Dearest Readers:

This year is ending with sad stories for the quilt world with the loss of two significant institutions. In Lincoln, Nebraska, regents at the University of Nebraska voted Friday, December 5 to close the department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design. In Houston, Quilts Inc. recently announced the end of International Quilt Market, which for decades has been the industry's biggest trade show.

Some of this news started breaking last month and my original plan was to squeeze out a November issue. But I returned home from a month of travel to Southeast Asia the week before Thanksgiving, and there was no way I could adequately research and report on all the news.

So here I am now, having taken time for interviews and insight into these two significant events. In addition, I'm going to share a few highlights of textile adventures from my trip to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Bali. Don't skip the newsy items at the bottom! There's a lot going on.

Because of the missed issue, there is a double giveaway this month. I've got Kaffe Fassett fabric and his most recent book for one winner, and a batik treat I brought back from Bali for another.

This is a long read, so pour yourself a beverage and dive in. Feel free to forward this newsletter (or any issue) to friends who might be interested in the content.

Quilt On,

Meg

Big Loss for Quilting:

UNL Shuts Down Textile Dept.

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The board of regents at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln voted on Friday, December 5 to shut down four academic departments including the Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design department (TMFD). The moves were part of a $27 million cost-saving plan the chancellor said was desperately needed to plug a budget deficit.

TMFD-trained people have gone into such careers as clothing design and retail management, but some of its courses focused on quilts. It was one of only a few schools in the country where students could earn a textile-focused graduate degree and only TMFD offered a professional certificate in quilt studies. People who came out of those quilt-focused programs have gone on to become quilt appraisers, historians and curators, some of them quite prominent (more on that later). Part of the attraction was studying on the same campus as the prestigious International Quilt Museum, which boasts the largest publicly owned quilt collection in the country.

Indeed, the museum was actually born within the Textile Department at UNL inside what was then called the Home Economics Building. In 1997, Ardis and Robert James donated nearly 1,000 quilts then worth $6 million to found an organization dubbed the International Quilt Museum and Study Center. The museum moved to its current building in 2008, where it now houses a collection of nearly 9,000 quilts from 65 countries. Over the years, it continued working closely with the textile department: its graduates have held some of the top roles, including the director and the head of collections.

To be sure, colleges are struggling all over the country partly due to demographic trends. Budgets have been slashed, professors fired and some colleges have closed their doors entirely. For context, here's an article in Forbes about this national financial crisis.

UNL seems to be in better shape than many but as with many state colleges, its financial support from state government has fallen considerably. In 1990, the university got 34% of its budget from the state and this year, only 19% of its budget was covered. Enrollment was a little squishy even before the pandemic, but it increased in 2024 for the first year since 2017, bringing the student body to nearly 24,000.

However, chancellor Rodney Bennett said UNL's budget was in the red and smaller actions like retirement buyouts for 70 tenured professors weren't making enough of a difference. The administration announced in September that it would eliminate six "underperforming" departments. There were efforts to protest these cuts and the chancellor took two departments off the chopping block. But the textile and fashion department remained a target for closure. More than 50 professors in all will now lose their jobs from the four departments, including 11 at TMFD.

On December 4, a sociology professor at UNL, Regina Werum, weighed in with an op ed piece in the local Nebraska Examiner, begging the regents to take a step back and reconsider. These are her arguments.

At the six-hour Board of Regents meeting on December 5, 110 people spoke in defense of the four programs including professors, students and staff. Multiple presenters said UNL's math was just plain wrong, including professors from the about-to-be-axed Statistics Department. A speaker on behalf of the Textile department insisted it makes more money for the university in tuition, grants and other inputs than it costs to run. There had been some small amount of hope that the board of regents would balk. That's because when the Faculty Senate met last month to consider the budget proposal, an overwhelming majority delivered a "No Confidence" vote on the chancellor. This marked the first no-confidence vote in the 157-year history of the university. But the regents approved the cuts anyway.

