Ancestral Gifts

  • Sunshine Herring bone Stripes by Kaffe Fassett (c) Dave Tolson

The Quilt Museum and Gallery's summer exhibition, created in collaboration with our patron Kaffe Fassett, is Ancestral Gifts. In 2012, Kaffe spent happy hours in the museum store with curator Heather Audin, exploring the riches of the historic collection. He eventually narrowed his choice down to fifteen quilts from The Quilters’ Guild Collection dating from 1780 to 1949, and has created fifteen new quilts in response to them. They form a unique exhibition, one of the most colourful and thought-provoking that we have hosted. The image here is of Kaffe's Sunshine Herringbone Stripes, inspired by a late nineteenth century Chevron Strippy quilt in cotton and wool from the Guild's collection.

In addition to his stunning new quilts, Kaffe is also lending us items from his studio, books, textile designs and things he has collected on his travels. The thirty quilts and accompanying artefacts fill the two main galleries at the Quilt Museum; our third gallery will be given over to creativity and interactivity with a flannel wall for aspiring designers and a Touchy-Feelly wall for those who simply can't resist the lure of fabric (and which of us can't?!).

The exhibition runs at the Quilt Museum and Gallery, York from 15 May, through to 5 September 2015 and will then tour to three venues in the United States from Autumn 2015.