Amish Crib Quilts from the Midwest: The Sara Millier Collection

by Janneken Smucker, Linda Welters, Lois Cox Rock

          A rare collection of 90 antique Amish quilts for children is show-cased in this brilliantly colorful volume. Few antique Amish crib quilts remain because they were put to hard use in large families which typically averaged seven children. But Sara Miller of Kalona, Iowa, herself a member of the Old Order Amish, began building a collection of lovely antique crib quilts which she learned about as the proprietor of a fabric and quilt shop. Thus began an unusual odyssey -- Sara, who once disparaged the quilting tradition of her heritage, thinking it dull and drab, began to see its graphic beauty when outsiders became intent on owning Amish quilts.           The richly colorful quilts featured here come from Amish communities through the Midwestern United States. In addition to 90 full-color plates of the exquisite quilts is interpretive commentary and documentation, plus three essays elaborating on the significance of the collection. Author Janneken Smucker descends from a line of quilters in the Amish-Mennonite community of Goshen, IN; Dr. Patricia Cox Crews is Director of the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, NE; Dr. Linda Welters is Professor of Textiles at the University of Rhode Island. Amish Crib Quilts from the Midwest: The Sara Miller Collection is an unusual feast visually. The analyses that accompany the boldly beautiful images contribute scholarship to this intersection of art and the life of the Amish.

Genres: Quilting, Amish

108 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2003

Reviews

[Niki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photos in this book are so inspiring to me, a modern quilter. The irony that these quilts were deliberately anti-modern is not unrecognized. Janneken Smucker's essay was very interesting as she can comment from the inside about the details of Amish life. Unfortunately, Linda Welters' essay on symmetry was a bore. She didn't ever argue for why we should care about it, other than when she notes that perfect symmetry is boring. Yes, it is and so why write 1,000 words about it?