Lectures

Katie Vaclavik presents lectures about quilts during the underground railroad era. She has researched and assembled a plethora of facts intertwined with personal knowledge of African Americans who risked their lives to gain freedom from slavery.

Quilts of this bygone era contained signs and symbols that gave clues to the time to leave and the direction to be taken in their quest for freedom. Katie relates some of her childhood experiences that remained locked away in the recesses of her memory until she began her exploration into the history of the trials and tribulations encountered by these determined people.

Katie is currently developing another lecture relating to women in quilting and their role in social activities before and during the Civil War era. An additional planned lecture includes Katie's own personal adventures in the quilt world, taking her through the years from oil, pastel, and water color painting to traditional quilts and how she developed her own personal artistic style and technique of "painting" landscape quilts with fabric.