People in the hearing room were openly weeping about the decision. Just two days before, faculty and students had staged a "jazz funeral," mourning the cuts by parading around campus carrying four black coffins bearing the names of the targeted departments, as a brass band played. Here is a link to a local TV station's report on the meeting, complete with crying students.

WHY THE LOSS OF THE TEXTILE PROGRAM IS DEVASTATING

I've seen plaintive social media posts from other students affected by the cuts including a young woman who has always wanted to be a meteorologist (Earth and Atmosphere Sciences). But for the sake of my audience, I'm only going to focus on the textile and fashion department and what this means for graduates and why it's loss will ripple out from them to all of us who care about quilts.

Anneliese Johnson graduated from the textile department in 2010 with a degree in textile and apparel design. She's been going to quilt shows since she was 6 years old and loved the chance to work with quilts in college: when the quilt museum was still located in the Home Ec building, she was trained as a quilt tour guide. Even before graduating, Anneliese started a quilt pattern business with her mother Brenda Reid called Eye Candy Quilts. She has designed more than 50 quilts, some of which were published in magazines, has been a fabric designer and a teacher. She also does digital marketing in the quilt world, mostly for quilt shops.

When Anneliese, who lives in Lincoln, heard of the proposed cuts, she was furious and started posting videos on Instagram explaining why the department and its ties to the museum were vital and how to protest the cuts. TMFD's programs include both design and textile science, and she argued "Textile science is a very prestigious department and one of the few in the country doing that kind of work. Dr. Yang there continues to get new patents in things like biofibers and is now developing ways to turn agricultural waste into textiles." When I tracked her down for an interview, she seemed especially distraught about the loss of a connection between the quilt museum and the textile department. "That museum has the largest publicly held collection of quilts in the whole country. It is a built thing. Why are we abandoning the academics that support this national facility?"

Quilter Jill Soens Gordon was a history and science teacher for many years. When she left that profession she literally Googled "how to make money by quilting." This was how she discovered there was a quilt studies certificate offered by UNL and she could also study to become a quilt appraiser through the American Quilter's Society. She was told she would "be a better appraiser if take the certification program." She began taking courses in the textile department virtually in the spring of 2019 and expects to graduate in May.

"I think this decision is just devastating," she told me. "This program changed everything for me. It got me on a track where I could see the possibility of doing something productive that I loved." Even as a student studying remotely from Illinois, Jill felt very connected to the school, her professors and the museum, getting opportunities she never imagined. She remembers in 2021 when the International Quilt Museum was preparing to mount a major exhibition of important Amish quilts, "they had us students work with the curators on some of the writing, including the signage that would go on the walls for the exhibition. That was a tremendous experience."

One of the most prominent experts to go through this department is Nancy Bavor, who went on to become a quilt appraiser and director of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Currently, Nancy is president of the board of the American Quilt Studies Group, a nonprofit concerned with quilt history that is also located in Lincoln, Nebraska. At the age of 47, Nancy began a masters program in the history of textiles through TMFD, with an emphasis on quilt studies. At the time, there was a hybrid program available where students could complete this degree by spending one semester on campus. Nancy lives in California and completed her other studies from there.

"As I look at the impact the graduates of this program have had on the professionalism of quilt studies, it has been really remarkable," Nancy told me. "An academic background really adds clout. For me, going through the program gave me the tools, the confidence and the connections to do what I always wanted to do, become a curator of textiles, specifically quilts."

The University of Delaware is one of the only other universities where quilts can be studied as part of a material culture degree, and that program is affiliated with the prestigious Winterthur Museum in the state. But the Delaware degree program "isn't as narrowly focused on quilts," Nancy said. "Besides, in Lincoln, the largest quilt museum in the country is across the street from the textile department. That isn't the case with Winterthur." (The university is based in Wilmington, Delaware, about 10 miles away from the museum.)

Nancy was one of many who wrote heartfelt letters to the UNL administration to nix the planned cut. She wrote: "Before eliminating this small but mighty department, please consider the ripple effect and the significant impact TMFD graduates have on the broader textile and fashion worlds. PLEASE SAVE TMFD!"

