwide and is universally known among quilters.34
The Schroeders established AQS after beginning their own publishing company,
Collector Books and Schroeder Publishing in the 1970s. Their first book featured
collectible fruit jars, and they expanded their catalog to include other antiques and
collectibles books on topics such as dolls, dishes, and rockers. Through distribution of
other publishers’ books, they noted the growing demand for quilt publications. After
attending an influential quilt show in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, they dreamed up AQS,
modeling it on the multi-faceted and popular Bass Anglers Sportsman Society (the
Bassmasters). Meredith Schroeder took on the leadership of this new branch of
Schroeder Publishing.35
The magazine American Quilter was one of the first initiatives of the American
Quilter’s Society in the summer of 1985. This full color publication continues to
represent a major public presence for AQS, and members receive a copy every other
month with quilting tips and techniques, patterns, articles about quiltmakers and new
quiltmaking trends, announcements of upcoming shows, and extensive advertisements for
quilting related products and services. Originally for members only, AQS now
distributes American Quilter to newsstands throughout the United States and at AQS

expositions and shows. Readers represent a significant commercial audience; according

to AQS’s market research, readers of American Quilter spend over $20 million on quilt
products each year.36

34 Bonnie Browning, e-mail message to author, March 3, 2011.

35 Patricia S. Staten, “An 1858 Fruit Jar, 14 Ducks, a Goose, and AQS,” American
Quilter 20, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 10.
36 AQS, “American Quilter Media Kit,” AQS, accessed September 24, 2009,
http://www.americanquilter.com/documents/publications/media_kit/media_kit.pdf.
 154

The Schroeders have always aimed to connect quilts with money—immediately

establishing cash prizes to signal quilts’ financial value and then creating the AQS Quilt
Appraisal Program to train and certify quilt appraisers and to provide appraisal
opportunities at AQS shows. The AQS appraisal certification program is rigorous, and
those who wish to become certified do so based either on prior experience or through
participation in courses offered at each Paducah show. Classes include: a full two-day
Insurance Appraisal, a one-day Fair-Market Appraisal, and a shorter two-hour Hands-On
Appraisal.37 To achieve certification, applicants must be equipped to differentiate
among “insurance value, fair market value, and donation value.” They must be able to
establish a quilt’s general date, understand its historical context and provenance, identify
and describe its fabrics, patterns and quiltmaking techniques, and determine its quality
and condition. Prospective appraisers must comprehend how each of these factors affects
the quilt’s value. Further, they must maintain high professional standards by employing
appropriate practices and procedures, upholding ethical standards, and valuing quilts in a
manner “which can be substantiated in a court of law.” To demonstrate these
qualifications, prospective appraisers submit a written application to the AQS, take a
written examination, and perform an oral appraisal at the Paducah Show.38
In addition to training and certifying appraisers, the AQS also makes their

services available at every one of its shows—providing a forum for attendees to learn the
monetary value of their own quilts. For $50 per quilt, AQS Certified Appraisers
determine either the insurance replacement or fair market value of new or antique quilts.
Appraisals are typically completed on official AQS appraisal forms that meet the

37 AQS, AQS Quilt Show & Contest, Paducah, Kentucky Registration Guide, 2010
(Paducah, KY: American Quilter’s Society).
38 AQS, “American Quilter’s Society Appraiser Certification Program: Quilt Appraiser
Certification,” American Quilter’s Society, accessed April 6, 2010,
http://www.americanquilter.com/documents/about_aqs/appraise-cert.pdf.
 155

Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice. Wielding an AQS embossing

seal, AQS appraisers literally stamp their imprimatur on the assessments they make of
each quilt. At most shows, these appraisers are available for one day, but at Paducah,
appraisers offer their services all four days.39
Quilt lovers have embraced the Paducah AQS Shows with remarkable enthusiasm
and overwhelming crowds. By 1988, AQS already had added an additional day to the
event to expand its workshop and lecture offerings; yet, it still needed to limit the number
of programs an individual could attend in order to accommodate all interested
attendees.40 The organization’s informative newsletter, AQS Update became an
invaluable source for attendees to learn about lodging options well in advance, as the
quilt enthusiasts’ numbers began to overwhelm the Paducah area. For the extended 1988
show, the Paducah-McCracken County Tourist and Convention Commission announced
its plan to organize “Bed & Breakfasts” in private homes to accommodate the overflow
from local hotels.41 By 2000, this program was hosting more than 500 quiltmakers
annually.42 For others who could not find local hotels, AQS Update began listing
campground information for the 1989 show.43 The 1990 hotel list extended as far as
Marion, Illinois, “which is just under one hour away from Paducah.”44 Attendees

39 AQS, AQS, Paducah Registration, 2010; American Quilter’s Society, “American

Quilter’s Society Appraiser Certification Program: Quilt Appraiser Certification,” AQS, accessed
April 6, 2010, http://www.americanquilter.com/documents/about_aqs/appraise-cert.pdf.
40 AQS, “1988 AQS Show Dates Extended,” AQS Update 4 (August 1987): 1.

41 AQS, “Bed & Breakfast,” AQS Update 4 (August 1987): 2.

42 AQS, “Quilt Show News: Lodging,” AQS Update 58 (January 2000): 1.

43 AQS, “Campers,” AQS Update 9 (January 1989): 4.

44 AQS, “Where to Stay During the Show,” AQS Update 12 (October 1989).
 156

currently fill approximately 5,000 hotel rooms within a fifty-mile radius of the event.45
In 2009, more than 37,000 quilters attended the event’s 25th anniversary.46
The American Quilter’s Society solidified its permanent presence in Paducah in
1991 by establishing the nonprofit Museum of the American Quilter’s Society to house
its quilt collection. In addition to awarding significant cash prizes to underscore the
quilts’ substantial monetary value, the organization also collected the prizewinning quilts
from the Paducah show, typically from the Best of Show, Best Workmanship, and Best
Wall Quilt categories, to reinforce the quilts’ historical value. All top prizes were
originally purchase awards—with prizewinners selling their quilts to the AQS in
exchange for sponsored prize money and the AQS then donating the quilts to the
museum. The organization changed its policy beginning with the 1991 Paducah show,
giving quiltmakers the option of whether they wanted their quilts to become part of the
museum collection or not. If a quiltmaker chooses to keep her quilt, she forfeits the prize
money but retains the prize. Organizers explained that they made their decision “in
response to those who wouldn’t enter for fear they would have to give up their quilt.”47
The vast majority of prizewinners do sell their quilts to the AQS, and they become the
property of the museum. In 2010, AQS awarded $20,000 for the Janome Best of Show,
$12,000 each for the AQS Hand Workmanship Award, Bernina Machine Workmanship

Award, and Gammill Longarm Workmanship Award, $5,000 for the Moda Best Wall

45 Bonnie Browning, interview by Sally Terry, Sally Terry Web site, MP3, 52:12,
accessed February 11, 2010, http://www.sallyterry.com.
46 AQS, “About AQS: How Started?”

47 AQS, “Important Policy Change,” AQS Update 15 (July 1990): 2.

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Quilt, and $3,000 for the Benartex Best Miniature Award.48 The museum has amassed
over 300 quilts in its permanent collection.49
Congress designated the Museum of the American Quilter’s Society as the
“National Quilt Museum of the United States” in 2008. Introduced by Representative
Edward Whitfield of Kentucky, the congressional resolution noted that the museum is the
“largest quilt museum in the world,” contains quilts “made by quilters from 44 of the 50
States and many foreign countries,” and attracts an average of “40,000 visitors per
year.”50 This designation distinguished it from other quilt museums throughout the
country including the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts (opened in
1987) and the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado (opened in 1990).
The University of Nebraska, Lincoln opened its own new museum in the same year as the
congressional designation with thousands of visitors gathering to celebrate the grand
opening the International Quilt Study Center & Museum that fall. The Schroeders seem
to possess political savvy in addition to commercial savvy, as they were able to claim this
honorific title for their museum.
AQS has been a boon for Paducah, Kentucky, and the Schroeders’ investments in
the city established it as “Quilt City, USA.” The National Quilt Museum has formed the
foundation of a much broader downtown revitalization, and the community embraces the

annual show and its attendees.51 Local businesses gear up for the annual show and
organize their own events to entice and entertain the quilt-loving crowds. For example,
in 1990, Paducah residents performed the play Quilters, organized an antique quilt show

48 Bonnie Browning, e-mail message to author, August 13, 2010.

49 National Quilt Museum, “About the National Quilt Museum,” National Quilt
Museum, accessed April 7, 2010, http://www.quiltmuseum.org/visit_about.htm.
50 H. R. 209, 110th Cong (2008).

