San Jose Quilt Museum

When on holidays in California we managed to visit San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.

It was a disappointing day, as the Museum was pretty small, and contained more textile art, it was weaved creations, than quilts.

The exhibit in the entrance "Advanced Geometry by Gloria Hansen"was interesting.

She made quilts using her computer to design geometric patterns, she used her printer to make the fabric, then overpainted it, sewed it together and quilted.

Parts of blocks that look pieced are printed.

This enabled her to realise very complex designs, with a lot of symetry, and geometric figures.

Sorry we weren't allowed to take pictures.

Then there was a room with older quilts, about a dozen.

The 2 big rooms at the back were all about textile art, interesting but not what I was looking for.

While still in San Jose we also visited the Museum of Modern Art, and lost our time, I think. When you are told that 2 canvas covered uniformely in grey for the first, and darker grey for the second, are representing Princess Margaret, you wonder who is deciding what is art...

Definitely not for me.

PS : following this post Gloria Hansen wrote a comment that says

"Thanks for the kind words on my exhibit.

While some of the pieces are created as you described, there are also some that have traditional piecing and hand quilting. :)

You can learn more at my site: www.gloriahansen.com.

Thanks again! "

I feel quite touched that she would answer me, and a bit guilty that I didn't put a reference to her website. She has also written 15 books on quilting, notably quilting with the use of computers. So she must be a celebrity in the world of patchwork, or at least in the USA.

Internet is a wonderful tool to learn, and to meet people on the other side of the world, and it all happened so quickly in the last 20 years.

I'm in awe.