Civil War quilts

The New York Historical Society's museum on Central Park West has a fabulous show organized by the American Textile Museum on exhibit now called Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts & Context in the Civil War. The show will continue into August, and includes some great quilts.

I grabbed the photo above off the museum's website, and the photos below I shot with my cell phone when the guards weren't looking. (I went through the exhibit 3 times, so I could get a really good look at the quilts and so I could snap the photos. Sorry they aren't a little better quality!)

I was especially impressed by the quilting in the one pictured above, and by the colors, which had remained really vivid over so many years. If I'm not mistaken, the sign next to this quilt said it had been made by a quilter in Georgia who'd had to bury her quilts  to keep them safe before the Union soldiers came through. Apparently the soldiers took whatever they wanted, and at least one quilter watched soldiers cut up one of her prized quilts to make saddle blankets for his horses.

The quilt above,  Reconciliation Quilt, was made by Lucinda Ward Honstein in Brooklyn in 1867. This quilt is stunning! Each block contains an appliquéd scene or floral arrangement that I assume was designed and then created by the quilter. It's a real work of art. 

I'm sorry that I don't have any information about this last quilt, which was very charming and had some lovely details. But if you like it, the museum's gift shop sold a kit for $125 containing the pattern and templates for the horses and flowers that would allow you to recreate the quilt. I was a bit tempted, but I've got so many UFOs going already that I decided to hold off, for now at least.