51 Staten, 15.
 158

at the local civic center, screened the quilt documentary “Hearts and Hands” at the public
library, exhibited “Fantastic Fibers” at the Paducah Art Guild Gallery, conducted tours of
the city’s historic homes and neighborhoods, and decorated downtown windows with
quilt motifs.52 Knowing it could count on AQS revenue, the host site, the Julian Carroll
Convention Center of Paducah announced a 60,000 square-foot expansion for its facility
in 2001.53 The City of Paducah purchased the Executive Inn next door to the
Convention Center in the late 2000s, committed to tearing down the old hotel, and
solicited bids for a new high-rise hotel to take its place.54 The city is undoubtedly
dedicated to welcoming and supporting AQS and the thousands of quilt visitors that have
made a name for it. It has faith that it will see a quilt-related return on its public
expeditures.
In addition to the presence AQS has established in Paducah or “Quilt City, USA,”
it has also conducted expositions, shows, and contests throughout the central and eastern
United States. It first expanded its annual events to Nashville, Tennessee, holding eight
expositions there between 2000 and 2008.55 It launched new expos in Des Moines, Iowa
in 2008, Knoxville, Tennessee in 2009, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 2010.
Each show has a different feel, depending, in part, on its host city, and AQS varies
contest categories, classes and vendors to keep the shows unique. However, all of the

shows operate on AQS’s large scale—with generous cash prizes, extensive vendor
booths, and numerous class and presentation offerings.

52 AQS, “More Things to Do During the Show,” AQS Update 13 (January 1990).

53 AQS, “AQS Show 2002—Bigger & Better,” AQS Update 64 (June 2001): 1.

54 Browning, interview by Sally Terry.

55 AQS, “About AQS: How Started?”

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AQS and Judging Standards

The AQS contests and publications have made a significant impact upon the
quilting world and the qualitative judgment of quilts in public shows and venues. AQS
has promulgated its judging standards through its juried contests and through its
magazine, American Quilter. As the first institution to award major cash prizes to
winning quiltmakers—and, therefore, to attach a monetary value to quality quilts—it
established itself as a significant force in quilt judging. When it began to collect top
winning quilts for its National Quilt Museum, it ensured that it would have a sacred space
to physically preserve its standards of workmanship, aesthetics, and design. It continues
to prize meticulous and careful workmanship, bold, eye-catching colors and piecing, and
a breadth of designs—from traditional reproduction bed quilts to innovative, figurative
wall quilts.
For its first seven years, American Quilter published a column that specifically
addressed judging standards for its readers. In “In My Judgment,” professional judge
Patricia J. Morris provided detailed information about the judging process as well as
proper design, piecing, quilting, and construction. In several columns, she revealed the
often-contentious nature of judging when defining and defending the role of judges. In
her two-dozen columns, she often took on a sort of scolding tone while emphasizing the

importance of accuracy and careful workmanship (and the common lack of these
qualities). Despite her often-intimidating stance, she concluded each piece with an
optimistic wish for her readers: “May all your quilts wear Blue Ribbons!”
Morris’s columns about the judging process provide her readers with a sense of
what happens behind the scenes at contests like those sponsored by AQS and demonstrate
how judges influence individual quilters as well as larger quilting communities. For
instance, her Winter 1987 column draws attention to the important comment sheets that
judges write for contest entrants. The judges, often with help from scribes, write
comments about each quilt entry; these comments serve as both a means of judging,
 160

ranking, and awarding prizes and as a way to communicate with the quiltmakers. In
Morris’s view, the comment sheet “extends a quilt competition beyond the awarding of
prizes, whether ribbons or cash,” for each quiltmaker takes away valuable information
about what she did well and where she needs to improve.56 Judges also intend for these
sheets to promulgate their values and influence the quilt community’s standards. As
Morris declares: “The judges take on some responsibility for upholding high standards of
design and workmanship in the craft and instructing entrants as to where they are meeting
the standards and where their quiltmaking can be improved.”57 The judges see
themselves as major stakeholders in maintaining their craft’s standards.
The quilt standards of AQS judges emphasize very specific, consistent criteria
related to the design and piecing of each quilt top—with attention to detail and careful
workmanship being of utmost importance. Patricia J. Morris focused on these criteria in
many of her columns. In terms of design, she underscored the importance of choosing
fabrics suitable to the design and of good quality, warned quiltmakers to integrate the
different aspects of their quilt design so they would “hang together,” and encouraged
quiltmakers to consider the overall impact of their finished entry.58
Morris captured her piecing advice most succinctly in her Spring 1986 column
addressing the frequently used judges’ comment, “basic techniques need improvement.”

According to Morris, seams are crucial: “at any point where seam lines meet, they
should meet exactly,” “seam lines should be sewn straight on straight edged pieces while
for curved pieces, the seam lines should be smoothly curved,” and “seam allowances on a

56 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 3, no. 3 (Winter 1987): 59.

57 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, (Winter 1987): 59.

58 See especially Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 4, no. 4 (Winter

1988): 8; Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 6, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 8; and
Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 4, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 5.
 161

pieced top should lie flat… [and] should not shadow through the top as little lines of
darker color.” Judges also consider the way that each piece connects and joins with its
neighbors. Quiltmakers should heed this advice: “all of the points of every triangle and
diamond should be complete and not chopped off or blunted. Every piece in the quilt top
should be cut in relation to the grain of the fabric and positioned on the top in relation to
the grain.” Further, quiltmakers must be conscious of their choice of thread and stitch
size. The thread between pieces should match the fabric and “be small and close together
and tightly enough sewn so that the seam line is firmly held.” The stitch tension must be
consistent so that the top lies flat when the piecing is complete.59
The actual quilting of the quilt—the decorative stitching that binds the top,
batting, and backing—is also subject to a whole battery of standards and rules. In a
column similar to her “basic techniques need improvement,” Morris addresses the judges’
comment, “quilting technique needs improvement.” As with the piecing techniques,
consistent stitch length, small stitch size, and straight lines are essential. Quilters usually
mark their quilt pattern on their top with a pencil, chalk, or fabric marker, and judges
require that quilters remove these marks when they have completed their quilting. It
should not be noticeable where quilters start and stop their quilting lines, and “no knots
should be visible on the top or on the back of the quilt.” Even the back of the quilt is

highly important to quilt judges: “All of the quilting stitches should have penetrated all
three layers of the quilt…. These stitches on the back should also be even.” As quilters
make all of these careful stitches, they must maintain a proper tension and avoid either
overly loose stitches or tight, puckered ones.60 While Morris does not address thread

59 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 2, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 5.

60 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 2, no. 4 (Winter, 1986): 8.

