Linda Elisabeth LaPinta has deftly pieced and stitched a radiantly researched and illustrated social history of one of Kentucky's most storied traditions. Artistry, utility, and sometimes even exploitation thread through this tale of three centuries of Kentucky women (and a few men). Brightly patched with quilters and quilt artists' own accounts, it will inspire quilt lovers today and for many years to come.
~Emily Bingham, author of My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song
Linda LaPinta's phenomenal research explores everything you ever wanted to know about Kentucky quilts and quiltmakers and their historical impact on Kentucky. Additionally, she accomplishes her vital goal of elevating the status of quiltmakers as the truly remarkable artists they are!
~Marsha Weinstein, former director of the Kentucky Commission on Women, past president of the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites, and vice president of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust
In Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers, Linda LaPinta vividly explores the centuries-long history of quilting in Kentucky, its cultural and artistic impact, and its economic role. Most important, LaPinta brings much-deserved attention to generations of quiltmakers—like my grandmother—whose vision and achievements built a continuing artistic legacy in the commonwealth. Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers is an invaluable resource for anyone hoping to learn more about quilting or our state's rich cultural heritage.
~Matt Collinsworth, CEO of the National Quilt Museum, and former Director of the Kentucky Folk Art Center
LaPinta has done exhaustive, astonishing research to provide this remarkable look at quilts and quilters in the commonwealth. This lovingly written and beautifully illustrated book, like the quilts to which it pays tribute, is a treasure.
~Silas House, author of Clay's Quilt
This valuable and accessible volume, encyclopedic in scope, documents the important contributions of Kentuckians, past and present, within the context of American quilt culture. Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers is an expansive overview of the range and diversity of quilt-related experiences, events, influence, styles, and purposes, illustrated and enhanced by the inclusion of transcribed interviews with quiltmakers, collectors, and movers and shakers.
~Laurel M. Horton, quilt researcher, author of Whitework: Women Stitching Identity
Like a cedar chest overflowing with treasured heirloom quilts, LaPinta's exhaustive study of Kentucky quilts and quiltmakers is stuffed full of fascinating stories, touching on everything from social and cultural change to technological advancements to myths and scandal. More than just an account of techniques, materials, and makers, this book captures the fine details of everyday life and reminds us that meaning exists in the mundane.
~Melanie Beals Goan, author of A Simple Justice: Kentucky Women Fight for the Vote
In 1981, Kentucky launched America's first statewide quilt documentation project, which generated a number of books and exhibitions. A few years later I acquired my first antique quilt, a masterpiece from Kentucky. It piqued my interest and I wanted to learn more. This book, Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers, Three Centuries of Creativity, Community, and Commerce by Linda LaPinta is the book I always wanted to read. It's a deep dive into a subject very close to my heart, and it is beautifully written and illustrated. This book is a gift, and I am thrilled to add it to my collection.
~Bill Volckening, award-winning photographer, quiltmaker, quilt collector, quilt book author, and blogger
Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers dives deep on generations of women and their artful archive of the state's history. The resulting book covers three centuries of Kentucky quilt and social history with dozens of interviews and photos of quilts from museums across the state. Beyond identifying aesthetic and stylistic changes in the art form since the late eighteenth century, Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers demonstrates the power of quilts to act as archival documents, a way to understand larger movements in Kentucky culture, politics, and industry—to admire a single quilt in LaPinta's book is to admire a specific moment in history, captured by the imagination and hands of an individual artist or a collective.
~Garden and Gun
Winner of the Popular Culture Association's Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women's Studies
