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Amish Crib Quilts From the Midwest
The Sara Miller Collection

Author: Janneken Smucker, Patricia Cox Crews & Linda Welters
Pages: 108
Page size: 8 1/2" x 11"
Publisher: Goodbooks
Cover: Soft
Item Code: 4HG0105
Weight: 1.2 lb

20% off: $15.96
MSRP: $19.95

Back Cover Information

A rare collection of 90 antique Amish quilts for children is showcased in this brilliantly colorful volume. Few antique Amish crib quilts remain because they were put to hard use in large families which typically averaged seven children. But Sara Miller of Kalona, Iowa, herself a member of the Old Order Amish, began building a collection of lovely antique crib quilts which she learned about as the proprietor of a fabric and quilt shop.

Thus began an unusual odyssey. Sara, who once disparaged the quilting tradition of her heritage, thinking it dull and drab, began to see its graphic beauty when outsiders became intent on owning Amish quilts.

In addition to 90 full-color plates of the exquisite quilts is interpretive commentary and documentation, plus three essays elaborating on the significance of the collection. Author Janneken Smucker descends from a line of quilters in the Amish-Mennonite community of Goshen, IN; Patricia Cox Crews is Director of the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, NE; Dr. Linda Welters is Professor of Textiles at the University of Rhode Island.

Amish Crib Quilts from the Midwest: The Sara Miller Collection is an unusual feast visually. The analyses that accompany the boldly beautiful images contribute scholarship to this intersection of art and the life of the Amish.

Shop owned by Sara Miller

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About the Authors

Janneken Smucker is the Graduate Curatorial Assistant for the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She expects to complete her Master of Arts degree in Textile History and Quilt Studies with a minor in Museum Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in May 2003. Her research interests include Amish and Mennonite quilts and quiltmakers, intercultural aspects of material culture, and Anabaptist history. She was a 2002 scholarship recipient from both the Lincoln Quilters' Guild and American Quilt Study Group.

Patricia Cox Crews is Director of the International Quilt Study Center and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Professor in the Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design. She served as primary editor for Nebraska Quilts and Quiltmakers (University of Nebraska Press, 1991), which won the Smithsonian's Frost Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Crafts in 1993. More recently she edited the exhibition catalogue A Flowering of Quilts (University of Nebraska Press, 2001)

Linda Welters is Professor of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design Department at the University of Rhode Island. He research include American quilts, archaeological textiles, and European folk dress. She edits Dress, the scholarly journal of the Costume Society of America. She co-edited and contributed to Down by the Old Mill Stream: Quilts in Rhode Island (Kent State University Press, 2000). Welters directed the Rhode Island Quilt Documentation Project, which won an Award of Merit from the American Association of State and local History in 2001. She was a Visiting Faculty Fellow at the International Quilt Study Center for the 2002-2003 academic year.

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