The Kentucky Sun Quilt
My husband and I made a whirlwind trip to the Kentucky Museum last weekend on the Western Kentucky University campus in Bowling Green, KY. The Kaleidoscope exhibition opened earlier this year featuring 30 Kentucky quilts, and the first public viewing of the spectacular Kentucky Sun quilt. I had seen pictures of it before, but nothing could take the place of standing there in front of it. I was overwhelmed. This quilt was made nearly 140 years ago, and it was old yet so amazingly modern, and I couldn't stop staring. To put in in a chronological perspective, it was made 15 years after the Civil War ended in the time of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and the O.K. Corral. It's funny how it puts me in the mind of the western frontier, and I wonder if that had any influence.
The Kentucky Sun Quilt has a fascinating story behind it, and was on the cover of the Kentucky Quilt Project's publication. Read more about it through the link. The Kentucky Quilt Project was the first of all the quilt documentation projects in the U.S., and organized in 1981.