The exhibition Abstract Design in American Quilts opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City on 1 July 1971, and quilting has not been the same since. From this universally acknowledged seminal event dates the study of quilting as a serious art form and the tremendously important international cross-fertilization among art historians, textile scholars, and the artist-craftspeople who work in quilts. This important work is a personal statement of Jonathan Holstein's development as a pioneer quilting connoisseur, a guide to the quilts of the Whitney exhibition, and a study of the effects of the consequent explosion of attention to this art form.