The American quilt is an art form that continues to thrive, more than 200 years after we gained our independence and began to put our distinctive spin on the quilts we knew from the British Isles. Each quilt tells a story, whether it is a Log Cabin from 1818 or a modern-day design made from a pattern downloaded from the Internet
On Saturday, March 18, 2017, from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., Odell Public Library and the Friends group present “The Quilt: America’s Greatest Creative Legacy,” in the Program Room, 307 S. Madison Street, Morrison, IL. Mary Fons will deliver a dynamic lecture about the history of the American quilt. She will share beautiful images of quilts, representing a wide variety of styles and traditions and spanning the history of quilting in the United States. A question and answer session will follow.
To help the staff provide adequate seating for this popular event, reservations are requested but not required.
This free program is made possible by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Road Scholars Speakers Bureau, a program that provides organizations with affordable, entertaining, and thought-provoking humanities events for their communities.
Mary Fons is a quilter, writer, teacher, and designer living in Chicago, IL. In 2010, she created Quilty, a weekly online how-to program for beginning quilters. She served four years as Editor and Creative Director of Quilty magazine. She writes “The Quilt Scout,” a bi-monthly column for Quilts, Inc. Most notably, Fons is co-host of Love of Quilting on public television, alongside her mother, Marianne Fons. Mary Fons’s first book, Make + Love Quilts: Scrap Quilts for the 21st Century, was released in 2014. Dear Quilty, a retrospective and pattern book from the pages of Quilty magazine, was published in 2015.
She is an enthusiastic spokesperson for BabyLock sewing and quilting machines. She admits to being proud to have a thread collection with Aurifil and an embarrassingly large fabric stash. Her fabric line, “Small Wonders,” is available exclusively at independent quilt shops like Fabric Depot. Fons is an amateur quilt historian and enjoys learning about the history of American quilts, as much as she likes designing and making them. Currently she serves on the board of the International Quilt Study Center Museum at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
Multi-talented Mary is a Nationally-ranked slam poet and proud alumni member of Chicago’s Neo-Futurist Ensemble. Currently she is working on her MFA in Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. To read daily posts on her popular blog, PaperGirl, visit MaryFons.com.
Illinois Humanities is an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, dedicated to fostering a culture in which the humanities are a vital part of the lives of individuals and communities. Illinois Humanities creates programs and funds organizations that promote greater understanding of, appreciation for, and involvement in the humanities by all Illinoisans, regardless of their economic resources, cultural background, or geographic location. Illinois Humanities is supported by State, Federal and private funds.
