Tartan

I so enjoy working with rulers and ruler foot on my Bernina. This has become popular for sewing machines in the last 5 years.

Quilt30

Suggest you go back farther and start with the GoodHousekeeping

quilt contest in the early 70’s and quilt conventions which started in 1977.

SewingSenior

Love Love Love anything that has anything to do with history. If you need to add a few quatations about quilting there is an adorable little (2" x 3") book that I found years ago titled Quilting Quotations Celebrating an American Legacy.. It has wonderful remembrances from quilters over the years. One of my favorites reads, "You can give the same kind o' pieces to two persons, and one'll make a "nine-patch" and one'll make a "wild-goose-chase," and there'll be two quilts made of o' the same kind o' pieces, and jest as different as they can be. And that is jest the way with living'. The Lord sends us the pieces, but we can cut 'em out and put 'em together pretty much to suit ourselves, and there's a heap more in the cuttin' out and the sewin' than there is in the caliker (calico). Eliza Calvert Hall.

https://www.amazon.com/Quilting-Quot.../dp/1561384186

Quiltah Mama

Judy5, what an awesome topic, thank you so much for sharing this. Love all the responses and added info. I am so jealous of your guild, your presentation will be a hit and spark such a great conversation. Enjoy.

oksewglad

Yes an interesting topic indeed and well thought out...My first quilt was made with pencil marked squares cut out with scissors. We've come a long way.

Quilt30

The Hoffman Challenge started in 1987 and was the first national challenge and still going.

Teacup

Agree that quilt revival started taking off in USA with American bicentennial in 1976, which revived interest in quilts themselves, learning the art of quilting, and created many historic quilting projects in towns across America. The patterns/books by Kaye Woods (TV shows started late 1980s) and Eleanor Burns (Quilt in a Day TV show first series started 1990) helped bring quilting to a bigger audience through television and further revive the craft. And don't forget Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting TV show on PBS which started in 2003 according to their website (they also had a number of books). Also, HGTV had Simply Quilts with Alex Anderson, which started at the end of 2003 and introduced many quilters and quilting styles. National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, opened in 1991.

judy5cents

Thank you so much for the added information. I will try to update my timelime and repost it. I was thinking this would be a 15 minute talk....now i think it could go much longer.

Murphy224

Really interesting thread. For some statistics on quilting in America check out the quilting in America surveys done in 2014 and the last one I can find in 2017. Interesting reading about the $3.7 BILLION industry.
Here is a link to the results of the 2017 survey as well as who did the survery. A google search will also show results from 2014.

https://www.quiltinghub.com/Articles/ArticleID/474

ptquilts

I started quilting in 1978 and boy has it changed!! I remember when the Concord Fabrics sample folder was THE resource for making quilts. They were the pre-eminent quilt fabric company.

I led a pretty insular quilting life (did not join guilds, etc) so when I joined the QB in 2010 I was shocked at all the changes, mainly how many people were doing machine quilting. When I started quilting, most quilters loved making tops but not quilting them, so I had a niche business doing hand quilting for others. Now it is the opposite, people can machine quilt so fast, some are hungry for more tops.

Happy to say I finally took up rotary cutting in the past few years, yes I know I am slooooow. But I love it now.