"A STORY LIKE MINE WON'T BE POSSIBLE"

Another prominent person whose masters from TMFD propelled her into a significant career is Janneken Smucker, now a professor of history at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. When Janneken started in 2001, she was the first graduate assistant in the brand new program.

"I learned how to look at fibers under a microscope and how to identify quilts. I curated an exhibition and by the middle of my second year, I had a book deal for a book about Amish crib quilts," she said. "It was life changing and it has given me so many opportunities. I can't believe I get paid now to research and write about quilts as a career."

But Janneken is saddened that others will no longer will be able to follow in her footsteps. "A story like mine won't be possible anymore," she said.

Patricia Crews was a long time faculty member in the Textile department before becoming the first director of the quilt museum. When I reached out to her recently, she called the imminent closure of the department "heart-breaking."

In a letter to the university committee that proposed eliminating her old department, Pat wrote in October, "The TMFD Department is a vital academic unit that complements and supports the mission of the International Quilt Museum. The presence of the TMFD Department was one of the most persuasive arguments offered to the State Coordinating Commission when seeking approval for operating and management funds for the museum building on the UNL campus."

Pat went on to describe a synergy between the academic department and the museum "which expands teaching, research, internship and outreach opportunities for students and faculty." And she closed by noting that the department's "faculty and alums have brought national recognition and distinction" to the university.

WILL THIS AFFECT THE INTERNATIONAL QUILT MUSEUM?

Michael James is a pioneering art quilter who was deeply involved in the museum's beginnings. One of the rare quilters to have two quilts chosen for a selection of "the best 100 quilts of the 20th century," he became a professor in the textile department in 2000 and headed the department for 15 years. He retired from the university 6 years ago. In an interview, he acknowledged that the size of the student body has fallen in recent years to about 75, down from 237 when he led TMFD. He said part of the problem was national demographics and part of it is that especially in recent years, parents have balked at funding a degree they fear won't be a lucrative one for their kids.

Michael has been outspoken in his objection to this move. In an opinion piece for the Lincoln Journal Star in late November, he argued:

"The elimination of TMFD is not simply the closure of an academic department. It represents the loss of Nebraska’s only academic home for textile and fashion education, material culture studies, and quilt scholarship. It removes the intellectual roots of one of the state’s most recognized cultural institutions. At a time when Nebraska’s leaders say they want to retain talent and strengthen creative industries, this decision moves the state in the opposite direction.

Nebraskans deserve to understand what is being lost and why it matters."

Now that the vote has happened and there is no way of reversing it, Michael reported to me that "Personnel in the affected departments are basically in mourning and the grief is palpable. Personally, I'm heartbroken over it all, and angry...It feels like an enormous betrayal, a word many people are using."

What happens next? The college has promised that current students in all four departments will be assigned advisors to help them finish their degrees.

No one from the administration has said anything yet about what will happen to a collection of historic textiles and costumes owned and housed in the textile department. There are more than 3,500 items in the collection.

But Michael James has a bigger fear: in 2019, the International Quilt Museum and its staff stopped reporting to TMFD leadership and IQM was moved under the direct control of the chancellor's office. Now that there is no longer any academic tether to the campus, Michael worries that someday the administration might lose interest in continuing to fund and run the museum.

The museum's current director Leslie Levy is adamant that IQM is strongly supported by the university and not in any danger.

"It's not easy to learn of the closing of a department that played such a foundational role in the International Quilt Museum's earliest history," she said. "Although the International Quilt Museum hasn't been a part of TMFD for 6 years, we do share an important and meaningful legacy - its professors and graduates are among our valued colleagues, board members, donors and ambassadors. At the same time, it's important to emphasize that the IQM continues to grow and thrive. Each year, we continue to welcome visitors from all 50 states and around the world and we actively collaborate with campus partners across UNL and across disciplines. The University's decisions regarding departmental changes are not a reflection on the museum. As an accredited academic museum we continue to curate diverse exhibitions, offer a wide range of public programs, conduct rigorous research and publish. This is possible through strong private support and the full aegis of the University."