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color in this specific column, it is of utmost importance and “should enhance and
highlight the top design” based on both design and technical considerations.61
Once a quiltmaker has completed both the top piecing and the quilting, she must
still “finish” the quilt, which usually entails trimming the batting and adding a binding
edge. These last steps should enhance the overall design of the quilt, polish the edges,
and square off the overall shape. As with piecing and judging techniques, strong
finishing skills depend on attention to detail and careful workmanship. Morris lamented
in her Spring 1988 column that finishing is frequently overlooked as an essential
component of the quiltmaking process. “Sometimes the edge finishing seems to be an
afterthought on the part of the maker as something that has to be done because you can’t
use a quilt with open edges.” The conscientious quiltmaker should be sure that the
batting fills the edges of the quilt evenly, the quilt corners are consistent and square, and
any binding matches the quilt and lies flat and smooth. As with all other steps, stitches
must be even, and thread should match the fabric color. Morris warns that “judges for a
competition are aware of the pitfalls of edge finishing and the entrant must be aware of
these pitfalls, too.”62
With all the very specific and nitpicky judging standards, it is not surprising that
there is an ongoing tension between quilt contest entrants and judges. In a particularly

humorous and biting “In My Judgment,” Patricia J. Morris spelled out the imaginative
fears that entrants conjure when thinking about contest judges:

When you were a child, did you have scary nightmares about ugly,
frightening monsters? Probably at one time or another, most of us
have had this experience. In fact, some people don’t outgrow their
tendencies toward horrific goblins, they just grow up to be
quiltmakers and dream about quilt judges!

61 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 5, no. 1 (Spring, 1989): 6.

62 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 4, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 38.

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To hear (or to be more precise, to overhear) some quiltmakers

talking, you’d think every judge has 62 eyes, each equipped with a
Sherlock Holmes-type magnifying glass (all those judges, that is,
who aren’t considered blind by the entrants). Every judge also has
six hands, each with a ruler in it.63
For quilt contest entrants, judges can seem like super-human beings with untold powers
of perception that threaten to tear apart a quilt’s every stitch.
This tension between entrants and judges is significant enough that Morris also
dedicated several columns to describing and defending judges’ credentials, qualifications,
and processes. She explains that judges come from many backgrounds, as quilt shop or
fabric shop owners, quiltmaking teachers, artists, or quilt writers. They may bring
experience from “fields which incidentally touch quiltmaking,” such as textile experts or
home economics teachers. Some judges have formally studied quilt judging.64
Regardless of their background, Morris assures readers and contest entrants that judging
panels consist of a variety of judges that balance one another’s skills, backgrounds, and
personal experiences; there is no need for entrants to be worried about judging biases.
“[B]y and large, a knowledgeable and experienced quilt judge, acting in a professional
manner, is capable of putting aside biases and objectively addressing the responsibilities
at hand.”65 According to Morris, judges are also innocent of creating “mythical” and
“arbitrary” strict rules to throw off contestants. In her last year of columns, she responds
to this notion and captured the rigorous spirit of AQS contests by writing: “[A]s for

strictness, I’d prefer to think that when judges look at entries they are not strict, but rather
very thorough and very fair.”66

63 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 4, no. 2 (Summer, 1988): 5.

64 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 5, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 6.

65 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 6, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 8.

66 Patricia J. Morris, In My Judgment, American Quilter 8, no. 1 (Spring, 1992): 60.

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Despite judging standards’ rigidity and “thoroughness,” judges have adapted to

pressures from quiltmakers themselves. Perhaps the most striking example was the need
to accommodate the increasingly popular and sophisticated machine quilting of the
1980s. AQS was at the forefront of this revolution in quilt judging when it awarded Best
of Show accolades to Caryl Breyer Fallert’s Corona II in 1989. Her vibrant, elaborately
pieced and quilted entry was the first machine-quilted quilt AQS awarded with this
distinction—and the first machine-quilted Best of Show at any major quilt competition.
Bonnie Browning, now AQS Executive Show Director, was a quilt teacher at the time
and still remembers her students’ questions about how a machine-quilted quilt could win
Best of Show. Like the judges, she had a simple but radical answer for the time: it was
the best quilt in terms of design and workmanship.67
Assigning Best of Show to a machine-quilted entry initiated a passionate dialogue
in the pages of American Quilter, and AQS published a number of articles addressing the
controversy. Editors Mary Bowne and Mary Lou Schwinn introduced their Fall 1989
issue containing contest results with their usual letter to members: “There was much
surprise when CORONA II: THE SOLAR ECLIPSE, was judged Best of Show. This
machine pieced, machine quilted winner was selected on design, color, and workmanship
and ultimately chosen for the successful execution of an idea.”68 This explanation

indicates that the editors felt some pressure to justify the judges’ decision to allay the
querulous responses of exposition attendees.
American Quilter’s editors also mediated the judges’ selection by including
“Judging Machine-Made Quilts” by Becky Herdle, a National Quilting Association
certified judge. Herdle’s assessment of machine quilting is somewhat ambiguous, and

67 Browning, telephone interview by author.

68 Mary Bowne and Mary Lou Schwinn, “Dear Members,” American Quilter 5, no. 3
(Fall 1989): 4.
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she poses the question of whether contests should separately judge the two processes.
She begins by diffusing the controversy and placing it in context by reminding readers
that a decade earlier, machine piecing was at the center of its own debates—and “[h]ow
far we have come since that time!”69 She argues that there are very few differences in
judging machine-made quilts versus hand-made ones. Judging criteria fall into the
categories of general appearance, design, and workmanship—qualities that apply to either
quiltmaking process. She admits that judges will see some differences in the actual
quilting depending on method: “[J]udges probably see more variations in the length and
evenness of stitches in hand work…. On the other hand, pulls and puckers, tension
problems and obvious starts and stops are more common in machine work.”70 In her
opinion, these differences offset one another and hardly require that contests establish
distinct categories.
Herdle is less clear about how contests should address the “intangible” differences
between machine- and hand-made quilts, however. As she notes, “Probably the majority
of people today feel that hand quilting is more appealing than machine work; that it is
somehow ‘better.’”71 Additionally, quiltmakers (especially hand quilters) are well aware
that hand-quilting takes significantly more time than machine-quilting; quiltmakers often
place a greater value on the sheer stamina and patience required to hand-quilt a whole

quilt. For these reasons, Herdle suggests that perhaps there are reasons to create distinct
judging categories.
The machine-quilting debate is a prime example of how the American Quilter’s
Society’s contests, expositions, and publications serve as a conversation platform for its

69 Becky Herdle, “Judging Machine-Made Quilts,” American Quilter 5, No. 3 (Fall

1989): 6.
70 Herdle., 8.

71 Ibid.
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members and the larger quilting community. AQS contest judges possess significant
power and authority in valuing quilts and setting specific standards, but they clearly do
not work in isolation. Though their judging criteria remain relatively static, they do
modify and broaden their perspectives to account for new and innovative techniques—
like machine quilting. They also acknowledge the complexity of making such changes
and welcome productive discussions about quiltmaking’s direction.

Negotiating Dichotomies: Amateur vs. Professional,

Traditional vs. Innovative, and Craft vs. Fine Art
In addition to opening conversations about quilt standards, AQS has also played a
significant role in defining quiltmaking categories and cultures in the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries. The dialogues that have taken place on the pages of their
publications, in their quilt exposition halls, and through the actual quilts in their shows
have profoundly shaped how quiltmakers conceptualize and define their quilts and quilt
communities. AQS frames itself as a membership-based organization and has facilitated
many of these dialogues—with quiltmaking members weighing in with their own
perspectives. These dialogues have focused on three main recurring threads: amateur
versus professional quiltmakers, traditional versus innovative quilts, and quilts as craft
versus fine art. Each of these threads overlaps and intertwines, forming a complex web

of negotiations about language, aesthetic expression, workmanship, and vision. While

