The winning bidder will receive four passes to the New England Quilt Museum.

The New England Quilt Museum is the only East Coast venue to exhibit this impressive selection of charm quilts from the Pat L. Nickols Collection at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, California.

Over the last 30 years, Nickols has amassed a wondrous collection of mostly American quilts from various parts of the country. The charm quilts gathered for this exhibition are composed of elaborate geometric patterns in which every piece of fabric is different.  This style of quilt making is attributed to the eastern U.S. in the late 1860s, but enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1870s and 1880s. 

Quilt makers of this era often had collections of fabric left over from dressmaking and would trade with one another in order to gather unique samples. They enjoyed the challenge of constructing a quilt that used all of these different fabrics to create a displayable, as well as useable, object--the Charm Quilt.