I'll close with this observation. I'm not terribly worried about the people studying in the statistics and meteorology departments in terms of finding relevant college programs elsewhere. But where else can people study quilts in these ways? I'm a little heartbroken too.

My optimistic side hopes for multiple possible reactions to this loss. One would be for the International Quilt Museum to create new ways of embracing, encouraging and presenting quilt scholarship. I'm also rooting for other academic institutions or nonprofits to fill in the gap in whatever ways they possibly can, whether through degree programs or something more like the professional certificate in quilting UNL has offered. Quilt history lovers and scholars are going to need some new patrons, defenders and institutions so that this work continues and these quilt stories continue to be valued.



No More Quilt Market:

Why Quilts Inc. Pulled the Plug + What's Next

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Let me start by correcting a serious misconception: the International Quilt Festival is NOT being cancelled. For decades now, Quilts Inc. has been operating two very different types of events: International Quilt Festival is a huge quilt show for consumers and Quilt Market is a trade show. As such, Quilt Market is an event for retailers like quilt shop owners to order fabric and notions and other items that they later sell to consumers. The photo above from a previous Quilt Market shows retailers figuring out which fabric collections they want to order for the next season.

Quilt Festival continues on, my friends, but Quilt Market does not.

When Quilts Inc. put out a press release earlier this month, a lot of people were very confused and started pumping out social media posts like "I'm so sad Festival is ending, because this was finally the year I will be able to go!" You can still go, girlfriend. But know but Quilts Inc. also changed the previously announced dates for the 2026 Festival show, adding further confusion. Plus, they took the dates they're contractually obligated to occupy the St. Louis Convention and, instead of the spring Quilt Market previously planned for the venue, changed the event to a consumer show. Is that clear?

Here are the two most important takeaways, and after that, I'll provide some context:

International Quilt Festival will run November 12 to 15 in Houston.

Quilt! Knit! Stitch! a multi-craft consumer show, will be held in St. Louis from April 12-15. (Classes will start April 8)

There is a lot to unpack here. Let me start with the end of Quilt Market. Attendance has been down at Fall Quilt Market for some years and this past fall, it was particularly sparse. I've been hearing lots of predictions from quilt industry professionals that the event was on its last legs and unlikely to survive.

Bob Ruggiero, VP of Communications for Quilts Inc. spoke with me about why the plug was pulled. "Attendance numbers have been declining since we came back from COVID," he said. "There were multiple factors. More and more companies had begun sending their sales reps on the roads to visit shops one-on-one (and some of them stopped coming to the show). And, shops that maybe used to send 5 or 6 employees were sending 2 or 3. By the time you add airfare, hotels, per diems etc. the expense of coming really adds up."

Adding to that, he said, "this year for Market, there was so much uncertainty about the economy and the tariffs. A number of international people told us they were skipping this year because the tariffs are so unpredictable."

After 46 years, it was still a tough decision for founder Karey Bresenhan to cancel Market, Bob said. "Ultimately it was the right one. I've been with this company almost 30 years. I'm so proud of what we've done and are doing but you can't run a company on nostalgia."

While many in the industry agree this was the right decision, there is also agreement about how significant Quilt Market was for many years. Bob said he was getting lots of messages from people remembering the first pattern or fabric line they sold there. A lot of transactions and connections occurred here. It was an aspirational place: it meant something if you could present yourself in this marketplace. I'll never forget attending Quilt Market for the first time in 2008 to plug my book The Quilter's Catalog: A Comprehensive Resource Guide. I got a chance to give a Schoolhouse presentation to a room full of quilt shop owners and tell them why they should stock my book. In later years, I got a chance to lecture at Market in a program called Threads of Success for people seeking a career in the quilt world.

What's With This New Consumer Show for Quilts. Inc.?

