Celebrate Women's History Month with a guest lecture by quilt historian Barbara Brackman as she brings to life the history of the women (and some men!) behind some of the popular quilt patterns.

As she's indexed quilt patterns over the years, Barbara Brackman has gotten to know the people behind the old 20th-century newspaper quilt columns. She'll introduce you to several entrepreneurs and their influence on our ideas of quilt history, selling patterns, kits and fabric by painting pictures of quilts on the lonely frontier with thrifty housewives creating an authentic American folk art to warm the family and their hearts. The professionals who made a living making quilts painted a false if popular picture of the past by ignoring the economic and commercial aspects of women's needlework at which they themselves were succeeding admirably.

Barbara Brackman is a quilt historian and author from Lawrence, Kansas. She’s written many books over the past forty years, indexing patterns, ex-ploring women's history through their quiltmaking and giving guidelines for dating fabrics and quilts. She writes several blogs about quilt history, including Material Culture and Civil War Quilts. Barbara was on the board of the Kansas Quilt Project; is a founding member of the American Quilt Study Group and honorary curator of quilts at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. Her most recent books are Divided Hearts: A Civil War Friendship Quilt and the third edition of her classic Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. She also designs reproduction prints for quilters for Moda.