quiltmakers may find few absolute answers through their conversations, they do
challenge one another to think critically about their work and about the language they use
to articulate what it is that they do.
The interconnectedness of these three debates—and their centrality to AQS—was
evident in the very first publication of reader letters. Mrs. W. H. Degenhardt articulated
her place within the debates in her response to the first American Quilter issue: “My
personal opinion is that there is too much of contemporary and ‘Quilts as Art’. I think
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most of us just love quilting as a hobby.”72 She clearly wanted a publication to speak to
her as an amateur (not a professional) who makes traditional (not innovative or
contemporary) quilts and views her quiltmaking as an accessible craft or pastime (rather
than an elite art form). The AQS, however, sought to appeal to more quilt enthusiasts
than just the Mrs. Degenhardts of the quilt world and to maintain a fresh perspective on
quiltmaking, so they structured their contests and publication content accordingly.
The AQS competitions long distinguished between amateurs and professionals in
contest guidelines and categories. Beginning with the first Paducah show, AQS divided
most categories into subcategories based on a quiltmaker’s professional status. At the
original competition, categories were designated as: Patchwork, Amateur; Patchwork,
Professional; Applique, Amateur; Applique, Professional; Other Techniques, Amateur;
Other Techniques, Professional; Wall Quilts, Amateur; Wall Quilts, Professional; and
Group/Team. In each category, judges awarded first through third places. They also
culled the top prize winners from across all categories, honoring Best of Show and Best
Workmanship.73 Bonnie Browning, Executive Show Director, explains that amateur
quiltmakers were particularly interested in seeing these distinctions made, as they were
concerned about their ability to compete against teachers, authors, and others who made
quilts for money. AQS determined the professional/amateur distinction strictly based on

money—anyone who made money from quiltmaking was considered a professional.

Over time, however, AQS discovered that in many cases, the amateur quilts were better
than the professional ones, and the separate categories were not relevant. It dropped
these category distinctions in the early 2000s.74

72 Mrs. W. H. Degenhardt, Have Your Say, American Quilter 1, no. 2 (Fall 1985): 8.

73 AQS, “1st National Quilt Show,” American Quilter 1, no. 2 (Fall, 1985): 21-41.

74 Browning, telephone interview by author.

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AQS began further dividing contest categories into “traditional” and “innovative”
in their second show in 1986 to address diverging quilt styles. The lines between these
two categories were never been particularly clear, and AQS stopped using them in its
2009 Paducah show and 2010 Des Moines show.75 However, this categorical distinction
certainly played an important role in the ongoing dialogue about quiltmaking styles and
aesthetics. The traditional category typically contained quilts that replicated or
incorporated historical designs, whereas the innovative category (sometimes referred to
as “contemporary”) included original designs that often pushed the boundaries of quilt
design and introduced new patterns or techniques. For Bonnie Browning, the innovative
category always was intended to be seriously groundbreaking; innovative means
“something never seen before.”76
American Quilter launched a formal dialogue about traditional and contemporary
quilts in its Summer 1988 issue. In four and a half full-color pages, the editors printed a
“Quilt Art Gallery” of fourteen quilts and posed the question, “What Do You Think?:
Traditional or Contemporary?”77 They requested that readers register their personal
opinions regarding the quilts’ proper categorization: “To respond, simply write the title
of the quilt, then whether you think the quilt is a traditional quilt, a contemporary quilt, or
a combination…. We do not believe there is always a right or wrong answer, but value

your opinions.”78 The editors clearly expressed AQS’s desire to facilitate thought-
provoking, complex discussions about defining quilt techniques and aesthetics.

75 Browning, telephone interview by author.

76 Ibid.

77 AQS, “What Do You Think?: Traditional or Contemporary?,” American Quilter 4, no.

2 (Summer 1988): 23-7.
78 Ibid., 26.
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Reader responses confirmed the ambiguity of these often-confusing and

frequently arbitrary categories. The editors note that “[a]mazingly enough, there were
only two quilts which did not get votes in both categories.”79 The quilt voted only as
“traditional” is Call of the Wild by Frances Brand. It features Log Cabin squares created
with primarily blue and white calico fabrics and a solid red Flying Geese pattern that
crisscrosses the Log Cabin’s diagonal grid and frames diamonds of blue and white hues.
The small triangles of the Flying Geese cut through the corners of the Log Cabin squares
and intersect in the center hearth squares. In contrast, the quilt voted only as
“contemporary,” Clarification by Sharon Clark, is a highly asymmetrical, irregular string
method quilt with light colored strips forming a general grid that is interrupted by triangle
pieces, Nine Patch patterns, and unexpected flashes of dark red, green, and purple.
Despite the contrasting impression left by each quilt—with Call of the Wild suggesting
strict planning and orderliness and Clarification communicating a sense of improvisation,
the two quilts share some striking similarities. They both utilize fabric strips sewn to
create both square and diagonal grids and make use of light and dark/bright colors to
emphasize their patterns. Of the additional quilts, two received a nearly equal number of
votes in each category; three leaned toward contemporary and three toward traditional.
Readers placed the remaining four somewhere between the categories.80

Alongside the voter return numbers, American Quilter editors also printed the
thoughts of Hilary Fletcher, curator of the Quilt National, the foremost organization
promoting quilts as art. Fletcher reinforces the reader survey’s findings, noting that “the
classifications traditional and contemporary are not mutually exclusive.”81 She describes

79 AQS, “What Did You Think?,” American Quilter 4, No. 4 (Winter 1988): 22.

80 AQS, “What Did You Think?,” 22.

81 Qtd in ibid.
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the many criteria used to determine categorization and uses concrete examples to
illustrate the complexity of making such distinctions:

The problem is, of course, that although a quilt is made for a bed
(traditional?) and is composed of repeated blocks in a symmetrical
setting (traditional?) it may feature an original block design
(contemporary?) in an innovative setting (contemporary?) and be
executed in a carefully controlled subtle range of colors
(contemporary?). Or the quilt may be made of Xeroxed paper
stitched to a fabric sandwich (contemporary?), intended to be
displayed on a wall (contemporary?) but at the same time may
employ a familiar log-cabin block (traditional?) in a light and dark
setting (traditional?).82
The lines between these categories are blurred, at best, and Fletcher gets to the heart of
the quandary of making these distinctions.
While the American Quilter experiment provided evidence of the near
impossibility of making such categorical distinctions, it did not preclude further
conversations about the matter or further attempts to make these distinctions clearer (after
all, AQS did ultimately embrace these categories in its contests). In the Spring 1991
issue, Gerald E. Roy reinvigorated the debate with an open letter to American Quilter
readers, “Coming To Terms.”83 His stake in solidifying such terminology stemmed from
his work helping to establish the AQS’s appraisal program. He reasoned that it was
necessary “to establish a standardized vocabulary and eliminate vague and ambiguous
terms” before the committee could proceed with its broader task. Through his article, he

aimed to share the committee’s determinations with the larger quilt community.84
The appraisal committee determined that quilts fall into two specific categories,
Traditional and Non-traditional. By their definition, Traditional quilts are “all quilts, old

82 Qtd. in AQS, “What Did You Think?,” 22.

83 Gerald E. Roy, “Coming to Terms,” American Quilter 7, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 16-17.

84 Ibid., 16.
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and new, that employ traditional piecing, applique, and quilting techniques.”85 Non-
traditional quilts, however, proved more complicated to define. For Roy, “[w]ords that
have become fashionable, when describing Non-traditional quilts, have been so misused
and abused that they have become ambiguous.”86 Such words include Contemporary,
Modern, Art, and Artist. Roy quickly dismisses the use of both Contemporary and
Modern, arguing that both mean only that something is “made today” or “of the present.”
He dedicates much more analysis to the terms Art and Artist.
Roy’s discussion of Art and Artist grows organically out of his concerns about the
categorization of Traditional and Non-traditional quilts, and it demonstrates how the quilt
community has intertwined these complex debates about terminology, categorization,
aesthetics, and workmanship. Roy is quite critical, however, about the concepts of Art
and Artist being conflated with quiltmaking, and he rejects the use of such terminology.
He argues that the term Art “confuses and limits the ability to make objective values
which are otherwise simply determined.”87 In other words, when someone declares that
a quilt is Art, she places the quilt beyond judgment. Viewers are more likely to overlook
poor workmanship in favor of visual appeal or overlook visual appeal in favor of
workmanship. The term Art robs the viewer of her ability to critique all aspects of the
quilt.

