By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Dave Waddell
From our April 2025 Home & Garden issue
Betsey Telford-Goodwin didn’t know much about quilts when an acquaintance in Massachusetts asked her to hunt around for some antique textiles from the American West to decorate her house. It was 1987, and Telford-Goodwin and her first husband had recently moved from the Boston area to Colorado. Her husband had watched his mother make and sell quilts when he was a child and taught Telford-Goodwin to inspect stitches from the front and back to determine their precision and condition, and to scrutinize the design, piecing, and color selection. On shopping trips, she fell in love with the art of American quilting, which includes more than a hundred common-name patterns and countless individual and regional varieties. Later that year, she opened a retail shop, Rocky Mountain Quilts (130 York St., York. 207-363-6800), specializing in textiles from the 19th through the mid-20th centuries.
Shortly after starting her business, Telford-Goodwin placed an ad for quilts in a Colorado newspaper and wound up meeting a group of women who made blankets in the Depression Era from brightly colored cotton flour, sugar, and feed sacks. “I would sit for hours and listen to them tell stories about how and why they made their quilts,” says Telford-Goodwin, who came away with a newfound appreciation for the art form’s human side. “I love the fact that women cared enough to do things to the best of their ability.”
In 1997, Telford-Goodwin moved her shop to York, where, today, some 700 quilts fill a timber-frame barn attached to her 1748 farmhouse. Stacked on shelves and draped over racks are freeform silk-and-velvet crazy quilts from the Victorian era, Depression-era double wedding ring quilts, mid-century African American quilts in improvisational patterns, and antique mosaic, star, log cabin, and broken dishes quilts from Maine. Most are priced between $1,200 and $3,500, a reflection of their workmanship and near-pristine condition. Telford-Goodwin also maintains a private collection of about a dozen rare quilts in her home, including an 1825 design featuring a multi-colored mariner’s compass inside an octagonal garden-maze pattern.
Most of Telford-Goodwin’s quilts are unsigned, but occasionally a maker leaves a clue. Once, a seamstress was repairing the border on a Depression-era quilt and found a small scroll hidden inside. “It gave the name of the woman who made it, that she had made it for her son, and the son’s name and the date,” Telford-Goodwin says. “We made a pocket for it on the back of the quilt with a little bow, so the owner could see it from then on.”
Read more stories about Maine collectors and their treasures, off-grid Maine homes, and more in our Home & Garden issue.
