International Quilt Museum, Lincoln Nebraska, Part I

A couple weeks ago I went on a road trip from Denver, Colorado to Lincoln, Nebraska and attended a “behind the scenes tour” of the International Quilt Museum.

From the museum’s website

The International Quilt Museum’s mission is to build a global collection and audience that celebrate the cultural and artistic significance of quilts. The International Quilt Museum is located on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus at 33rd and Holdrege streets. The museum has the world’s largest publicly held quilt collection, dating from the early 1700s to present and representing more than 60 countries. 

We had an amazing tour guide, a retired high school teacher, and did the behind the scenes tour with another group of visiting quilters. Here I am about to go on the tour:

Our first stop was the room where they handle quilts in their collections for various archiving activities or setting up for exhibit. The staff of course wear gloves when handling the quilts and we were only allowed to view the quilt they were evaluating from afar:

In the other group on the tour with us, there was a family group who had requested to see ahead one of their relative’s quilts that are part of the International Quilt Museum‘s collection. We chatted with them and their mother/grandmother (who was passed) was a renown quilter and several of her quilts are at the museum. This specific quilt was made for her grandson, now a grown man, and they wanted him to see it in person after all these years. It was a sweet and very emotional family moment for them and I enjoyed chatting with the family and learning more about their family matriarch the renown quilter.

In the room where they archive and evaluate quilts, they had a humorous wallhanging that gave us a smile – a traditional “Sunbonnet Sue” but she was wielding a knife!

If you are familiar with this famous antique quilt block pattern then you might get a giggle (or fright) out of the knife wielding version!

We also toured where the museum stored it’s huge quilt collection in special moving racks/vaults.

I’ll continue the story and photos about my first visit to the International Quilt Museum in my next post.