Winter 2022 Exhibits Soar with Songs and Samples!

LA GRANGE, TEXAS – December 28, 2021 – The Texas Quilt Museum kicks off its 2022 season with two incredible collections that put a wholly different spin on the phrase “music sampling.” The exhibits SAQA: Musica! and Super Samplers will be on display from
January 6-May 7, 2022.

​Left: San Antonio On My Mind (30" x 30") by Carolyn I. SkeiRight: Sonata for a Stone (60” x 60”) by Paulette Landers Both from the exhibit SAQA: Musica!

Featuring works by members of the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), Musica! showcases 31 works which were juried by San Francisco-based quilt artist, teacher, and author Joe Cunningham. He also produces the very popular “Quilt Report” series of online videos documenting his quiltmaking processes.

As the sole juror of Musica!, Cunningham praises SAQA for its longtime support of the art quilt medium. “Through expressions [like these quilts], we can foster individual ways of making, thinking, and seeing the world,” he offers. “I am grateful that such an organization exists for quiltmakers who want to make art.”

To illustrate the exhibit’s theme, “music” may be pictured as sculpting a shape of sound in our heads, lifting us up high, dipping down low, and swirling out like ripples in a pool.

According to Museum Curator Dr. Sandra Sider, “Some music also seems to have color. We speak of ‘singing the blues’ as well as ‘red hot jazz.’ And music can be said to ‘color’ our emotions. Several quilts in this exhibit interpret performers, dancers, and dancing, including a piece evoking the swish and swirl of dresses during a waltz.”

And then we have…Super Samplers!

​Left: Baltimore Album (110" x 108.25") by Frances Benton.Right: Yellow Rose of Texas (74” x 74”) by Arminda Lopez. Both from the exhibit Super Samplers

The majority of quilts in Super Samplers are drawn from the Collection of International Quilt Festival, and feature an eclectic group of 20 sampler quilts dated between 1795 and 2014. This style of quiltmaking, with blocks all the same size but with different designs, may have originated in this country during the early 19th century.

“In the days of American pioneering, a family member preparing to venture across the country might create sampler blocks of favorite patterns as a resource to use once the family was resettled,” Dr. Sider offers.

“For many quilters today, working on sampler blocks provides an opportunity to test a pieced or appliquéd pattern, helping the maker decide whether multiples of that pattern would result in a pleasing overall quilt design.”

Sampler quilts have been popular communal projects, in the form of Album or Friendship quilts, often featuring signatures inside the blocks. While the decorative elements of sampler quilts can be either pieced or appliquéd, more than half of the examples in this exhibit are in appliqué.

The most elaborate samplers are the splendid Baltimore Album quilts that flourished in the 1840s and 1850s, and the exhibit includes three stunning contemporary quilts inspired by the Baltimore Album style.