Recently, I took a little day trip to Lowell, Massachusetts, with my friend and fellow quilt designer Timna Tarr. Our destination was the New England Quilt Museum, but of course, we couldn’t resist taking a little detour to check out new quilt shop, Fab Lab Fabric + Quilt in Acton, MA.
The museum is housed in an 1845 landmark building in the heart of Lowell’s historic district. And Lowell itself is a particularly fitting place for a quilt museum.
A Little Lowell History
Lowell has a wonderful mix of historic brick buildings, canals, old mill architecture, and cobblestone streets that give you a real sense of its history. The city also has a really interesting connection to fabric.
Lowell was one of America’s major textile manufacturing centers. Beginning in the early 19th century, the city’s water-powered mills transformed Lowell into an industrial powerhouse, producing cotton textiles on a massive scale. By the 1850s, more than 40 textile mills stretched for about a mile along the Merrimack River and employed more than 10,000 people.
Today, many of those historic mill buildings and canals are part of Lowell National Historical Park, and the city’s textile history is still very much a part of its identity.
Some of my Favorite Quilts at the Museum:
Go the Distance Quilt by the Marathon Quilters Guild
One of the main reasons Timna and I visited the museum was to check out the Go the Distance Quilt. a collaborative polyptych project conceived by the Marathon Quilt Guild as part of its 30th anniversary quilt show. Timna designed and made the Boston panel.
The project is made up of eight individual quilted panels, one representing each of the eight towns along the Boston Marathon route. In January 2025, the Marathon Quilt Guild issued an open invitation to quilt and textile guilds and artists across Massachusetts to participate.
The goal was to celebrate 130 years of Boston Marathon history and the unique culture of each of the eight towns along the route. More than 40 artists from across the state collaborated on the project, which was completed in January 2026.
I especially love projects like this because they show how quilting can tell a story on a really large scale. Each panel has its own identity, but together they become something much bigger. And there’s something particularly appropriate about using quilts to document a journey. A marathon is, after all, about putting one foot in front of the other and moving through a series of places and experiences until you reach the finish line. A quilt can work much the same way—one block, one seam, one piece at a time.
You can learn more about the project on the Marathon Quilt Guild website.
The Go the Distance quilt will eventually be housed at the International Marathon Center planned for Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
Fenway Park Centennial Quilt by Rosemary Bawn
Another quilt that I really enjoyed was Fenway Park Centennial, made by Rosemary Bawn of Stowe, Massachusetts, in 2012.
I’m a New York Yankees fan, so I have to admit that I approached a quilt celebrating Fenway Park with a little bit of Yankee skepticism, but I absolutely loved this quilt.
What grabbed me first was its graphic quality. At first glance, it felt more like a vintage poster or a piece of graphic design than a traditional quilt, and that’s exactly what made it so interesting to me.
The quilt commemorates Fenway Park, which opened on April 20, 1912, just one day after the sinking of the Titanic. But the story behind the quilt is just as interesting as the design.
Rosemary became a Red Sox fan during the 1967 season and spent the next eight years sitting in the Fenway bleachers with a large group of teenage girls. They each had their favorite players, and those memories eventually became part of the inspiration for this quilt. In 2010, Rosemary decided to make a commemorative quilt and began collecting autographs from some of her favorite players. She mailed green fabric strips to Red Sox players from 2010 and received about a dozen signatures in return. She then continued collecting autographs at baseball card shows and through Autograph Alley at Fenway.
Rosemary and her daughter attended the Centennial game in April 2012, and she even had the chance to talk with Bob Bolin.
I love that this quilt isn’t simply about Fenway Park. It’s really about memories, fandom, collecting, and a very personal connection to a place.
Quilts from The Boston Modern Quilt Guild
There was plenty more to see at the museum, including the Summer Celebration of New England Quilts 2025, featuring winning quilts from the Boston Modern Quilt Guild. Here are a few of my favorites from the exhibit:
Engaged, Engraged, and Finding Center by Emily Barr
Machine pieced and quilted, hand quilted
Artist Statement: “From a somewhat chaotic pile of fabric strips these vibrant log cabins emerged off-kilter, a little weird and demanding my attention. I met them with curiosity and used the rich cordovan background and quiet echoed quilting to give them a place to shine. Making this quilt offered me a temporary reprieve from shoveling snow during the February blizzard and the heartache of watching Tomahawk missiles rain down to start another senseless war.”
Pink Pony Club Quilt by the Boston Modern Quilt Guild
Machine pieced, hand and machine appliqued, longarm quilted by Rebecca Loren
Artist Statement: “Pink Pony Club plays with ideas (silhouette, cameo, and circular) that came out of a guild brainstorming session. After developing these ideas in a design, we challenged members to applique motifs in silhouette to wedge-shaped blocks. The questionalbe color palette, likened to unicorn vomit, inspired the central motif and somehow suits this whimsical quilt. Extra credit to: Emily Hofmann, Amy Kidd, and Susan McKinney for design development”
And Then I left Two Quilts Behind and the Museum….
There was one more reason for this particular trip to the New England Quilt Museum. I didn’t just visit the museum to look at quilts, I dropped of two of my own!
Journeys Aren’t Straight Lines and Wildflower Remix will both be part of a group exhibition entitled, Precision Paper Piecing, that will be on view at the museum September 29 – December 31, 2026.
I’ll definitely share more details about that exhibit as we get closer, but it was a pretty exciting feeling to walk into the museum carrying two quilts that would soon become part of an exhibition there.
I went to Lowell to see quilts, get inspired, spend time with a friend, and enjoy a day away from my usual routine… and I ended up leaving two of my own quilts at the museum. Not a bad day trip at all!
If you find yourself in the Lowell area, I definitely recommend adding the New England Quilt Museum to your list. The museum presents changing exhibitions throughout the year
