Quilt City USA

Many of us enjoy bundling up in a quilt or two when winter winds howl, but if you want to appreciate quilts even more, head to Paducah, Kentucky. Just over the southern Illinois border, this UNESCO Creative City is home to the National Quilt Museum, a collection of amazing artistic works.

Paducah also brims with other arts, from the river wall murals telling the city’s history and several museums, to multiple galleries and impressive homes for theater and music. The city’s efforts to promote the arts and restore historic areas led to UNESCO designation in 2013, one of the nine Creative Cities in the United States and 350 around the world. “Paducah makes important connections with other cultures to harness the power of creativity in artist exchanges, sustainability measures and cultural preservation,” says Liz Hammond, director of marketing and communications.

Opened in 1991, the National Quilt Museum is a mainstay of the artistic community and the most prominent of Paducah’s five museums. Its permanent collection holds some 700 quilts, with several dozen displayed at a time. Regular touring exhibits also get wall space, and the museum becomes the center of the quilting universe when the American Quilt Society holds its annual show in late April.

Bill and Meredith Schroeder owned a publishing company in Paducah and started going to quilt shows for fun. Soon they decided the work that goes into the art form needed to be appreciated and funded the museum to showcase the best from the United States and the world.

You don’t have to be a quilter or even sew your own buttons to admire the painstaking details in the quilts displayed. Many tell stories of history, nature or whimsy in their intricate designs.

“Our museum features exhibitions by emerging and experienced quilt artists who implement creative ideas and emerging approaches to fiber art,” according to the museum. “What you see here may challenge your expectations of quilting, but we also hope that viewing these works brings joy and understanding.”

The museum and gift shop are open seven days a week except for major holidays and the first week of January, with workshops all year long. In addition, Paducah has several quilting and sewing shops.

Within walking distance of the museum is a series of murals painted on the city’s flood walls, built to keep the Ohio River from damaging the city. The Wall to Wall murals tell Paducah’s history, from its earliest days as a Native American settlement, trading outpost and stop on the Lewis and Clark Trail, to its role in the Civil War, its heyday as a bustling river and railroad town and into the 20th century. You can take a self-guided tour aided by bronze plaques explaining each mural or book a tour with volunteer guides.

Several other museums call downtown home. The Paducah Railroad Museum has a simulator that allows visitors to “drive” a locomotive, history and technology exhibits and activities for children. It is closed in January and February but open other months, Wednesdays through Saturdays.

Nearby is the Inland Waterways Museum, previously called the River Discovery Center, with interactive exhibits and information about the nation’s rivers. Housed in an 1843 former bank building, the museum is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday all year, except for major holidays and on Sunday afternoons May through October.

The 1852 Lloyd Tilghman House and Civil War Museum explains Tilghman’s life as a railroad agent, West Point graduate and Confederate general. Paducah billed itself as the “Union Gateway to the Confederacy,” and the museum has exhibits on the Union’s occupation of the city, ironclads used to fight battles on the rivers and a group of former slaves who fought in the war. The museum is open April through November from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.

Also housed in a historic building is the William Clark Market House Museum, containing artifacts, exhibits and photos from the city’s past. A French vase the Marquis de Lafayette gave to Clark and his wife for their wedding and the bell that signaled fog for the crew of the USS Paducah gunboat are among the museum’s holdings. So is a small writing table used by Paducah native Alben Barkley, Harry Truman’s vice president. For more history, visitors can take a walking tour through Lower Town, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, named because it was downstream from the commercial area known as Old Town. The downtown Visitors Bureau offers a guide to Lower Town’s restored homes and commercial buildings.

Paducah started encouraging artists to live and work in the city when it launched the Lower Town Artists Relocation Project in the early 2000s. That helped revitalize the historic area by selling properties to artists at costs as low as $1.

Today the city has multiple galleries. The Paducah Area Painters Alliance hosts a gallery, as does the Art Guild of Paducah. The Yeiser Art Center is a nonprofit art gallery and shop aimed at promoting art with classes, exhibits, lectures and a permanent collection. Performing arts also get civic support. The Market House Theatre, in the same building as the Clark museum, produces plays, comedy shows and musical performances. A nonprofit cinema specializes in showing independent films and boosting arts projects. The state-of-the-art Carson Center downtown hosts the Paducah Symphony and Orchestra and touring performances, adding to the city’s artistic bent.

For more information, go to www.paducah.travel.

Mary Bohlen, a Springfield travel writer, does not sew but still appreciates the work of quilt artists.

This post was originally published on here