Let's talk about Quilt! Stitch! Knit! This is actually the name and concept of a consumer show that Quilts Inc. tried in Portland, Oregon in 2014 and 2015. The idea was to attract not just quilters but also knitters, weavers, needelpointers and other needle crafters. It wasn't well marketed or well attended at the time. I spoke with Teresa Coates (now running her own pattern company Crinkle Dreams), who worked for a vendor in 2015 and she said "it was very small. There was hardly anyone there and Portland is a big maker place. I felt like it was a good idea badly implemented."

Bob at Quilts Inc. said it was too much like a smaller version of Festival, with too few vendors, classes or exhibits that were focused on crafts other than quilting. But he says now is the perfect time for such a mixed-craft show, and Quilts Inc. is ready. For one, he said the vendors at Quilt Festival have started to include exhibitors of other types of needle crafts and the company has tried harder to attract them.

He said Quilts Inc. has two new staffers who better represent the demographic of younger, multi-craft makers including the new director of education, Jamie Miller. "Jamie is a former shop owner and has exhibited at Festival, and personally does embroidery and cross-stitching as well as quilting. She is the reason we started a TikTok account," Bob said. "She is all over the internet looking for trends and new teachers. A third of the teachers who proposed classes for Quilt! Knit! Stitch! have never taught at one of our shows."

Lectures and classes are being chosen by Quilts Inc. this month, Bob said, and they hope to open registration in February. The company only has a one-year contract with the St. Louis center. "We will have more Quilt! Knit! Stitch! shows but not necessarily in St. Louis," he said. "This is a show we do plan on traveling."

Look Out For The New Competition: A New Fiber Show

These decisions aren't happening in a vacuum. Quilts Inc. was already getting serious competition in the trade show realm from the h + h americas, the U.S. branch of a German company called Koelnmesse Inc. The first h + h international handicraft show was in May of 2022 at a convention center in Rosemont, Illinois (Chicago suburbs). The show was a big success from the start and h + h keeps adding more elements. There were 263 exhibitors in 2023 and 300 in 2024.

The company has been great at making technology part of the experience, including providing an app exhibitors can use to set up meetings and featuring presentations on topics like "Leveraging Generative AI for E-Commerce for Designers and Creative Businesses." The show ends with a "mixer" for influencers to meet brand representatives and designers. I've heard great enthusiasm for the show from many veteran industry types.

Now here's the real interesting wrinkle: h + h will soon compete with Quilts Inc. head-to-head in the consumer realm, with a new show called the Fiber + Fabric Craft Festival. Tickets go on sale February 1.

This consumer show will debut on May 1 to 3 (with classes starting April 30) in the same Chicago-area venue as the h + h americas trade show. It's like they copied Quilts Inc. but in reverse: their consumer show will run first, followed by the trade show. But like Quilts Inc.,there will be many companies who will want to sell both directly to consumers and to retailers. And think about it: the h +h consumer show will run less than a month after Quilt! Knit! Stitch!

I'm not even going to try to predict how all this will turn out. But I fervently hope both succeed. Healthy competition is essential for a strong marketplace. Selfishly, we all want the quilt economy to thrive. Right?

Late Breaking News: Just as I was about to hit send and publish this issue, h + h americas put out a press release today, December 17, announcing that they will be mounting a craft trade show in Houston in Fall of 2026. Like their spring show near Chicago, the h + h americas Fall Edition will feature many needle crafts. The show dates are September 30 to October 2. They've already put out a list of "founding exhibitors" that include most of the major fabric companies that exhibited at Quilts Inc.'s Fall Quilt Market over the years. I'll have a lot more details in next month's issue.

Photo courtesy of Quilts Inc.

Southeast Asia Textiles:

Highlights of My Recent Trip

Although my four-week journey through Southeast Asia wasn't formally a textile trip, I was visiting multiple countries with rich textile traditions and I made the most of every opportunity. Also, before my organized trip I stopped to visit a quilter friend in Bangkok, Thailand and she took me to her favorite silk merchant. At the end of the formal tour, my boyfriend and I went fabric shopping on our own during 5 days in Bali. Y'all must know if there are textiles to be found, I will be there!

