These free events are very popular and, as very limited seating is available, reservations are required.

Crazy quilts most likely evolved as a way to make use of every scrap of fabric with each piece stitched to a foundation fabric. During the Victorian era, these quilts were quite elaborate with the use of satins, velvets and emboidery as embellishments. The Illinois State Museum’s 1893 World’s Fair Crazy Quilt, attributed to a miner named Leonard F. Mitchell, is a remarkable example. The quilt features a bevy of fabrics, adornments, symbols, and animals plus individuals and events associated with the fair, commemorating a major event in state, national, and world history.

Merikay Waldvogel, Knoxville, TN, a nationally known quilt authority, is an author, curator, and lecturer focusing on quilts and women's lives. Waldvogel has published on the ISM’s quilt by Mitchell and it will be the focus of her talk at the Lockport Gallery. Raised in the Midwest, her interest in quilts began while teaching in Chicago, changing her life and work. In 1986, she wrote Quilts of Tennessee: Images of Domestic Life Prior to 1930 with Bets Ramsey, based on the Quilts of Tennessee Survey they co-directed. Another book, Soft Covers for Hard Times: Quiltmaking and the Great Depression, is the first book devoted to mid-20th century quiltmaking. With Barbara Brackman, she researched quilts in the 1933 Sears National Quilt Contest and wrote Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Merikay has served on the Board of Directors of the American Quilt Study Group and the Alliance for American Quilts.

Visitors to The Urge to Embellish have the opportunity to view an eclectic array of new acquisitions and rarely-seen works from the Illinois State Museum Collection, many of which were made by non-professional artists. The nearly 100 objects reveal how embellishment has been guided by experimentation, learned behavior, social expectations, and traditions. Included are commemorative, ceremonial, decorative, functional, and whimsical objects spanning two centuries. Many date from the mid-to late-nineteenth century when the idiom of effusive ornamentation reached its zenith and pervaded the visual aesthetics of material culture. The exhibition is comprised of 2- and 3- dimensional pieces constructed with beads, ceramics, feathers, fibers, hair, metal, paint, papier-mache, porcupine quills, wood, and other materials. -- www.museum.state.il.us