The greatest danger of applying the terminology of Art to quilts, according to

Roy, is the detrimental effect such language has had on quilts themselves. The art quilt
contrivance has led to overly conscious, strained quiltmaking that discourages many
intimidated quiltmakers from displaying or competing with their quilts. The act of

85 Roy, 16.

86 Ibid.

87 Roy, 17.
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imposing Art expectations on Non-traditional quilts has stifled creativity and led to a new
style of conformity. Roy calls on quiltmakers to put aside Art aspirations so that
“quiltmaking can return to and enjoy a more comfortable position, allowing everyone to
participate in his/her own way.”88 Ultimately, he believes that “[o]nly time and future
generations should be concerned with determining which contemporary quilts are
deserving of this honor.”89 For Roy, the act of labeling a quilt Art is a retrospective
act—something that can only be done with the hindsight of a future perspective.
A year later, American Quilter published fiber artist Gayle Pritchard’s “The
Future of Quilts as Art,” which was clearly a response to Roy’s earlier assertions about
categorization and terminology.90 While Pritchard does not cite Roy or his open letter
specifically, she references several of his key points and poses the rhetorical question, “If
people respond with a negative attitude to the categorization of quilts as art, why not help
educate these people?”91 She begins this educational process by citing the dynamism of
modern art, noting that major museums are continually expanding their definition of art,
and she asserts that judging standards can, in fact, adapt to these changing conditions.
Pritchard also suggests that the quilt community has a choice—to either embrace the
growing field of art quilts or to stand by as quilt artists look to museums and multimedia
shows for exposure, respect, and support. She goes so far as to suggest that the quilt

revival will wane if its participants choose the latter: “We must continue to expand upon
the great tradition we all share so that the art of quiltmaking is not once again relegated to

88 Roy, 17.

89 Ibid.

90 Pritchard also wrote the definitive history of Ohio’s art quilt movement, Uncommon
Threads: Ohio’s Art Quilt Revolution (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006).
91 Gayle Pritchard, “The Future of Quilts As Art,” American Quilter 8, no. 1 (Spring
1992): 8.
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craftspeople reproducing centuries-old techniques viewed as ‘quaint’ by an uneducated

public.”92 To Pritchard, the nomenclature and standards of art represent an opportunity
for quiltmaking to progress.
Roy and Pritchard’s American Quilter articles were the first of many musings and
arguments within AQS about the complicated and charged language of art versus craft.
Discussions continued both on the pages of American Quilter and as quiltmakers
gathered at AQS shows. Michael James’s keynote address at the 1992 AQS Quilt Show
& Contest Awards Banquet was the most significant and influential contribution to these
discussions. His professional background and approach to quiltmaking—along with this
pivotal talk—have made him one of the most prominent quiltmakers in the United States.
He has become a leading figure in the art quilt movement and for the convergence of
quiltmaking with formal art training. He earned a BFA from the University of
Massachusetts at Dartmouth and an MFA from Rochester (NY) Institute of
Technology—both in painting and printmaking.93 The University of Massachusetts also
granted him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 1992. He is both a quiltmaker and a quilt
scholar—with works featured in six Quilt Nationals and in the collections of major
museums including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery and the Museum of Arts and
Design. He teaches in the Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design at the University

of Nebraska-Lincoln, home of the International Quilt Study Center and the only graduate
degree focused on quilt studies.94

92 Pritchard, “Future of Quilts,” 9.

93 Michael James, interview by David Lyon, January 4-5, 2003, Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution, accessed August 10, 2010, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections
/oralhistories/transcripts/james03.htm.
94 Michael James, “Biography,” University of Nebraska, Lincoln, accessed April 7,
2010, http://www.unl.edu/mjames_quilts/dossier.html.
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A significant tension has arisen regarding the distinction between those

quiltmakers with formal academic training and those who have learned from guild
memberships, community quilt classes, expositions, family members, publications, or
their own trial and error. This educational factor has been another dichotomy that AQS
members have negotiated alongside amateur versus professional, traditional versus
nontraditional, and craft versus art—and one that is inextricably entangled with all of
these. James’s keynote and its subsequent reprint in the Fall 1992 American Quilter
brought this tension to the forefront and raised questions about the importance of formal
training in quilt creation and design.
Well ahead of the Y2K fervor, James reflected on “Getting Our Bearings: Quilt
Art at the Century’s End” in his pivotal address.95 His talk and published essay begin on
an upbeat and flattering note by citing the continual strength of the quiltmaking revival
and by outlining the ways that quilts have gained in both prevalence and status. He
demonstrates that at the end of the century, quiltmaking had become an accepted art form
and an economic growth market, had benefited from permanent institutions like the
Museum of the American Quilter’s Society, and had been legitimized by collectors,
historians, and researchers.
Ultimately, James’s essay is a call to action, however—more of a critique than a

laudatory oration. He criticizes the art quilts that he sees contemporary quiltmakers
creating and displaying, and he challenges his audience to enact changes that will
enhance and expand quiltmaking in new directions. James divides his criticism regarding
art quilts into three basic categories. First, he faults art quilters for their tendency to
resort to an “every-trick-in-the-book-approach,” applying an excessive number of
techniques to a single quilt. He also criticizes art quilters for using fabric to replicate

95 Michael James, “Getting Our Bearings: Quilt Art at the Century’s End,” American
Quilter 8, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 52-4, 74.
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painting techniques rather than embracing the materials and processes that are unique to
quiltmaking. Color is his final sticking point—when art quilters incorporate color with
“little understanding of its subtleties and with too-evident reliance on obvious spectral
harmonies and undistinguished value gradations.”96 Each of these faults leads to quilts
that are “underwhelming” with no sense of true artistic design.
As James describes the specific faults that he sees in the art quilts of the late
twentieth century, his language reflects his formal art education. This remains true as he
speaks more generally about the state of the quilt world. He writes that “good visual
design, the understanding of surface patterning and the manipulation of such formal
elements as line and shape and negative space, their orchestration with and through color
and spatial illusion, and their support of meaning or vision or message, seem to elude
many makers, who can’t seem to see the forest for the trees.”97
James does grant that quiltmakers generally possess a talent for strong
workmanship. However, he pokes a jab at the nitpicky judging standards reflected in
many shows—and in columns like Patricia J. Morris’s “In My Judgment.” He makes the
case that “[a]s ends in themselves, tiny stitches, perfect seams, matching points, and so
on, lead nowhere.”98 So his critique aims not only at those who aspire to create art but at
those who create meticulous traditional quilts as well. No aspect of quiltmaking is

immune from his challenges.

James calls for a much more critical approach to quilts—especially when
discussing quilts as art. With a biting logic, he proposes a reason for the lack of critical

96 James, “Getting Our Bearings,” 53.

97 Ibid.

98 James, “Getting Our Bearings,” 53. It is interesting to note that American Quilter
printed Morris’s final column in Fall 1992, so perhaps the editors agreed that it was time to focus
the magazine elsewhere.
 176

rigor thus far: “Women’s work was undervalued for so long that we don’t have the heart
to be critical of a field whose substance is drawn from the intellectual, emotional, and
physical labor of women.”99 He suggests that the democratic nature of quiltmaking—its
accessibility and use of “home-based sources”—is important to maintain, but not at the
expense of critical standards. To him, art is something much more challenging and
dynamic than what most quiltmakers are touting as “art quilts”: “Art is about self-
knowledge and exploration. It’s about knowing what the limits are and about pushing
beyond them. It’s about maturity and honesty. It’s about doubt and despair and working
through them. It’s about discovery and new directions and looking ahead—not sideways,
or over one’s shoulder, but ahead.”100
While James focuses his rhetoric on “art,” there are certainly gendered
implications to his observations about quiltmaking. As one of a small minority of men
active in the female-dominated quilt world, he is calling for an “honest” critique of
women’s work. He attempts to push quiltmaking towards the standards of the fine art
world, an arena traditionally dominated by men. While James acknowledges
quiltmaking’s roots in women’s home-based labor, he aims to transform it into something
more innovative, rigorous, and prestigious, perhaps something more in line with
masculine artistic traditions.

