February 16–24, 2019
Winedale Historical Complex, Round Top, Texas
The Briscoe Center for American History presented an exhibition of twenty-eight extraordinary pieces from its Astronomical Quilts! Block Challenge Collection. The quilts were created from blocks made in response to a challenge issued by the International Quilt Festival (IQF) in 2013. The challenge was inspired by a quilt block hand sewn by NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg while serving aboard the International Space Station in 2013. The exhibit included this quilt block and a video of Nyberg quilting in space. The block challenge invited quilters from around the world to make astronomically-themed blocks that could be used in a single collaborative quilt for display at the 2014 International Quilt Festival (IQF) in Houston. Nearly 2,400 quilt blocks were submitted, prompting volunteers from NASA and Quilts, Inc. to join forces and assemble the blocks into 28 quilts. In 2015, IQF founders Karey Bresenhan and Nancy O. Puentes gifted the collection to the Briscoe Center for permanent preservation and research.