First, I want to say a word about the organized tour that took up three of the four travel weeks, because it was truly exceptional. Overseas Adventure Travel (O.A.T.) is an American company known for immersive, culturally rich tours for small groups (16 maximum.) Their travelers are generally over 50. We had one overall tour leader who is Thai, the fabulous Nicha, along with local leaders for each country we visited. This trip is titled Ancient Kingdoms and as with all O.A.T. adventures, they not only take you into villages and homes to meet the locals, but they include the painful parts of a place's history. Among other things I will never forget, we visited a memorial to the "killing fields" outside Phnom Penh. Well over one million Cambodians were murdered in the '70s by the Marxist Khmer Rouge regime and we visited both a place with many mass graves and a nearby site that was a notorious torture prison.

Less than a month later, I am still processing so many of the vivid experiences we had and inspiring people we met. This was my first O.A.T. trip and won't be the last. I highly recommend the company, but also encourage visiting this part of the world in general if you are able.

As I said, textiles weren't a specific theme, but this is a region famous for its textile traditions, especially weaving. We visited multiple sites where weaving was done and I had a chance to purchase textiles at all of them. Just to give you a feel for what is there and what we saw, I'm going to talk about four specific venues in Laos and Cambodia.

First let me tell you about a village in Laos called Tin Keo where we visited a school and the local weavers. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and life doesn't get easier when the government moves a village from its beautiful spot near a waterfall to another site. Like most locals, the people here mostly survive on farming, but weaving is something women grow up doing. With the help of a foundation tied to O.A.T., the Grand Circle Foundation, 30 looms were bought to help set up the local women to sell their weaving.

I've visited weaving villages in other countries, but what was unique here is that when we admired a woven piece displayed on a rack, the woman who had made it would walk up to us and we would pay her directly. I found that very satisfying. Here is a link to a short video about the village which includes both the school we visited and the weavers. The woman in a white blouse speaking while weaving is one of the women whose work I purchased. She is married to the village shaman, whom we also met.

There are two other sites I wanted to mention in Laos, both in Luang Prabang, a small city that is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The protected site encompasses 33 local villages. The town on the banks of the Mekong River is full of charming shops, beautiful temples and museums and good restaurants. The craft scene is particularly impressive.

During some free time exploring in Luang Prabang, we wandered into a small but beautifully curated shop called LaLa Laos, where I bought a scarf and a small sandstone Buddha amulet that had been turned into a necklace. We met the founder and owner of the shop, Sithong, and heard his story. He came from a farm family with many children and his father shipped him off to the town at age 12 to become a monk. As a monk he was able to get an education and with good English skills, got a job as a waiter to save for college. He met two American women who helped pay for his education. He now gives part of his profits to support young girls and further their education. You can read his story here on his website.

LaLa Lao doesn't sell its crafts online, but there was another shop we visited in Luang Prabang, that does have an online gift shop. Go here for shopping and go here for a terrific article about Laotian motifs in textiles and what they represent. This shop is named Ock Pok Tok, which means East Meets West.

Also in Luang Prabang is the little shop below called Hill Tribe Heritage (my photo.) I spent some time on two different days there with the owner, Sho Lythi. If you look at the flyer above for her shop, the middle photograph on the right is her as a young woman. At the shop, I met her husband and young daughter as well. She is Hmong and from one of the hill tribes north of the city. She buys old garments and other items and repurposes them into wall hangings, pillows and tote bags. She brought some of those woven and embroidered pieces from the back that she was in the process of disassembling. One of the hangings on that wall to the right is no longer there: it's hanging on a wall in my house. This is another small business that doesn't sell online, but if you go to Luang Prabang, you should look up Sho.

Lastly, an amazing place we visited in Siem Reap, Cambodia that's working to keep many craft traditions alive is called Artisan Angkor. Taking a tour of the workrooms is like visiting a living museum, where you can see stunning wood carvings, silk scarves and other items being made by craftspeople. This operation has been around for 25 years and they say they have provided training and job security for nearly 1,000 artisans. Again, there is no online store, but you'll learn about the techniques and styles of work by going to the terrific website.

