Get Your Flights of Fancy at the Coverlet Gallery

SVC is Urged to Stop by the New Exhibit

By Matthew Thomas, Staff Writer

*Originally Posted September 25th, 2025

Did you know Saint Vincent College (SVC) is home to a cultural preservation organization? On Sept. 12, the Foster and Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery opened its newest exhibit, "The Flights of Fancy: A Menagerie of Handwoven Birds." The exhibit is on the ground floor of the Fred Rogers Center and will be open for the rest of the semester through Dec. 20th.

"The Foster and Muriel McCarl Art Gallery has been open since 2008,” Emily Barth, the curator of the Foster and Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery, who has worked here for over a year, said “It features a prominent collection of handwoven coverlets. Back in the day, these coverlets were used as decorative bedspreads and were woven in the late 1800s.”

Since 2008, the collection of coverlets at the gallery has grown from 400 to 860. All the coverlets have been donated and are well taken care of. They are rotated based on separate groups, and each year, about 25 to 30 coverlets are displayed in the gallery at any given time. A coverlet is a bed spread typically on the front of the bed, and back in the day, people would decorate and design it.

"What makes a coverlet different from a quilt is that it's woven on a loom.” said Barth. “Coverlets are woven one fabric at a time and take about one to two days to make. The loom has a feature called a Jacquard machine, which runs on punch cards. This means you can program the machine to create any pattern or design, one line of fabric at a time. Years later, the Jacquard machine single-handedly inspired the IBM single punch card machine.”

Each year has a theme for the exhibit and this year’s theme is birds. The coverlets will feature roosters, turkeys, peacocks, eagles, and other birds woven into the sheets. Additionally, the exhibit will feature a 19th-century field guide so viewers can better understand the artist's viewpoint of what birds may have looked like at the time of the coverlets’ creations. These coverlets are a combination of wool and cotton designed and made by professional weavers, such as blacksmiths and coopers. Some of them had the owners' names woven into them, and the manufacturer would sometimes weave their name or a poem on the back. The SVC community is urged to stop by and see the incredibly detailed and beautiful coverlets!