A Visit to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum
It’s Interesting…
My vacation included a nice visit to a quilt museum. We took a drive to Golden, Colorado, the home of both Coors beer and the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, a gem of a place in a very nondescript shopping mall. Not a very big place, but very welcoming.
I dragged The Partner and daughter along with me and promised I wouldn’t be long. They were good sports, however and went in with me to see the quilts. The Partner is used to these little side trips and actually looks at the quilts with a lot of interest. He also likes to take pictures of me observing the quilts with my opinionated eye, catches me with very judgemental expressions on my face and makes sure to get very unflattering angles. I’m not at my most photogenic when bending over to see how the binding looks at the bottom of the quilt or squinting while I peer at the quality of the quilting stitches.
RMQM has 2 small galleries and an equally small quilt store space. The larger gallery was filled with Caryl Bryer Fallert quilts all made using the same techniques. A very pleasant docent explained her process to me. She designed all the fabric using a computer. Sent the program to Spoonflower (I think) to print the fabric, and then proceeded to quilt the heck out of it when she got it back. Many geometric shapes, some flora and fauna, and some other modern art concepts. She also used a lot of thread painting. Needless to say, they were not my cup of tea. My daughter kept nudging me and showing me the prices of the quilts. They were in the range of $5,000 and up to $18,000 each. She asked me with a light in her eye if I could sell my quilts for that much money. I was flattered by the comparison but explained that Caryl Bryer Fallert is world famous and her quilts hang in art museums. The light went out. Of course Caryl deserves those prices for her artwork, but my daughter is not a connoisseur of art quilts. She is too used to sleeping under them and using them as the cats’ bed.
By the way, my daughter tolerated my visit with only a few sighs and eye rolls. She is cursed with a mother who quilts.
I did take of photo of Caryl’s quilt honoring the suffragettes and First Ladies of the past. I don’t think it was for sale.
The smaller gallery was full of more traditional quilts made by Joan Duncan, a resident of Golden, whose favorite techniques are hand work. She is a 10 year survivor of breast cancer whose cancer has metastasized. She is also a superior quilter. Take a look at her Baltimore Album quilts.
And her Hawaiian quilt. (My apologies, I had many photos of the Baltimore Album quilts made by Joan but Substack was being recalcitrant and wouldn’t let me load them.)
Looking back at the photos The Partner shot while we were in this section of the galleries, you could see how much more relaxed we looked amongst the more traditional quilts. I’m so glad the RMQM was able to honor this excellent quilter with an exhibit and Joan Duncan obviously possesses appliqué as her super power just like opinionating is my super power.
Exiting the galleries, we walked through a surprisingly well stocked store with fabric, notions, books, patterns, etc. I know they need income from this little store to keep the museum going, but I wish they used this space as another gallery. It would have been nice to see maybe some antique quilts hanging here honoring Colorado’s quilting history. I bet it is very extensive and colorful.
Another thought: what if the quilt museum was housed in the Coors buildings and the Coors offices were in this strip mall? Coors probably takes up a good 90% of Golden’s city limits. But now I’m just being snarky.
But a good time was had by all and a big recommendation from me to visit this gem of a museum.