Introduction
"Much of the social history of early America has been lost to us precisely because women were expected to use needles rather than pens. Yet if textiles are in one sense an emblem of women's oppression, they have also been an almost universal medium of female expression." --Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
The International Quilt Study Center & Museum is a leader in the burgeoning field of quilt studies. Research focused on quilts illuminates the complex ways gender, class, ethnicity, aesthetics, politics, religion and technology find expression in the textile arts, quiltmaking traditions, design and culture.
