by Laurie Labar is available at last!
We had to wait a year, thanks to Covid, but a new book, Maine Quilts: 250 Years of Comfort and Community, is available at last by Laurie Labar, Chief Curator of History and Decorative Arts, Maine State Museum.
Maine Quilts:250 Years of Comfort and Community celebrates Maine’s quilts, their makers, and the ways they reflect Maine’s past. Throughout the state’s history, whole communities of Maine women held together households, farms, businesses, and families when men were at sea, at war, or in the woods. The social networks that supported these women, and the political environments in which they lived, show in the fabrics, patterns and inscriptions of quilts that these women made. LaBar uses the stories she discovers to enlighten, entertain, and bring new voices to Maine history. The quilts she has studied spotlight women and communities across Maine, where the distinctive character of life and experience finds voice in locally-made quilts.
The first book on the topic, Maine Quilts features 275 illustrations, including full photographs of over 150 Maine quilts made between the late 1700s and late 2019. The book includes examples from over two dozen museums, historical societies, and private collections. Most are from the Maine State Museum’s extensive quilt collection and have never been published before. The cover features a quilt acquired by the museum with the help of PTQG. A related exhibit will open in 2023, when the museum reopens to the public after renovations. A major, one-year exhibit, it will be the largest-ever showing of historic Maine quilts.
Maine Quilts: 250 Years of Comfort and Community is available through local bookstores, as well as at amazon.com. If you would like a book or have any questions, please contact author and curator Laurie LaBar at laurie.labar@maine.gov or (207)-287-6606.