Directional Triangles by Maker once known

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It would have taken many hours to make this quilt, which comprises more than a thousand carefully cut, selected, and pieced triangular patches.

The quilter used many striped fabrics and cut her triangles to create a variety of diagonal, horizontal, and vertical lines. These variations disrupt the regularity of the uniformly shaped patches and give the piece a dizzying visual effect.

Curators and conservators must choose the orientation of quilts when they are prepared for exhibition by sewing a Velcro strip across the chosen “top” of a quilt. In a quilt like this one, the composition does not always give clues as to which side may have been the top when the quilt lay on a bed. Another clue, though, can be found in condition: whichever end of the quilt is more worn may have been the side its user would have pulled up over themselves in bed.

Conservation revealed that this quilt is not quite as early as originally presumed. It was dated to the 1930s when the museum accessioned it, but the quilter used lurex threads, which would not have been available in mass markets until after 1946.

Maker once known, purchased in Texas, Directional Triangles, 1930s, cotton, 80 × 64 inches, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Corrine Riley on the occasion of Collectors Evening 2017, 2017.185.