If anyone has any questions about this trip, let me know. If you would like to visit this part of the world but through a textile-centric tour, there are a few I can recommend. Creative Arts Safaris is a company that I'm told does excellent tours and there is one coming up to Vietnam in the fall led by A-list quilter Victoria Findlay Wolfe. I see on the website there are only 2 slots left, but the company has other textile tours coming up to that area soon. I have been reading about a small travel company called Behind the Scenes Adventures, and they are doing a 20-day textile tour to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia called "Indigo, Ikat & Angkor that looks amazing.

Happy travels, whether virtual or otherwise!

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Quilt World News + Notes

Reactions Are Wildly Mixed to Pantone Color of the Year

Pantone is a New Jersey-based company that is considered the "world's authority on color" according to NPR, which did an article evaluating the choice and public reaction. Every year since 1999, Pantone has issued its pick for the Color of the Year, reflecting the culture and current design trends. They position the pick as both a prediction of coming trends and a recommendation. The first year, for 2000, the color was Cerulean. These color choices often influence a wide range of products from house paint to quilt fabric. Last year's color was Mocha Mousse. Many were stunned that this year's pick was a shade of white, the first time Pantone has gone with white. In its announcement, Pantone said this color, Cloud Dancer, was chosen "for its symbolism of quiet reflection, calm and a fresh start in a hectic world." The public reaction has been swift, strong and quite divided. While some people embraced the move, others said white was boring and these dark times call for bright colors. There were spirited claims that the Pantone experts were being political and making it about race, since the last two colors were brown and white. The company firmly denies it was referring to skin color either time. Here is a link to the Pantone website where you can see their explanation as well as a list of every color picked in the past.

Performer Harvey Fierstein Makes Big Quilts + Talks About Them

Playwright, actor and screenwriter Harvey Fierstein has won four Tony awards, not counting the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement that he was given this year. His plays include Kinky Boots and Torch Song Trilogy. One of his Tony awards was for his Broadway performance of the character Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. Maybe the next award he wins will be for quilting, a huge passion of his that has been under wraps for years. Although he has been quilting for 30 years, it was only this year that his quilts were seen in public in a temporary exhibition in Connecticut at the Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center. The show was called "You Made That?" The Quilting Adventures of Harvey Fierstein. Now he's been interviewed by the nonprofit Quilt Alliance for one of its oral history projects. You can watch the interview conducted by Zak Foster on YouTube for the QSOS project. Harvey tends to make very large quilts, 108 inches by 108 inches, and then quilts them himself on a longarm. He especially loves Kaffe Fassett's brightly colored fabrics. Here's an excellent article from Playbill about Harvey's quilting history and philosophy with great photos of his quilts from the exhibition.

Quilter Harriet Powers Gets Her Own Postage Stamp Set

It's not often that quilts have been featured on U.S. postage stamps and, of course, they always look great. Remember when the Quilts of Gee's Bend were featured in 2006? There was a series of 10 quilts and they immediately became a hot commodity. Before that, there was a series of Folk Art quilts in 1978, featuring a classic basket block made in four different fabrics. A series of four Amish Quilts were featured in stamps in 2001 and in 2016, a star quilt was chosen for a "presorted first class" stamp. Celebrated artist Harriet Powers was freed from slavery in Georgia at the end of the Civil War and became famous much later for her two quilts depicting Bible stories. One is now in the collection of the Smithsonian and the other is owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Four stamps have been created with each showing a panel from what is now called the "Pictorial Quilt" (in Boston.) These Forever stamps will be issued on February 28, 2026. Here is a link to a USPS news release about the Harriet Powers stamps. Quilter Kyra E. Hicks has been researching Harriet for many years and I recommend her book This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces. At the back of that book, Kyra listed 12 things she hoped would happen in future to celebrate Harriet and one was having a commemorative stamp issued. Bingo! Her only other wish that has been fulfilled so far: the two quilts being exhibited together for the first time, which happened in Boston in 2021 at the amazing Fabric of a Nation exhibition.

Meg Cox

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meg@megcox.com

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