If you want to see beautiful Michigan quilts, the MSU Museum is the right place to look for the next five months.
Michigan quilts are the focus of two new exhibitions at the museum, which opened Sunday and will run through December.
The exhibitions, “The Michigan Quilt Project: New Discoveries” and “The Mary Schafer Collection: A Legacy of Quilt History,” will display more than 500 quilts that have helped create a resurgence of interest and knowledge about Michigan quilting traditions.
“This exhibition is a tremendous collection of intricate examples of quilts from all over the country,” said Lora Helou, information officer for the MSU Museum. “We have a wide variety of styles, ranging from historic to contemporary.”
“The Mary Schafer Collection” focuses on the works of the Flushing historian and educator. Her collection includes antique quilts from the 19th century, as well as patterns, books, letters and a variety of needlework.
Marsha MacDowell, curator of folk arts at MSU, said Schafer’s work with quilts was instrumental in reviving studies and public interest nationwide during the 1970s.
“(Schafer) developed her collection at a time when there was very little interest in quilts,” MacDowell said.
Schafer, an 86-year-old great-grandmother, has been studying quilts since the early 1950s and she doesn’t seem to have lost any interest in them.
“I’ve always been interested in needle work,” she said. “I’m fascinated by the patterns of quilts and the difficulty that comes with creating these patterns.”
Schafer has given many talks on quilts and has conducted extensive research on the history of unfinished quilts. She believes the revived interest in quilts, which she said started around the bicentennial, was the result of people appreciating needlework as an art, instead of a suburban woman pastime.
MSU students helped narrow down 7,000 quilts that have been inventoried state-wide to form the other exhibition, “The Michigan Quilt Project: New Discoveries.” Since its establishment in 1984, the project has preserved Michigan’s quilting history through archival research and field work.
“Quilting is very popular in Michigan,” MacDowell said. “The largest quilt shop in the nation, Country Stitches (located in East Lansing), was one of our sponsors.”
