Quilt Exhibition in the West Virginia State Museum

​Housesitting in Charleston, West Virginia, I visited the West Virginia State Museum yesterday. The Museum is remarkable and worth every effort to visit, tour, study, and enjoy--especially as admission is FREE!

Seeing West Virginia's historical memorabilia on display was a particularly emotional experience for me. I'm an amateur genealogist, and my grandparents and beyond were from West Virginia, so many of the exhibits tugged at my heartstrings.

More importantly, for our discussion here, my timing was excellent! Can you imagine my surprise to enter the building and be confronted by the West Virginia Quilters' annual quilt exhibition?

​The building is beautiful, and the entry hall is dramatic in its own right. The show was bold and dramatic because viewers could take in many quilts in one view. The colors and patterns fairly danced on the walls! 

The quilt display was impressive, especially for someone (like me) entering the hall for the first time. However, a close-up inspection of these beautiful quilts was impossible for obvious reasons. 

Certainly, the quilts were protected from well-meaning "touchers," people who do not know that excessive handling of quilts damages them.

However, the quilts could not be viewed and appreciated close up in this venue. It was impossible to appreciate the fine detailing in design, not to mention the quality of the quilting stitches. The close-up shot below is not that; merely a blow-up of the image above.

My advice before you go to see this show? Take your binoculars!

Find a list of the winners and awards here. It's unfortunate that the site fails to publish photos of the winning quilts. It would be good to see which quilts took awards and prizes. Surely, these fine, talented, and hard-working quilt-makers deserve the right to display their work proudly.

Is the fear of copyright violation so paralyzing that no one shows anything anymore?