Every fall, lovers of quilt history (old and new) meet to share research, treasures, and friendship at the Annual Meeting/Fall Seminar of the American Quilt Study Group (AQSG). Last month, I shared some of the wonderful experiences I had visiting this year’s meeting in New York’s beautiful Hudson River Valley, with tours of New York City and surrounding states.

As always, it was an amazing event full of old and new friends and a lot of antique quilts. In the previous article, I focused on the off-site tours, but there are many terrific events at the host hotel included with seminar registration — from Early Fabric Printing, 1840s Signature Quilts, 1890s Cut and Sew Dolls, to Quilts in Museums and Rotary Cutters in the 20th and 21st Century.

One of the highlights of every year’s seminar are the scholarly paper presentations, which are peer-reviewed research papers showcasing “the most recent advances in quilt-related research.” The papers are presented at seminar and published in Uncoverings, the annual academic journal of AQSG.

These papers represent years of intense research by the authors, who must condense and collate that information into the written word and then further distill the information to a brief Powerpoint talk at seminar. We were treated to a stellar group of talks on a variety of quilt history, both past and present, as indicated above. It was a delight to learn details about such a range of topics and time periods, from early 1800s lapis printing to contemporary Instagram posts about close encounters with rotary cutters.

I loved seeing images of the “Playthings by the Yard,” adorable cut-and-sew dolls and toys of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Of course, my personal favorite was Cathy Erickson’s presentation on 1840s signature quilts in Southeast Pennsylvania, a topic near and dear to my heart. And we each came home with a copy of Uncoverings to dive further into the research papers.

Great food and entertainment

Seminar also features wonderful food paired with informative luncheon and dinner speakers. This year we enjoyed a keynote speech by African-American quilt artist Dr. Myrah Brown Green, speaking on “The Presence of African Symbols in North American Quilts.” The first luncheon speaker was the Quilt Journalist Meg Cox giving one of her State of the Quilt Union updates aka the Quilt Journalist Tells All -Seminar Edition, an interesting and timely update of the status of the quilting industry. Dr. Janneken Smucker took us back in time a century, speaking on “A New Deal for Quilts: How Quilting Helped Rebuild America in the New Deal Era” (check out her amazing book of the same title).

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