James challenges quiltmakers to look ahead and to push the medium. He writes:
“[I]f we are to truly realize a new Golden age of quilt art, we must be appropriately
trained as artists and craftspersons, and we must be critical and discriminating, both of
our own work and of what we see around us. We must set standards for ourselves and for
the art that we make, and those standards need to be the highest.”101 In other words, the

99 James, “Getting Our Bearings,” 54.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid., 74.

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judging systems of organizations like the NQA may address many aspects of
workmanship, but they do not account for the imaginative rigor necessary for the creation
of art.
The most crucial element to moving quilts toward art is formal training. James
believes that this training is what will separate art quilters from hobbyists. For this to
happen, institutions of higher education must expand their textile programs beyond
weaving and fabric design to encompass the needle arts. In the meantime, quiltmakers
should continue to train through intensive workshops, and they must recognize that
artistic education requires a long learning process. James stresses that “[t]he artist’s
entire artistic life is one of research, reflection, learning, and exploration.”102 To make
an art quilt, one must immerse oneself in a life of art—not simply a life of fabric shops,
casual classes, and quilt guilds.
James’s critique of art quilters and demand for more formal artistic training set
the quilt community abuzz and instigated several response letters to the editors at
American Quilter. Paul Pilgrim, quilt collector, author, curator, and active AQS member
mailed his letter before the American Quilter reprint even reached members, and the
editors printed it in the Winter 1992 issue. Pilgrim captured the Awards Banquet tension
and the range of responses among audience members. Some found the talk thought-

provoking while others were shocked to silence. As Pilgrim tells it: “I was fortunate
enough to be sitting at a table where people were taking notes or saying this is all
hogwash. Some of my table mates who clapped loudly when Michael James was
introduced sat on their hands when his speech was over.”103 When the shock wore off a
bit after the banquet, “many who were in the audience agreed that Michael had the right

102 James, “Getting Our Bearings,” 74.

103 Paul Pilgrim, Have Your Say, American Quilter 8, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 60.
 178

to his opinion, even if they did not agree.”104 For Pilgrim, this marked a crucial moment
for quilt artists—when the conversation was opened up to allow for dissenting views.
In his letter, Pilgrim asserts that James could actually go even further in his call to
action, and he takes a swipe at traditional quilters as well as so-called art quilters. He
places the onus on judges to change the nature of quiltmaking through their own formal
education, insistence on originality, and rejection of reproductions. His suggestions seek
to undermine the long-standing traditions of copying patterns, reproducing images in
fabric, and focusing on impeccable workmanship. He states: “As long as judges
continue to give awards to copies and reproductions they send a signal to quiltmakers that
originality is second to technique and that the art world will never accept quiltmaking as
an art form.”105 He also commands judges to remove “sentimentality” and “personal
emotion” from the judging process and to embrace “standards comparable to those in
other art fields.”106 Pilgrim is even firmer than James in his insistence that the quilt
world must derive more of its critical perspective from the art world. Standards must
include those so central to fine arts like painting and sculpture.
By the Summer 1993 issue, readers were entering the debate with James and
Pilgrim and defending their quiltmaking against the perceived attacks. By and large,
women responded to these male critiques by emphasizing quilts’ emotional affect and

capacity for creating community. Jill Bryant of St. Peters, Missouri wrote an
impassioned reply arguing that the creative use of fabrics is always artistic—whether as a
reproduction or not. She takes particular umbrage at Pilgrim’s critique of judges’
sentimentality and personal emotion: “AAUGH! Wake up, Paul, that is the whole reason

104 Pilgrim, 61.

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid.
 179

for top award selection, second to workmanship! The Best of Show Quilt should reach
out, grab you by the shoulders, and shake you down to your toes!.... I hope that it is the
quilt that makes [the judges] cry at the mastery of emotion that wrings from their souls.
THAT IS ART!”107 Bryant’s impassioned response captures the fervency that
quiltmakers feel about their medium and its traditions.
Helen Kelley, a critically acclaimed quiltmaker and teacher from Minneapolis
wrote a more measured and reflective letter about the meaning of the terms “art” and
“original.” Speaking primarily to Pilgrim’s rejection of reproductions, she writes: “[T]o
say that a quilt is not original if the quilter draws inspiration from other quilts or other
media is to deprive him/her of the basis of inspiration that is, to me, the essence of
art.”108 She illustrates her point by listing several songs, plays, and architectural styles
that have built upon their predecessors. She concludes with her own call to action—to
remember that creativity is emotional. “If we could not look at a beautiful flower or
sunset or painting, or hear laughter or glorious music and respond to it in our quilts, the
world would be a sadder place. The gift of quilting is the joy of reflecting our emotions
in our work.”109 She speaks to the long quiltmaking tradition of stitching the personal
into these material objects.
All of this debate and discussion about quilts and art may seem like semantics at

times, and Elly Sienkiewicz, a quiltmaker, teacher, and author addressed the stakes of this
debate in “Are Quilts Art? What’s It To Us?,” an excerpt from one of her many
Baltimore Album quilt books.110 She provides some perspective on these questions by

107 Jill Bryant, Have Your Say, American Quilter 9, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 61.

108 Helen Kelley, Have Your Say, American Quilter 9, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 61.

109 Kelley, 61.

110 Elly Sienkiewicz, “Are Quilts Art? What’s It To Us?,” American Quilter 10, no. 3
(Fall 1994): 10-11, 67-9.
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placing them in the larger context of twentieth century aesthetic debates about handwork,
the individual artist, reproductions, and the quest for newness. She distills the quilt art
debate to one quality that sets quilts apart from other artistic forms and at odds with
standard definitions of “art”: communality. Sienkiewicz argues that quiltmaking often
contains the elements that the Guardians of Culture expect from art: a minimum standard
of high craft and skill, an expression of the artist, a sense of magic, and some reflection of
its current place in time. Quilts also contain a sense of the past, however, that often sets
them at odds with the “novelty” and “sensational effect” lauded by the art world. For
Sienkiewicz, quilts “connect us to family, friends, fellow quiltmakers. They establish our
belonging… Quiltmaking’s ritual may be a gentle, intuitive way of finding
fellowship.”111 Herein lies the debate about art, for “definitions of quilts as art would
seems to emphasize the individual’s self-[centered] expression, not the expression of an
individual’s ardent yearning to reaffirm place in communal culture.”112 For her, this
tension between quilts’ individualistic and communal attributes makes them a dynamic
part of American history, where this push and pull has always been at work. And so, she
answers the question, “What’s It to Us?,” but she leaves the question, “Are Quilts Art?”
to history: “Time will tell if some are, some aren’t. Certainly all intend to be.”113
A full year after American Quilter published Sienkiewicz’s reflections, it brought

Lorre Weidlich, a folklorist and symbolic anthropologist into the debate. In her Fall 1995
article “Quilting As An Art: Who Defines It?,” she makes another attempt to define
quiltmakers in relation to art. Weidlich asserts that quiltmakers are “popular artists”
rather than the “hobbyists” of James’s 1992 keynote or the “fine artists” of this ongoing

