Did someone say "Quilt Road Trip"?

Your car is gassed up and ready for a road trip.  Your GPS is ready to go.  Do you know where you’re headed? Do you have planned stops along the way? If the heat radiating off the pavement into the horizon is calling to you and you have no planned stops along the way, you may want to consider visiting a quilt museum. 

Many states have quilt museums.  A Moda Fabrics recent blog post lists many of the familiar ones.  I’ve had the fortune to visit Paducah, Lowell, Golden and Shelburne, but I sure hope to visit others in my future trips.  I’d love to organize a bus trip across country with my quilty BFF’s visiting many of the others, and perhaps a quilt shop or two along the way.  Naturally!

For those that still prefer a paper road atlas, grab the yellow highlighter and get busy planning your stops.  The rest of you log on, map your route on google earth.  If your traveling with ‘hubs’, be sure to find a ‘guy stop’ to keep him busy, maybe a Cabela’s or a golf course, or some other stop that can fill his afternoon so you can enjoy the rich history these museums have to offer.

http://www.quiltstudy.org

University of Nebraska

Lincoln, Nebraska 

http://www.texasquiltmuseum.org/index.html

Textile Quilt Museum

La Grange, Texas

http://dairybarn.org

The Dairy Barn Arts Center

Athens, Ohio

http://quiltmuseum.org

National Quilt Museum

Paducah, Kentucky

http://www.sjquiltmuseum.org

San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
San Jose, California

http://www.laconnerquilts.org

La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum
La Conner, Washington

http://www.nequiltmuseum.org

New England Quilt Museum

Lowell, Massachusetts 

http://www.museum.msu.edu/glqc/about_glqc.html

Great Lakes Quilt Center/MSU
East Lansing, Michigan

http://wiquiltmuseum.com

Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts

Cedarburg, Wisconsin 

https://rmqm.org

Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum

Golden, CO

http://www.quiltershalloffame.net

Quilters Hall of Fame

Marion, Indiana

There are many museums that feature exquisite quilts in their collections, but may not be exclusively quilt focused.  However, they are still very quilt worthy in terms of our time, and important to the history and promotion of quilt making.  There are many more across our great land so check the states you plan to visit to see what may be showing.  Check these websites to learn more about their exhibits, dates and times:

http://www.thehenryford.org/museum/index.aspx

The Henry Ford Museum

Quilts of Henry Ford

Detroit, Michigan

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/other/geesbend/about/index.html

The Quilts of Gees Bend

Auburn University

Auburn, Alabama

http://shelburnemuseum.org/collections/quilts/

Shelburne Museum

Shelburne, Vermont

http://www.dar.org/museum/exhibitions/current-exhibition

DAR-Constitution Hall

Washington, DC

http://folkartmuseum.org/exhibitions/

American Folk Art Museum
New York, New York

Here’s an additional site that lists exhibitions by state, so give this a look too:

http://www.quiltersresources.net/museums_usa.html

And if all that doesn’t yield enough, simply google/bing/yahoo search “quilt exhibits or museums” and the area you are visiting.

Happy Quilty Summer!