Wisconsin Quilts: Stories in the Stitches

April 29–August 29, 2021

Wisconsin Quilts: Stories in the Stitches celebrated WMQFA's 10th anniversary. Twenty years ago, a group of women researchers wrote the seminal book Stories in the Stitches based on their documentation of quilts in Wisconsin. The women began  this longstanding project, called the Wisconsin Quilt History Project, in the 1980s and still continue it today.

WMQFA's history is intimately entwined with the Wisconsin Quilt History Project. Many of the quilt documenters became the museum's founding mothers. On the 20th anniversary of the book and the 10th anniversary of WMQFA, this exhibition brought together thirty quilts illustrated in Stories in the Stitches, exhibited here for the first time.

The quilts reproduced in the book represent detailed personal histories and incredible stories surrounding the quilts, including narratives of women's lives during the Civil War and the Great Depression, personal triumphs and tragedies, connections to the 1933 World's Fair, and quilts from the Works Progress Administration, among many others.

The result of deep research into the whereabouts of the quilts, many of which are still with the makers' descendants, this exhibition told the rich history of quilt making in Wisconsin.

Support for Wisconsin Quilts: Stories in the Stitches was generously provided by American Quilt Study Group and Hilgendorf Memorials: Rock of Ages.