111 Sienkiewicz, 11.

112 Ibid. (brackets in original).

113 Ibid., 69.

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debate. She bases her assertion on the folklorists’ prized notion of context—the context
in which women produce their quilts. Weidlich argues that quiltmaking originally began
as a “folk art”—so termed because it was “practiced by women whose training was part
of expressive culture.”114 She demonstrates that quiltmaking no longer falls into this
category; for her, those who practice quiltmaking today do not do so as part of a
traditional community. Though quiltmakers are no longer folk artists, Weidlich rejects
designating them “fine artists.” Again, she focuses on context. The majority of
quiltmakers do not produce quilts as “art produced by formally-trained artists, intended
for gallery display and the review of art critics.”115 Finally, Weidlich also rejects
James’s catch-all term of “hobbyist” for quilt revival quilters who do not produce quilts
in a fine art context. She perceives “hobbyist” as a dismissive term employed by
academically-trained artists to set themselves apart from (and above) those whose
training is different from theirs. Quiltmakers, instead, are “popular artists,” whose
“creativity is not less because it is informed by a different set of understandings and
aesthetics.”116
James responded fervently to Weidlich’s article in a Winter 1995 letter to the
editor, stating that she misrepresented his use of the term “hobbyist” and standing by his
own usage. He quoted his original keynote to make his point clear: “The growth of the

art of the quilt, however, rests in a spirit of adventure and experiment that most hobbyists
are unlikely to pursue.”117 He takes this a step further by specifically distinguishing art
quilters’ work from that of quilt guild members—and emphasizing a whole different

114 Lorre Weidlich, “Quilting As An Art: Who Defines It?,” American Quilter 11, no. 3
(Fall 1995): 62.
115 Ibid.

116 Ibid., 63.

117 Michael James, Have Your Say, American Quilter 11, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 60.
 182

intent in each of the groups. To James, Weidlich’s article is divisive and undercuts the
collaboration between art quilters and guild quilters that is necessary for “constructive
interchange and growth.”118 He still believes that quiltmakers must push their medium
to a higher standard—one dictated by fine art’s expectations.
Reader Glenda Philippe of Payson, Arizona registered her opinion as the final
word in this conversational thread on the pages of American Quilter. She brings readers’
attention back to the core of what they do and who they are, writing: “I am not a crafter,
nor a fine artist. I am a quilter. I have been both a crafter and a fine artist, but now I am
neither because I am a quilter. I do not put myself above their work nor below their
work. My work speaks for itself. I am just me… a quilter.”119 She calls on others to
join her in her self-definition: “So, why not forget about whether we should be labeled
fine artists or quilters. We deserve our own label as quilt artists or quilters[….] I would
ask you to join me in my appreciation of this individual art by proudly being yourself… a
quilter.”120
After all of this fervent debate, the terminology “art quilt” began to appear with
regularity in American Quilter—without any sort of apology, disclaimer, or explanation
of the term. This acceptance of terminology and categorization happened in much the
same way that American Quilter began to unselfconsciously discuss machine-quilting

techniques—through extensive conversation within the magazine and at shows. By

opening such dialogues and responding to quiltmakers’ discussions, AQS is able to keep
current in its magazine content, shows, and publications without being so forward-
looking that it becomes radical or alternative. This approach has proven to be a strong

118 James, Have Your Say, 61.

119 Glenda Philippe, Have Your Say, American Quilter 12, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 54.

120 Ibid., 55.

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business model in that AQS continues to appeal to a broad swath of quiltmakers and
generally avoids alienating members. It also exercises significant influence over the
techniques, values, and language defining today’s quiltmaking.

Conclusion
The crowded aisles at AQS’s shows will continue to be spaces for quilt
conversations—about workmanship, aesthetics, design, and the language to describe all
of these qualities. As these conversations continue, the AQS also continues to make
changes in the way it frames quilts in its contests and publications. In shaping new
contest categories, the AQS has removed all distinctions between professional and
amateur quiltmakers and has also stopped separating innovative and traditional quilts. At
the same time, entrants have shaped the contest categories by choosing to submit
different quilts. Whereas the contest quilts were originally about 30% machine-quilted
and 70% hand-quilted, they are now about 70% machine-quilted and 30% hand-
quilted.121
As a result of the give and take between AQS and its members, competition
categories now focus largely on quilts’ form/function and quiltmaking techniques. In the
2010 show, Lancaster featured five categories: Bed Quilts, Pieced; Bed Quilts, Appliqué;
Wall Quilts; Pictorial Wall Quilts; and a special category for Grand Geometrics – Created

the Amish Way. Categories were largely based on quilt size, and each category
contained entries quilted by hand or machine. Knoxville also designated five categories
that emphasized quilt size and quilting technique. Quilter’s Choice Quilts included bed-
sized quilts using any technique; On the Wall Quilts included smaller, wall-sized quilts
also using any technique. The SewTech category highlighted machine-quilting
techniques, requiring entrants to make a bed- or wall-sized quilt using a machine entirely.

121 Browning, telephone interview by author.

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Two final special categories included the Ultimate Guild Challenge Quilts, selected by
local guilds for national competition, and Galaxy of Stars. Des Moines’ 2009 expo
featured Bed Quilts – Hand Quilted, Bed Quilts – Machine Quilted, Wall Quilts – Hand
Quilted, Wall Quilts – Machine Quilted, and Fabric Art.122
Given the Paducah show’s scale, the categorization is more complex, but it still
focuses on quilt size and technique. For 2010, AQS broke the categories into four
general divisions based on size: Bed Quilts, Large Wall Quilts, Small Wall Quilts, and
Miniature Quilts. For Bed Quilts, items were further differentiated as Hand Quilted,
Home Sewing Machine, Longarm/Midarm Machine, 1st Entry in an AQS Contest, and
Group. Large Wall Quilts could be Hand Quilted, Home Sewing Machine,
Longarm/Midarm Machine, or Pictorial Quilts. Small Wall Quilts included the same sub-
divisions as Large Wall Quilts with the addition of a 1st Entry in an AQS Quilt Contest
Category. Miniature Quilts was one all-encompassing category with no further
distinctions.123
This reworking of contest categories over time may seem to negate all of the
negotiations about amateur vs. professional, traditional vs. innovative, and craft vs. fine
art. Rather than ignoring these debates, however, AQS categorizations actually
demonstrate how the debates largely managed to deconstruct these dichotomies. Quilts

that may have been slotted into one side or the other of any of these pairings now
compete against one another, and those conflicted, ambiguously defined quilts no longer
defy categorization. For the most part, it is not necessary to separate amateur from
professional, traditional from innovative, or craft from fine art.

122 AQS, Quilt Contest Rules, Lancaster, 2010 (Paducah, KY: AQS, 2009); AQS, Quilt
Contest Rules, Knoxville, 2010 (Paducah, KY: AQS); American Quilter’s Society, Quilt Contest
Rules, Des Moines, 2010 (Paducah, KY: AQS).
123 AQS, Quilt Contest Rules, Paducah, 2010 (Paducah, KY: AQS).
 185

The Fabric Art category at the Des Moines Expo is a crucial remaining category,
however, which demonstrates that conversations continue regarding quilt terminology,
categorization, aesthetics, and workmanship. While Quilt National leads art quilt
competitions, and fine art museums are including more in their exhibition spaces, AQS
deliberately embraces a broad range of quilt styles and remains committed to judging and
promoting quilts that are decidedly contemporary. In the Des Moines show, AQS defines
their Fabric Art category as “[s]mall quilts to be viewed as works of visual art, displaying
innovative, contemporary design and materials, using fabric as the primary medium, and
quilted by hand or machine.”124 Positioned prominently toward the Expo entrance, the
2009 Fabric Art entries distinguished themselves by being more pictorial or figurative
than the other bed or wall quilts. Many of them incorporated layers of fabric, thread, and
other embellishments to create a deeper, more textural surface. Several displayed fabric
painting or dyeing techniques in addition to piecing, appliqué, and quilting. In their
figurative layers and dyed fabrics, many possessed a painterly quality that spoke to their
relationship with other fine art media, yet the ribbon winners still manifested those
exacting qualities so important to Patricia J. Morris and other professional quilt judges.
As the Fabric Art category suggests, the quiltmaking community remains a
dynamic space with many continuing debates about its make-up, and AQS continues to

position itself as an important force in encouraging and mediating those debates. It raises
the conversations’ stakes by tying money to quilts, offering cash prizes and certifying
appraisers. It also shapes the direction of quiltmaking by providing a space for
commercial vendors and quiltmakers to interact with one another. Shifts in quiltmaking
techniques and materials necessarily coincide with quilt-related manufacturing and
distribution. Its sheer size and geographical reach also contribute to AQS’s broad reach

