“Why Quilts Matter: History, Art & Politics” Reviewed by Booklist.com

If you own a handmade quilt, you may think you know why quilts matter. But it’s a guarantee that you don’t know everything about the history and culture of quilts, as revealed in this passionate nine-part documentary.  In the sampled Empowering Women One Quilt at a Time, host Shelly Zegart—author of American Quilt Collections (1998)—introduces five segments, concluding with “Taking On an Icon: One Quilt’s Journey.”  Each segment, backed by guitar and classical music, includes vintage and contemporary film clips and photographs as well as interviews with quilt makers, fabric artists, museum curators, scholars, and more.  The experts detail how quilts became powerful vehicles of expression—a “soft medium to deliver a hard message”—empowering women to move from homemakers to expressive entrepreneurs.  Other episodes include Quilts Bring History Alive, The Quilt Marketplace, and Quilt Scholarship: Romance and Reality. This colorful, well-produced, and fascinating production sees quilts “through the lenses of history, art, and politics.”  Downloadable resource guides with thumbnail photos accompany the series.
— Eloise Kinney

Originally published on BooklistOnline.com