A weekend in New Mexico

One of the main reasons I had wanted to go to NM this past weekend was to go to the International Museum of Folk Art. On Day 1 in town it was closed due to inclement weather, then Monday it is always closed so Tuesday morning we checked out of the motel, had a late breakfast at the french bakery and headed to the museum to quickly check it out before our 5+hr drive back to Denver.

I came to the museum mainly interested in seeing the fibre arts and I had no sooner stepped in the door and I found a quilt! No flash allowed in the museum so the photos aren't doing these works of art justice:

Matt my cycling mad hubby even found a bike so he was happy!

This was amazing, a wall of embroidery samplers:

And check out how old they were!

But this is what I came to see, these panels are part of a large quilt known as the NAMES project:

In 1987 they were part of this Washington display to memorialize Aids victims:



I have a collection of vintage quilt books and didn't know about this quilt until coincidentally I added both these books to my collection within weeks of each other:

  

One is a children's picture book about 1 quilt panel and the family of that victim getting together to make the quilt panel. The other is a book full of stories to go with quilt panels, to explain who the victim was. Both very touching.

And of course now I want to see more of the quilt!

So I did finally get to see the quilt and lots of other wonderful works of art so the trip to Santa Fe was well worth it and we will go there again some time when the weather is a little warmer, so we can see it in a different light, but for now it is nice to be home again.