A valuable, historical contribution, this is the first book on the quiltmaking tradition of African Americans in Michigan. With 60 photographs of quilts, it brings together many images in the exploration of African American quilting and examines quiltmaking as a form women have used to make a contribution to the historic meaning of the African American family and community.

Michigan Quilts celebrates the 150th year of Michigan's statehood by focusing attention on quilt making, quilts, and quilters. Quilts have always represented prized family possessions, important family and community documents, and the strength and breadth of quilting as an art activity in the state.

Rachel May’s rich new book explores the far reach of slavery, from New England to the Caribbean, the role it played in the growth of mercantile America, and the bonds between the agrarian south and the industrial north in the antebellum era—all through the discovery of a remarkable quilt. While studying objects in a textile collection, May opened a veritable treasure-trove: a carefully folded, unfinished quilt made of 1830sera fabrics, its backing containing fragile, aged papers with the dates 1798, 1808, and 1813, the words “shuger,” “rum,” “casks,” and “West Indies,” repeated over and over, along with “friendship,” “kindness,” “government,” and “incident.” The quilt top sent her on a journey to piece together the story of Minerva, Eliza, Jane, and Juba—the enslaved women behind the quilt—and their owner, Susan Crouch. May brilliantly stitches together the often-silenced legacy of slavery by revealing the lives of these urban enslaved women and their world. Beautifully written and richly imagined, An American Quilt is a luminous historical examination and an appreciation of a craft that provides such a tactile connection to the past.

Includes how-to information.

Thoughtfully written by curator Cuesta Benberry as catalogue for The Kentucky Quilt Project's installation of 1992 exhibition by the same title. Features 35 quilts in full color. Forewords by Jonathan Holstein & Shelly Zegart. Text discusses the historical context of African-American quiltmaking in the mainstream of American quilting and reviews some of the current artists' use of quilts as their point of reference.

GLAAQN Everlasting Threads joins the cannon of documenting the stitching history of Michigan Black Women. In 1887, Mrs. Delia Barrier founded the Willing Workers Club in Detroit. Affiliated with the Needlework Guild of America, this group of fifty members raised funds through the sewing and selling of quilts for at least forty years. The 1915 Michigan Manual of Freedmen's Progress included mention of quilters Miss Fannie Anderson (Detroit) and Mrs. Dennison Graine (Kalamazoo). In the 1990s, the late Carolyn Lucille Warfield documented Michigan African American quilting guild activities and shared her articles in community and regional publications. In 1997, Michigan State University published African American Quiltmaking in Michigan, the first comprehensive study of Black American quilts by any US state. Today, longtime Detroit News columnist Jocelynn Brown continues to promote crafters, needle artists and quilters, through her "Homemade" articles. Now and 50 or 100 years in the future, we'll know about GLAAQN and its members when other guilds may be forgotten.

Contains an illustrated guide to twenty string quilt designs, including traditional and Amish, instructions for short strings, long strings, rectangles, and wedges, and photographs of antique string quilts.