124 AQS, Rules, Des Moines, 2010.

 186

and its centrality in the quiltmaking community. Through its mediation, AQS has
ensured that prized quiltmaking continues to depend upon careful workmanship. It has
committed itself to traditional aesthetics and techniques as grounding for quiltmaking,
and it has also supported an innovative, forward-thinking perspective as well.
As AQS has erased the categories of professional and amateur quilts as well as
traditional and innovative quilts in order to focus more on quilt size and technique, in
effect, it has opened the contest floor to a new sort of debate between the quilts
themselves. With the work of professionals and amateurs hanging side-by-side and
traditional and innovative quilts in the same categories, the objects can speak to one
another in different ways. Quiltmakers may experiment with a full range of aesthetic
options, perhaps feeling freer to meld the old with the new without concern for which
category will be most appropriate for their finished product. And so, AQS continues to
mediate these dynamic debates as the decades-old quilt revival continues.
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CONCLUSION

The conflicts revealed by each of these case studies illustrate the intense
investment that individuals and institutions make in quilt display. At the Iowa State Fair,
women have used quilts to negotiate their relationship to changing social networks and
labor patterns and to maintain the gender-integrated models of productivity central to
their agricultural state. In creating, circulating, and judging their quilts, they have also
engaged in important debates about how new technologies interface with these social and
cultural changes, and they have shaped both the figurative and literal landscapes of Iowa.
The Mennonite women who organize and contribute to the Michiana Mennonite Relief
Sale Quilt Auction draw on their quiltmaking traditions to dramatize their exceptional
talents, participate in their church’s public work, and shape their church’s faith.
At larger institutions, quilts are also used to engage in public cultural work—
usually with a broader audience and agenda in mind. At the Smithsonian Institution,
quilts are displayed in a variety of venues along disciplinary lines, and their displays
reveal the divergent theoretical and philosophical approaches of those different
disciplines. In the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, quilts have
typically been treated as fine art with displays that emphasize their visual qualities and
aesthetic appeal. The National Museum of American History, on the other hand, uses

quilts as an example of American productivity and industrial progress. This tension

between aesthetics and utility is also evident in the American Quilter’s Society’s
publications and shows, where the institution has facilitated extensive debates about how
quilts are defined and valued and how they relate to art.
The negotiations and dialogues that take place within each institution are critically
important to those involved and are highly political. They are not simply internal
discussions, however, but are specifically intended to influence external public culture—
and certainly do so. As a result, the institutions’ individual conceptions of quilts
 188

inevitably intersect in the public arena. While these institutions may not literally
converse with one another, the quilts they make, displays they create, and discussions
they have all bring them into broader external debates about how quilts are defined,
displayed, judged, and valued. As the case studies demonstrate, these debates are about
much more than the quilts themselves. At their core, they are debates about aesthetic
standards, community values, disciplinarity, women’s labor, and often social, cultural,
and political issues.
The quilts themselves reveal some of the ways that institutional agendas collide.
At the Iowa State Fair, for example, 98% of the quilts are machine-quilted, while those at
the MMRS Quilt Auction remain exclusively hand quilted. The physical objects in these
two settings are indicative of differing values and priorities related to tradition,
production, and community beliefs and values. The State Fair quilts represent
negotiations about the changing social and economic Iowa landscape, while the MMRS
ones represent a commitment to traditional values and anti-modernity. The
Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History collects quilts of historic
significance that embody American heritage—ones whose patterns and stitching have
more in common with those of the Mennonites than with State Fair entrants where
technological innovations are embraced. Its Renwick Gallery tends to display more

contemporary quilts that underscore its alignment with the fine art concerns of formal
design and visual appeal. The quilts at the American Quilter’s Society shows share much
in common with those of the Iowa State Fair—with many contemporary, machine-quilted
entries. The juried AQS quilts and the ribbon-winning State Fair ones represent similar
values related to meticulous workmanship. The State Fair category for “art quilts” has
few entries, however, while many AQS entrants employ the innovative techniques and
figurative elements associated with art quilts.
The quilt displays—and the goals of those displays—are also in conversation with
one another. The folded, closely hung quilts on the assembled frames of the Iowa State
 189

Fair and the MMRS quilt preview seem casual in comparison to the formally mounted
exhibits in the Renwick Gallery or even those on the curtained panels at AQS shows.
Even though the stitching techniques of the fair and auction quilts are at odds, the
displays are structurally analogous and engage in similar community-based work. At the
State Fair, all entries are exhibited regardless of how they are judged, and the abundant
quilt racks are indicative of the democratic nature of the display. At the MMRS, the
primary goal is to display as much of each quilt as space allows so that previewers can
see that the fine workmanship is worthy of generous bids. Though the Iowa State Fair
quilts are similar in construction to those at AQS shows, the show display is markedly
different from the democratic exhibition at the fair. Only prize-winning quilts are
awarded space, and each quilt is fully open on its own panel. While community takes
precedence over individuality at the fair, the artistry of the individual defines the
exposition displays.
As I travelled to each site, I also heard many direct conversations about how
different institutional values intersect in public culture. Women often spoke passionately
about their own conceptions of what makes a good quilt and frequently critiqued other
definitions that clashed with their own. When I interviewed Elsie Miller about the hand-
quilted Relief Sale quilts, for example, she suggested that machine quilting techniques

open up the possibility of poor quality imported quilts and noted, “We have a lot of quilts
in the area that are machine quilted… and the workmanship is absolutely atrocious—it’s
absolutely atrocious.” Because of her concerns about quality, she conjectured that if the
auction started including any machine-quilted quilts, all of the auctioned items would be
tainted with suspicion. Iowa State Fair Superintendent Dorothy Faidley spoke about
machine quilting much less censoriously: “Well, my personal position is that the quilting
is to enhance the quilt, and it really doesn’t make any difference to me whether it’s done
by hand or by electricity.”
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Women also spoke passionately about their personal and professional investments
in quiltmaking and display. Over a potluck lunch at the Iowa State Fair, I described my
project to one of the judges as “a study of how quilts are displayed and judged,” and I
was treated to a lengthy primer about the National Quilting Association’s certification
program. As a certified judge herself, she believed that only those who are certified are
actually qualified to “judge” quilts. Such a rigorous certification process ensures that
judges at competitive shows share a uniform set of standards for critiquing and valuing
quilts. While all of the AQS show judges are certified, not all of the Iowa State Fair ones
are; the State Fair women are much less concerned with the judges’ formal credentials.
In fact, in 2008, the volunteers staged a minor mutiny when two NQA certified judges
chose a sentimental photo transfer quilt for the Judge’s Choice ribbon. After a full day of
viewing quilts, the volunteers felt strongly that an intricately appliquéd quilt with a floral
medallion and border should win the coveted prize, and the third non-certified judge
agreed. The volunteers stood beside the three judges with their own top choice as the
judges voted—though the certified judges had removed the quilt from the running.
Ultimately, the State Fair awarded two ribbons for Judge’s Choice, demonstrating that the
contest is not simply about the formal judging hierarchies of organizations like the NQA
and AQS but is committed to the community values of Iowa quiltmakers.

These examples reveal some of the complex interactions that take place among
individuals and institutions as they advocate for their own conceptions of quilts and
promulgate the values at the heart of those conceptions. Such public tensions and debates
are what motivate the individual case studies in this project. I chose to delve deeper into
the institutional histories and contemporary concerns that inform this quilt work to better
understand its public contentiousness. My four case studies certainly demonstrate why
quilts are such a heated and political medium with so much at stake for those who create,
judge, and display them. As more institutions capitalize on the quilt revival to organize
new exhibitions, these tensions will inevitably persist, but they will also continue to
 191

inspire rich, dynamic public conversations about the myriad social, cultural, and political
issues that converge in quilts.
 192

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