Yours Truly
Marti Michell has changed the quilting world for over 50 years with her innovative designs, entrepreneurial spirit, and industry knowledge. It all began in the 1970s when Marti started making quilt kits out of 100% cotton, a rarity in that decade. Her creativity led her to one of Woman’s World’s best-selling offers, the Quickest Quilt in the World in 1977. It was a quit-as-you-go pattern that sold $750K and an additional $500K with the Woman’s World offer. In today’s money, that would be substantially more!
That was just the beginning for Marti. She continued innovating by creating quilt designs of traditional patterns but making them easier. These quilts have graced the covers and insides of popular quilting magazines such as Better Homes & Gardens American Patchwork & Quilting, American Quilter, and McCall’s Quilting. Her books have sold almost 2 million copies but her most popular book Quilting for People Who Don’t Have Time to Quilt has sold almost 450 thousand copies.
Marti has designed multiple fabric lines which have sold over 10 million yards of fabric. Many of her fabrics are under the Maywood Studio fabric line. Today, Marti creates acrylic templates under her company From Marti Michell, which includes an extensive line of Perfect Patchwork Templates, specialty rulers, quilt patterns, and educational materials for shops. Such as block of the month programs and one-class lesson plans.
In this Virtual Exhibit, you will see 26 of Marti’s quilts using high-definition photography and a narrative about the quilts. The best thing about our Virtual Exhibit is you can pause, rewind and fast forward as much as you like!
So, make your purchase of $8 (the cost of an in-person visit) and go check your fabric selvages to see if you have any of Marti’s very successful fabric lines.
Deeds Not Words: Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage Virtual Exhibit
Not everyone lives in Iowa and this exhibit only has two more locations to travel to before it’s gone forever. If you’re not able to travel to Winterset, IA by April 10, 2022, then purchase the next best thing, a Virtual Exhibit of Deeds Not Words: Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage.
This exhibit comes to us from co-curators Dr. Sandra Sider, Curator of the Texas Quilt Museum, and Pamela Weeks, Binney Family Curator of the New England Quilt Museum.
It has toured the country for the past 2 years and has finally landed in our gallery, the third to the last opportunity to see this touring exhibition of studio art quilts commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Twenty-eight award-winning artists from across the United States accepted the invitation to create new works celebrating women’s suffrage, along with one artist whose 1995 quilt on the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments is included.
The subjects of the works include many of the women who are well known for their work in the century-old fight for the vote for women, but many more of the women the artists chose to commemorate are less well known. Jane Burch Cochran chose Martha Wright as her subject. Wright was one of the organizers of the historic 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, but her work was overshadowed by her sister, Lucretia Mott, and the now famous Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Beasley’s work centers on Ida B. Wells, an African-American suffragist who was nationally known as a journalist, lecturer, and for her anti-lynching campaign. When she traveled to Washington, DC, in 1913 to march in the suffrage parade, she refused to follow instructions given to the black delegates to march at the back of the parade, and stepped into her place with the other delegates from Chicago.
The national tour is sponsored by eQuilter.com, with additional support from Karey Bresenhan and Nancy O’Bryant Puentes.
Here Comes the Sun Virtual Gallery Tour
It’s winter and it is cold. We understand when the weather prevents you from coming to visit us in person. So, here is the next best thing. Our current exhibit is now available in video format. It costs $8 for non-members and is free to our members (use your code sent in a previous email).
This virtual experience features a high resolution photo of each quilt accompanied by narration of the exhibit signage. And because it’s a video, you can pause, rewind, and watch it as many times as you want.
