There are a lot of people in the quilt world who dislike the term modern quilting. While I often find the term inadequate to describe what is actually going on with a new generation of quilters, there is another word I find equally problematic: traditional. It is a word used as much as modern, and more often than not, it is used in a way that seems to assume that it refers to a singular, unified practice; that is, quilting as it always has been done, and by implication, should be done. Traditional frequently appears to lay authoritative claim to the quilting tradition. But just what is traditional quilting?
