When is a quilt more than a quilt?

When it represents history and it's displayed as if it were a piece in an art gallery.

The Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in Altenburg, Mo., puts those two elements together in a new exhibit, "A Celebration of Red and White," a display of 29 quilts from the collection of Ann M. Hazelwood of St. Charles, Mo., according to museum director Carla Jordan. The vivid and varied quilts are on display through April 30 at the museum, 75 Church St.

Hazelwood, a native of Perryville, Mo., is former president of the board of directors of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Ky., a prolific author and credentialed quilt appraiser. She was the featured speaker at the 2012 East Perry County Quilt Show and Fair at the museum, during which she presented a bed-turning using the quilts of area quilt collectors. A bed-turning is a way of describing a quilt and telling its history, with the quilts atop one another and turned down to reveal one at a time.

In describing the April exhibit, Jordan said, "We got really creative with this. The way the quilts are draped and folded, some in zigzag patterns, it almost looks like an art gallery. [The exhibit] is for everyone -- young, old, men and women. They are geometric works of art, a few of them modern."

“A Celebration of Red and White: the Quilt Collection of Ann Meyer Hazelwood” is on display at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum, 75 Church St. in Altenburg, Mo. (Adam Vogler)

Jordan explained the show predominantly features red-and-white quilts created during the late Victorian era, from 1880 to 1901, and until about 1930 when the Turkish red dye became widely used because it would not bleed into the adjoining white fabric.

Some of the quilts are constructed of intricately pieced red-and-white blocks in dramatic geometric forms; some feature embroidered animals, flowers, portraits and autographs, In addition, a contemporary quilt carries red cross symbols commemorating the lives of Americans lost in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Our racks are lined with black, not muslin," Jordan said, explaining that it adds to the drama of the display. "I don't think you're going to see anything like this short of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Ky."

Displayed with the quilts in the museum's central gallery is Hazelwood's collection of antique red and white splashers. Hung from a horizontal dowel above and behind the washstands that predated indoor plumbing, splashers protected the wallpaper as people bathed using water from a pitcher that was poured into bowl or basin on a stand in the kitchen or bedroom, Hazelwood said. It's possible that a splasher had a small matching tablecloth beneath the basin; they were sometimes embroidered and monogrammed.

Hazelwood said that except to the quilting cognoscenti, red-and-white quilts and splashers had become somewhat irrelevant, consigned to the past until about two years ago when the American Folk Art Museum in New York City staged a retrospective that again made them trendy.

Ann Hazelwood

"They're very striking and are sometimes elaborate," she said, noting that she made a couple of the quilts in the exhibit. "Some of those at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum have sayings in Slavic languages and German. They represent what quilt-making was in a certain time period."

A prolific author whose quilt-related and fictional works are detailed on her website, booksonthings.com/php/bot2012.php?topic=home, Hazelwood will be feted at a reception from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at the museum, about 28 miles north of Cape Girardeau. The reception is sponsored by the East Perry County Cultural Alliance, the mission of which is to encourage tourism in East Perry County.

Hazelwood began quilting and collecting quilts in 1970 and had a shop, Patches Etc., in St. Charles from 1979 to 2007. Her late parents, Fritz and Esther Meyer, owned Meyer Bus Line in Perryville, which is still run by family members. Hazelwood's husband Keith is a lawyer.

With the exception of Easter Sunday, April 20, Jordan said, Hazelwood's collection will be shown from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through April 30 or by appointment. To make an appointment, call the museum at 573-824-6070. She said the center will open at 9 a.m. the weekend of the 24th annual Mississippi River Valley Scenic Drive, April 26 and 27.