Texas Quilts and Quilters

Book excerpt: Winner, Violet Crown Award, Writers’ League of Texas, 2008 For more than a decade, Marcia Kaylakie traveled Texas from the Panhandle to Big Bend country, from the Piney Woods to the Gulf, discovering thousands of quilts in towns from Alpine to Austin, Dimmitt to Dallas, and myriad other Texas communities large and small. Hidden away in closets, trunks, and attics, the quilts Kaylakie found are not only heirlooms but also, owing to their histories, irreplaceable emblems of Texas heritage. This book showcases thirty-four quilts. Through them and their stories, the cultural development of the state unfolds. Most will never be exhibited or appear in any other permanent record. All Texas-made, they span the state geographically and range from the 1870s to the turn of the twenty-first century. As examples of what Texas quilting was and is as craft—and as cultural narrative—these quilts preserve a unique and compelling aspect of Texas history.