Not Exactly Your Grandma’s Quilts
The Quilters Guild of Brooklyn is exhibiting twenty-five colorful quilts at the Brooklyn College Library masterfully crafted by twenty-two of its members. The exhibit, Stitch by Stitch: Works in Fabric, which opened in June, will be on display until November 1.
     “These same works were shown at Brooklyn Borough Hall before we brought them here,” said the guild’s co-president, Madeleine Appell, who graduated from Brooklyn College in 1968 with an M.A. in art education. “It has become a traveling exhibit.” A quilter for thirty years, Appell’s work is also part of the exhibit.
     A quintessential American craft, quilting has gone through several changes over the past decades and, according to some critics, has become a medium of artistic expression as well. Although modern quilts abide by the same quilt-making tenets, each has its own particular style. And while some conform to traditional quilting standards, others exhibit new techniques or include social or political statements.
     “Most of them have a sentimental value for the quilter, and some are done on commission or to celebrate a special occasion,” said quilter Susan Contento, who has three pieces in the show. “I did one of them at my son’s request, as a tribute to Ireland,” she said, noting that the Quilters Guild enjoys doing charitable work. It recently donated sixty-one quilts to Iraq war veterans at the Walter Reed Hospital.
     Library hours are Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (and until 9 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday). For more information about the exhibit—including possible purchases—contact Janet Finello, (718) 758-8209 or jfinello@brooklyn.cuny.edu.
     The two-hundred-member guild will be celebrating its fifteenth anniversary at the end of the month. You may visit the guild’s website at www.QuiltBrooklyn.org.